Reasoning behind Mercenaries and Holy Orders being weaker

[GreatAlucard]

So... Title...

Is there a reason behind the Mercenary companies and Holy Orders being so much weaker in CK2+?

They are quite good in vanilla, maybe more so than they should, admittedly, but mostly that is because of how the economy works in vanilla.

In CK2+ money is harder to come by and at least from my perspective it appears that Mercenaries and Holy Orders are completely useless.

Mercenary Companies are just too expensive for what they provide which is at the most 2000 troops.

Holy Orders are mostly negligible too because their numbers are too low, even when they have a lot of land.

Also, for player created Mercenary companies, right after creation they already cost around 900 to hire and between 30 and 40 monthly as maintenance cost even while they are very underwhelming, not sure why.

I understand that it has been like this for a very long time in CK2+, I just never thought about asking before so...

 

[OdinX]

You should probably post this in the quick questions thread; it'd be more likely to get the attention of one of the mod devs.

 

[GreatAlucard]

I will if it ends up not getting answered but for the time being there's no real rush.

I'm certain they'll answer it if the see this and / or have the time to do it, either way is fine though, I'm patient.

 

[Cody Spring]

Do Holy Orders actually gain more power when they hold more land? TIL... I agree that they are a little weak right now. Then again I haven't been giving them land, so who knows...

As for Mercenaries, I think they're in a good spot right now numbers wise. They won't be able to fight entire armies for you but they can flip the scale if you and your enemies armies are at least somewhat close in strength. The only problem I see in my games is that some regions in the game just don't have many mercenaries to hire. I admit I rarely hire mercenaries so this may not be as big of a problem as it appears.. But I've had moments where I go to hire some and there's one super expensive band and then one single other band with a tiny amount of 97 rag tag men, and nothing in between.

 

[GreatAlucard]

Holy Orders do not get bigger if you give them land, I generally do give them land and vassalize them, this way when you raise armies from their land you get more generally than when raising from regular people, it is probably because they have higher martial values though (I'm not sure as to the reason, but generally their lands give you more men). The holy order itself never grows though.

As for numbers though, I find it that in CK2+ both Mercenaries and Holy Orders are very negligible and can most of the time be completely ignored because at least from my perspective they're not worth their price.

400g to hire 2000 men, with a monthly cost of 20 (this is the average). IF these 2000 were ALL high tier troops, you could say that they're somewhat worth their price, it's not the case though. Honestly, excluding some very particular scenarios I never seem to use them in CK2+.

I think they should either have more men or just be composed of high tier units

Holy Orders on the other hand should probably have dynamic numbers and quality of troops, the way they currently are though (1000 troops) just doesn't seem right.

I'm completely open to the possibility that I'm completely wrong though, It's just my perspective of them at the moment.

 

[Cody Spring]

My biggest issue has been with the holy orders you form yourself. They never seem to give many troops.

 

[GreatAlucard]

I think they're all pretty much the same, start out empty and rise up to a maximum of 1k to 1,5k. It does seem to get a long time to grow though, that is rather normal though, it wouldn't be that much sensible for them to start full, if anything they should be allowed to grow more if certain conditions were met.

 

[Soyaman]

I think the problem stems from the fact that a small no-body count can suddenly hire an army ten times the size his levies to combat heathens.

I understand that these holy orders did fight heathen realms but they'd usually seize land themselves and not for some random count.
It's probably to counter-act the odd implementation of Paradox without removing them completely...

Don't take my words for this. It's just my own speculations