Mercspam

[Pyramid_Head]

How come that after Persia patch, which, supposedly, aimed to deal with infinite mercspam and irrelevance of manpower, mercspam became, like, two times as frequent?
Army drill bonus vanishes after one battle and it takes years to earn it back. Ottomans with 70 mercs and 0 manpower? Sure, why not. Delhi with 40-60 mercs? No problem. And Imean absolutely no problem for economy. hey can waste all their powers and then replace lost units with mercs instantly.
Will mercspam ever end? It plagued game for how long? Six patches? Manpower became irrelevant log before that.

 

[makaramus]

army drill is just an early boost. main long term boost is professionalism
I am drilling my men even in war after I start winning and sieging only with undrilled men/mercs to avoid attirtion to valuable men.

also drilling arties are allways great

 

[Vulkandrache]

irrelevance of manpower

Manpower isnt irelevant, its nonexistent.
Mercspam a symptom not a cause.
Have manpower regeneration start 2 times as high as it currently does and have that increase to 10 times near the end of the game.
Then mercs will be much less needed. Right now any sort of war beyond a single big fight is impossible to sustain without them.

And Imean absolutely no problem for economy

The AI got taught the basics of buildings and estate management so we are now closer to the amount of money that should have been in the game all along.
Of course, now we might start to notice runaway amounts of cash but that remains to be seen.
If for one enjoy being able to run the first 100 years of my economy entirely on peacedeals while being able to build multiple manufacturies after each war.

 

[AnssiA]

Manpower isnt irelevant, its nonexistent.
Mercspam a symptom not a cause.
Have manpower regeneration start 2 times as high as it currently does and have that increase to 10 times near the end of the game.
Then mercs will be much less needed. Right now any sort of war beyond a single big fight is impossible to sustain without them.


The AI got taught the basics of buildings and estate management so we are now closer to the amount of money that should have been in the game all along.
Of course, now we might start to notice runaway amounts of cash but that remains to be seen.
If for one enjoy being able to run the first 100 years of my economy entirely on peacedeals while being able to build multiple manufacturies after each war.

In addition, there were bunch of province modifiers added, new more valuable trade goods and few more prince increase events that all also increase the amount of money in game.

 

[saegoto]

when an army is sieging drill should not be decreasing. when army is fighting drill should increase a bit.

 

[makaramus]

when an army is sieging drill should not be decreasing. when army is fighting drill should increase a bit.

army drill reducing when sieging because men dying to attirtion

 

[Vulkandrache]

army drill reducing when sieging because men dying to attirtion

Which is one of the problems.
Drill should not decrease passively while at full maintenance, professionalism should give a drill floor (~30% minimum at 100 prof).
As it stands drilling is just a nice toy button for the AI with nothing else to do.

 

[makaramus]

Which is one of the problems.
Drill should not decrease passively while at full maintenance, professionalism should give a drill floor (~30% minimum at 100 prof).
As it stands drilling is just a nice toy button for the AI with nothing else to do.

I think base drill line is bonuses prof giving :/ it would be stupid to make men just called as soldier being experinced
I mean imagine 16 years old lad coming to field taking riffle to hand and while his general preparing himself to tell him how to use it he just loads it and shoting target dummy and barely missing it
I mean that would be stupid

 

[Vulkandrache]

The whole thing is meant to simulate a standing army of paid soldiers, something they do fulltime for a living,
that 16 year old has been receiving army lessons for the past few months before coming to the field.

I can understand drill going down a bit if they have to reinforce, but the more professional the countrys army is being run the
more trained new soldiers would be.
I can also understand drill dropping if you lower maintenance, since they cant be arsed to work while getting paid minimal wage.
But being drilled is their job, literally. So why i do i have to pay them to build it up only to have it drop down in a matter of years afterwards?

 

[makaramus]

The whole thing is meant to simulate a standing army of paid soldiers, something they do fulltime for a living,
that 16 year old has been receiving army lessons for the past few months before coming to the field.

