Merc Realism

[Zorgoth]

I understand the game mechanics and balancing factors involved in providing regular and mercenary armies. However, it seems unrealistic that one get 50,000 swords/guns for hire, lose 50% of them in battle, then immediately disband them without any of the mercs getting upset. Particularly when there is no other standing army in a country.

I can't recall a good historical example, but the bands of armed men terrorizing the German country side in the 30 years war and the praetorian guard would see to hint the dangers involved.

Perhaps if there was a chance of the dissolved brigades becoming rebels or something of the sort, some of the most egregious abuse of mercs could be curtailed.

Any thoughts?

 

[Nirmara]

Mercs overall could use improvements overall taking inspirations from their historical behavior. The point you brought is a good one, but it's only one of the reasons why using mercenaries during this period was not always a good idea.

Other reasons would include;

Their unreliability: Mercenaries were well known for switching side or deserting before a battle);

Their greed: Mercenaries often used shady practices to get better deals (inflation of their numbers, bid-rigging, corruption, racket, etc);

On the other hand, many nations had a rather reliable mercenary army at one point or the other during Eu4 time frame like the Netherlands or the Hungarian Black Army. Perhaps some kind of loyalty meter could influence mercenaries reliability. Such meter could be affected positively by keeping mercenaries for a long period of time, winning battles and from plunder while decreasing due to losses and loosing battles.

 

[Sharples88]

There's a couple of problems (that can be tied with one another) with how mercs work in the game.

1. No attrition. - If Napoleon used mercs, there wouldn't be a need to retreat in Russia.
2. Infinite manpower. - You have a cap, but that can be boosted in quite a number of ways through ideas. The fact that you can delete weak merc units and then recruit them again removes any manpower limit aspect.

The AI, especially in the late game will spam hundreds of merc units when it gets to a point of 'infinite money' (I.E a bottemless pit of cash). This is why money is so important, if you can get rid of that bottleneck, you can win any war. There needs to be some sort of manpower and attrition for mercs in the current aspect of the game. The only thing they've recently done with them to my knowledge is increase the cost of hiring mercs, which is certainly a hindrance early game, but as the game progresses, you will gain more and more money, their price (assuming inflation stays the same) is always fixed.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Mercs are one of the oldest and worst parts of the game left untouched for far too long in my opinion.

While there is definitely value in simplicity and straightforwardness in the way mercs currently work, specially for MP where its basically money+loans = more armies than you should be able to have, for me personally they are really a horrible and immersion breaking mechanic. The way mercs work in CK2 (or used to work, i havent played in a while) is like 50x better.

The AI, especially in the late game will spam hundreds of merc units when it gets to a point of 'infinite money'

They used to do it even early on, dear god, every game as Moscovy, when id go to war with POLIT id have to beat/deplete/wipe their armies like 7 or 8 times instead of 4 or 5 it would take normally. You literally couldnt defeat anyone militarily because AIs would just loan into more and more armies until they went bankrupt. Thank Johan thats changed nowdays.

 

[makaramus]

oh god pls its simple
make mercs more expensive faster they die . number has a base number and same for each country. if you lose 100 k mercs as france next 1k gonna cost you 100 ducats as example

 

[tinculin]

The later in time you get, the more centralised a nation states army should become and mercenaries should become less.

The reality is, the later in the game you are, the more gold you have & the more Mercs you can hire.

As time progresses the overall availability of mercs should fall.

 

[BeyondExpectation]

How exactly do mercenaries work in CK2? What stops one from hiring every mercenary on the map as a merchant republic? I ask because there's a strong chance it could be implemented in EU4 to create a solution that both allows small countries to hire them and stops large countries from having infinite manpower reserves.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

The later in time you get, the more centralised a nation states army should become and mercenaries should become less.

The reality is, the later in the game you are, the more gold you have & the more Mercs you can hire.

I have no strong opinion on the handling of mercs in the game, but I will point out that for some nations (especially Britain) it did work that way. Early wars in Ireland were mostly fought with feudal levies, whereas by the mid-1700s they hired the entire Prussian army to fight the French for them (as well as German mercs to try to put down the American revolution; they were a huge part of basically every major British war in that time period).

I'm aware the kind of things Britain did could often also be represented as Condottieri arragements but until Condottieri become a much more significant feature of the game than they are now, the game effective represents this kind of contract by mercenaries.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

How exactly do mercenaries work in CK2? What stops one from hiring every mercenary on the map as a merchant republic? I ask because there's a strong chance it could be implemented in EU4 to create a solution that both allows small countries to hire them and stops large countries from having infinite manpower reserves.

The main reason they aren't comparable is that in CK2 if you can't pay mercenaries, they'll leave you or defect, which puts a hard limit on how many you can have at one time and how many armies you can have wiped before you have to give up. In EUIV you can dig yourself arbitrarily deep into debt to pay them, which makes them much more open to abuse.

 

[Foxador]

In ck2 there is also a finite amount of mercs shared between everyone and they need to recover manpower after being damaged or destroyed. They're also really expensive to buy upfront and maintain.

 

[BeyondExpectation]

In ck2 there is also a finite amount of mercs shared between everyone

Can anyone hire any and all of the mercenaries in existence?

 

[holyvigil]

Mercy loyalty is a good idea. But it can't be rng based.

 

[DeerMan]

Mercy loyalty is a good idea. But it can't be rng based.

The diplo'/admin points of the ruler could affect their loyalty.
Mercs will try to take advantage of a dumb king

 

[tinculin]

Can anyone hire any and all of the mercenaries in existence?

From my experience of ck2 - the economy of mercs is far different - hiring a merc company costs a lot of gold, in eu4 it’s a small drop in the ocean.

Furthermore the upkeep of mercs is far more expensive in ck2.

In ck2 mercs seem far better represented. In eu4, they are abused to work around the manpower mechanic & in need of a rethink. Supply shouldn’ be limitless, mercs were often highly trained units and often very well martially trained - there numbers were far from infinite.

Condoterri are a step in the right direction for how nation states hired from each other in later years and mercenary companies became less prevalent. Perhaps a better interface to hire, list & rent troops could be implemented? Right now, hiring them feels awkward.

 

[Zak Preston]

I've posted a large suggestion about the whole mercspam vs manpower meta in "Suggestions" subforum. Feel free to add your opinion there as well