Cultural Levy Units still messed up?

[Iosue Yu]

Starting a new game as Caledonia. The Culture has 20% Heavy Infantries, 25% Chariots and 55% Light Infantries.

And I start my game with this:

"Now what?" I asked.

 

[Iosue Yu]

And what's the point of reducing Merc prices when the bottleneck is the $100 recruitment cost?

(It was $2.1 a month and we needed to pay $21 to disband. So it's somewhat cheaper but not really.)

 

[Rabid]

The "hire mercenaries" cost should definitely scale with the number of units, that just seems to make sense.

 

[Jiben]

The "hire mercenaries" cost should definitely scale with the number of units, that just seems to make sense.

They "kinda" do. 100 is just the lowest floor. Big companies can demand more.

 

[Iosue Yu]

They "kinda" do. 100 is just the lowest floor. Big companies can demand more.

No. It's a constant $100. Located in:

\game\common\prices\00_hardcoded.txt, Lines 68 to 70

Where it says

recruit_mercenary = {
gold = 100
}

Previously, we had a cost to fire the Mercenaries. The requirement of Hiring was to possess enough money to Fire them once, while you still pay $100.

1. Upfront Payment: $100
2. Monthly Maintenance: Scaled, approximately $0.5 a Unit a Month
3. Disband Cost: 10 Months of Maintenance
   1. Requirement to possess at Hiring

Now, we no longer have Disband Cost. But we still pay $100 to Hire.

1. Upfront Payment: $100
2. Monthly Maintenance: Scaled, approximately $0.375 a Unit a Month

 

[nikkythegreat]

Yeah, levies are still messed up.

In 2.01 template of the largest culture in the governorship was used regardless of integration status.

In 2.02 template of the cultures with in the governorship is used regardless of integration status.

I invaded Egypt as Armenia, I didnt integrate any culture but somehow a proportion of the levies of Lower Egypt were based on the Egyptian pops there thus I had camels and stuff.

 

[juanpacirca]

Yeah, levies are still messed up.

In 2.01 template of the largest culture in the governorship was used regardless of integration status.

In 2.01 template of the cultures with in the governorship is used regardless of integration status.

I invaded Egypt as Armenia, I didnt integrate any culture but somehow a proportion of the levies of Lower Egypt were based on the Egyptian pops there thus I had camels and stuff.

Just wandering, did you have any Armenian pops in the region? If not, I would think that the levy is the 4 cohort one that is the minimum of the region, and one could argue that if you raise levies in this situation, as there are no Armenina pops, the levies are actually Egyptian, and thus the composition. But I don't know if that's how it actually works. For sure something is wrong in the OP, those LC are not supposed to be there.

 

[Iosue Yu]

Just wandering, did you have any Armenian pops in the region? If not, I would think that the levy is the 4 cohort one that is the minimum of the region, and one could argue that if you raise levies in this situation, as there are no Armenina pops, the levies are actually Egyptian, and thus the composition. But I don't know if that's how it actually works. For sure something is wrong in the OP, those LC are not supposed to be there.

There's no logic to follow. My screencap is literally day 1 of the game. So it's undisturbed 100% pure Caledonian Levies, but giving me Light Cavalries.

 

[Ruck]

I also wondered about this in an Carthage game. On day 1 I got 1 or 2 cohorts of war elephants in the punic home region as levies. When the first war began they were already gone and never got back, I didnt integrate anyone and had quite a huge and diverse pop balance in the punic home region. The game was started on 2.0.2

 

[nikkythegreat]

Just wandering, did you have any Armenian pops in the region? If not, I would think that the levy is the 4 cohort one that is the minimum of the region, and one could argue that if you raise levies in this situation, as there are no Armenina pops, the levies are actually Egyptian, and thus the composition. But I don't know if that's how it actually works. For sure something is wrong in the OP, those LC are not supposed to be there.

I think so. Since I had like more than 4 levies at that time.

 

[Arthrodira]

No. It's a constant $100. Located in:

Where it says


Previously, we had a cost to fire the Mercenaries. The requirement of Hiring was to possess enough money to Fire them once, while you still pay $100.

1. Upfront Payment: $100
2. Monthly Maintenance: Scaled, approximately $0.5 a Unit a Month
3. Disband Cost: 10 Months of Maintenance
   1. Requirement to possess at Hiring

Now, we no longer have Disband Cost. But we still pay $100 to Hire.

1. Upfront Payment: $100
2. Monthly Maintenance: Scaled, approximately $0.375 a Unit a Month

You only pay $100, but you're required to have much more cash on hand to hire (not sure exactly what the number is; might be the disband cost, not sure) and this number scales with merc size. Since that's the amount of money you need to hire them (even if you don't actually spend that amount upfront) it's what limits your ability to hire mercs. So really the ability to hire mercs does scale and $100 is just a floor (even if it's a rather convoluted floor/scaling).

 

[Iosue Yu]

You only pay $100, but you're required to have much more cash on hand to hire (not sure exactly what the number is; might be the disband cost, not sure) and this number scales with merc size. Since that's the amount of money you need to hire them (even if you don't actually spend that amount upfront) it's what limits your ability to hire mercs. So really the ability to hire mercs does scale and $100 is just a floor (even if it's a rather convoluted floor/scaling).

Actually it has been changed. Upkeep is relatively cheaper.

It's about $0.38 a unit a month. And no other spendings. But you always have to pay $100 upfront.

In the past, you'd need $21 (coded requirement) to hire a Band with 4 Units, with $2.1 upkeep. But you pay $100 (actual requirement) upfront and $21 to disband.

Now, the same band costs $100 to hire with around $1.6 upkeep with no other costs.

Yes it's cheaper. But the problem is it doesn't scale. And AI usually just has a lot of cash sitting in their treasury. So they are very willing to spend the $100 to hire them.

So if they're attacked, they spend the money and win a war. And after that, they run out of their treasury and become a sitting duck for a 2nd invasion by another country, as they would disband quite quickly.

Things would be improved by a whole lot if the upstart is not hardcoded, but scaled to somewhat reflect the surroundings.

 

[Kerham]

There are a ton of modifiers avaialable, you can easily ditch some 30% of those costs.