Mercenary Companies should not count toward a country's force limit

[kairom13]

My apologies if this has already been suggested, but I didn't see it when I did a quick search of the forum.

Currently, mercenary companies count toward one's force limit, as if they are regular professional regiments. This in theory makes since 1) it's a carryover from the old system, and 2) there should probably something that prevents a nation from going far over their force limit, even if they can afford it.

Since the AI would only hire mercenaries when they were low on manpower, they could easily hire mercenaries and stay under their force limit. However, under the new system, mercenaries are encouraged to be supplementary to professional armies, especially in the early game, rather than an army of last resort when one's manpower is low. To make sure the AI would be willing to hire mercs (which they wouldn't go over their force limit to do), they were made to prioritize sitting at half their force limit, allowing them to hire mercs if necessary. This makes them easy pickings for the player, since they player will usually sit at their full strength and their competitors will be half as strong. I have personally used this strategy to deliver a quick strong blow against the AI before they can hire mercs, recruit more regiments, or get their allies to defend them.

Again, this solution is not altogether terrible, since it effectively encourages the AI to hire mercs without involving a completely rewriting of the AI's logic for populating their army.

The big problem I have is there is an equally simple solution that achieves the same effect while not nerfing the AI (and could help with other issues with how the AI deals with mercs)

My proposal is to stop counting mercs against a nation's force limit. This would allow the AI to not be arbitrarily weakened in order to encourage them to hire mercs, while not punishing players for having to consider mercs when deciding how many regiments to have.

In exchange a cost penalty would be added to mercs hired above a certain limit, similar to colonial maintenance. Additionally, the "available mercenaries" idea could be modified to lower this penalty, allowing one or more free merc companies. Certain events, like the Italian Wars, could include a similar modifier, to encourage more hiring of mercenaries.

I appreciate any feedback you might have about this idea.

 

[Canute VII]

Maybe a merc company could be counted against the diplomatic relations slots instead?

 

[kairom13]

Hmm. Those are valuable and I don't think many would be willing to save one for a merc company that is uncertain to even be hired. Plus, hiring mercenaries doesn't really seem like a diplomatic action, especially since they're only loosely related to a specific country.

Also I'm not sure how that would be an improvement on the current system. The AI would still have issues since they would probably have to be hard coded to now keep 2 slots free.

 

[Razor Feather]

So if my understanding of what you're saying the ai is doing and the reason its doing it is correct, the ai sits at half force limit with the intention of possibly hiring mercs once war is declared. This leads to the obvious issue of the ai sitting around too weak to fend off a quick assault by the player, making them ultimately quite helpless.

I feel like a better way to deal with this scenario is to instead of changing the way mercs work dramatically, simply change the way the ai plays around them to be slightly more aware of the situation. Very small countries, with less than say 30-40 dev, really tend to just not have a need for mercs. Because base manpower is so much higher than what would be expected for base force limit, unless a minor is in fairly sizeable wars constantly, they just tend to have enough manpower. They also are very highly at risk of getting insta wiped and occupied at the outset of a war, making it unreasonable for them to expect to have time to build new units. As such, they should stay at their force limit or close to it as before. Meanwhile, moderate countries, say 50-150 dev, where they are starting to not notice the base values as much but still have somewhat inflated manpower and small merc companies, should probably stay at around 2/3~3/4 of force limit, so they can grab a company of mercs in the time they now have, while still having a decent standing force. Large countries though, with force limits over around 30, can generally afford to be at half force limit just fine, since they have forts and land, and can likely still field a decent fighting force at half capacity, so they could keep the extra room for a larger company if they think they'll need it.

Basically just make it so that the proportion of standing army force limit a country wants scales down as the country grows in dev, so that it works better for smaller powers.

I'd also like to note that right now, very small countries seem to disband all or most of their starting troops a fair amount of the time, which doesn't really make much sense, as 1) they will need them, and 2) They are losing the manpower that mercs would replace anyway. It seems like a very counterproductive behavior.

 

[kairom13]

I do think recoding the logic for the AI re: army size and mercs is the best solution, but that's also quite complex and would require numerous manhours to hammer out the details and bugs. IMO, the devs don't seem too interested in drastically changing how the AI handles new mechanics, so I proposed my solution as something that would be very simple to add (a user could almost mod it in), which the devs might be more willingly to implement.

That disbanding at the start is exactly my point. All countries start at 75% force limit (you can change this value in the defines), but then I think they do a monthly check to prioritize being at half force limit, so they disband troops.

I went through almost every country in the HRE and recorded their starting force size and limit, and then recorded the new force size after 6 months. Other than Cologne, who was dealing with rebels, every country was at or below their original start. It's no wonder AI Burgundy always attacks Liege when Liege is down to 3/8 regiments.