I can understand drill going down a bit if they have to reinforce, but the more professional the countrys army is being run the
more trained new soldiers would be.
I can also understand drill dropping if you lower maintenance, since they cant be arsed to work while getting paid minimal wage.
But being drilled is their job, literally. So why i do i have to pay them to build it up only to have it drop down in a matter of years afterwards?

because you need men to DO THEIR JOB if being drilled is their job then who is gonna pay them for that? YOU!

 

[darth254]

would be great if attrition warfare and manpower management mattered. but yes, it's still Mercspam Universalis, even well into the 1700s and 1800s.

you can expect Ming and Ottoblob to merc spam you and the other AI as hard as ever before. infinite manpower, hooray!

 

[Badesumofu]

One thing I have to add - there are ways to get plenty of manpower now. Maybe not so much if you start as an OPM, you're going to need mercs then most likely. But once you get a power base built up and some professionalism going, you will find that Slacken can provide you with masses of manpower when you need it. Anything that increases your max manpower or your manpower recovery boosts what you get from Slacken.

Now I'm not saying that mercspam isn't the way to go for a WC. But it's not the only way to go.

And the other thing, drill wears off quickly. Professionalism is more permanent. Once you hit 80 then it costs only 125 MIL to pay for a Slacken. Manpower can become abundant in the mid to late game.

 

[Amadeu of Savoy]

Along with drilling, they could add experience for units like in HoI4, generated in battles. It would be a good combination together.

 

[Kergan]

Professionalism is more permanent. Once you hit 80 then it costs only 125 MIL to pay for a Slacken. Manpower can become abundant in the mid to late game.

+1 to this. I recently was at zero MP after fighting the Ottomans without using a single merc. I recruited 10 generals at > 80 professionalism and 80 military tradition. I ended up with plenty of MP for my next war, plus a few great generals to play with. those 250 mil points were very well invested.

 

[Quaade]

Did a game until end with only regular armies... I rarely lacked manpower despite fighting constantly for 80 years

 

[Pyramid_Head]

Ottomans, lost, like, their entire manpower. Result:

They are fighting half of europe and thye can't do shit about them because they have infinite armies because their income and loans allow them to ignore any combat and manpower losses.
EXTREMELY fun to play.

 

[bbqftw]

as it should be.

here's a pretty standard game on VH. France and England chain claim DotF, everyone insanely rich, retooled AI spamming alliances.

It's a good change.

If only the army / vassal AI could be as good ~

I for one love my zero professionalism 20 ducat mercs.

 

[Benghi Bon]

as it should be.

here's a pretty standard game on VH. France and England chain claim DotF, everyone insanely rich, retooled AI spamming alliances.

It's a good change.

If only the army / vassal AI could be as good ~

I for one love my zero professionalism 20 ducat mercs.

teach me sensei

 

[BAMman100]

I suppose I might be partially ignorant of the problem being discussed here since I try to avoid using mercs if I can, have always played the game that way, and don't find it super difficult (if anything I find it easier to conserve my manpower than it was in previous patches since I tend to maintain high Professionalism). A further caveat being that I only have two campaigns in CoC so far, so my impression could well be mistaken.

Still, at least as it relates to the complaints I've seen by players claiming that mercspam is the only way to go, it seems to be primarily because they want to be as expansive as possible rather than approaching the game at a slower pace. Frankly, that makes sense. You shouldn't be able to war all the time without it easily driving your manpower into the ground -- there has to be an opportunity cost to that to offset the relative inefficiency of tall play and its realistic. In terms of the AI, its obvious that the increased money they're getting is encouraging them to war more often, resulting in lower manpower from simple use, which then causes them to merc up but since they're debt isn't high their mercs don't cause them to avoid additional wars, meaning they're caught in a bit of a cycle.

 

[Stenen Jan]

I want to know who these 70k mercenary armies are who are willing to fight and die in a completely unwinnable war against a massively stronger army that they have no hope in hell of beating.