Mercs are the same price as in the demo

[Doomdark]

Mercenary maintenance should be double what it is in the demo. The hire cost is unchanged.

 

[Captain Gars]

Uh, the 'release, you have now is exactly the same as the demo minus the date/character/save restrictions.

Once you apply the day-one patch (which may or may not be released on day one) then your mercs will be more expensive, have no fear

That's not true. The release version includes a patch with all the work we have done since the demo was made.

 

[Doomdark]

Ok, sounds like there is some miscommunication among Paradox people. So merc maintenance is still the same as the demo in 1.02b, and that is the newest patch so far?

Version 1.02b should have double merc maintenance costs compared to the demo.

 

[Doomdark]

Same for Holy Orders? AFAIR hiring Templars was like ca. 40gold maintenance in prewiev version.

Not, it's not supposed to be the same as for Holy Orders.

 

[Doomdark]

Maintenance costs for the lowest level mercs are still showing as ~6 for me. I believe this is what they were in the demo.

6 sounds about right to me.

 

[Doomdark]

Ok, so they were not doubled. 6 is fine in my opinion, but its the same as the demo.

It's easy to check in "common/defines.lua".

v1.02b: MERCENARY_MAINTENANCE_FACTOR = 2.5
Demo: MERCENARY_MAINTENANCE_FACTOR = 1.25

 

[Doomdark]

60 - 6 is not right. It's rather easy to get 100 and start rampage as anyone at the start of the game.

Mercs are powerful in the early game, and then become less so as normal levy sizes increase.

 

[Doomdark]

Ok. Well the maintanence is the same as in the demo.

It's possible that something else changed that offset the merc maintenance cost increase. I will look into it.

Also I am finding I cant raise levys when I have already raised levys. Is this a bug? The ai can do it but I cant. I.e. I have raised my armies but now I need extra men I cant go back and raise the men it says are available after about 6 weeks of the war...

No, it's not a bug, you need to disband your levy from the holding before you can raise it again. The AI can't do this either.

 

[Doomdark]

Nothing has changed with the merc, neither the hire nor the maintanence!
It is 1:1 as in the demo.

GG version 1.02b

One thing you can be 100% sure of is that 1.02b is the latest version of the game. So, no worries.

 

[Doomdark]

Ok cool. Thanks. Thats a change from the demo too then I think.

No, it was not possible in the demo either.

 

[Captain Gars]

I was expecting 50% myself. Given a 50% penalty on a wrong-gov city brings it down to castle barony level, 75 seems a bit overkill, but I guess Gars really abused it too much in in-house testing and it pissed off someone bad

Hehe, I surely did... But it was actually I who suggested that it should be nerfed.

 

[Doomdark]

Alright, here is what happened with the mysterious mercenary maintenance costs:

1) The Demo was released
2) We did a complete rebalance of unit costs
3) Mercenary costs were indeed 50% lower than they should be (so the Catalan band would cost 3 gold per month), which I corrected.
4) People complained about cheap mercs.
5) I erroneously thought that the rebalance had been done just before the demo was built, and posted that we would double the costs for release.

Anyway, the important thing is that the costs you are seeing in the the demo and the release version are in fact correct and working as designed.

 

[Tegus]

Is the AI even using mercs though? I find it rediculously easy to become king of Ireland within the lifespan of one OPM count. Just hire mercenaries and fire away. AI doesn't seem to hire them, even if they have the money. Also if the AI would be able to hire them you can easily counter that by just buying up all the $60 mercenaries so their only choice is to hire the expensive ones they cannot afford.

I think the minor counts can have some trouble to save enough cash for hiring mercs. You will see bigger enemies using mercs quite often though