Ships - How to hire?

[Geredis]

I understand how to levy galleys as a coastal nation, but how do you buy/arrange transport for a landlocked army? As the Habsburgs, I was made Duke of Sardinia; however, I can't defend my claims there or kick the Muslim kingdom in the southern half of Sardinia out because I don't have any ships. How/where do you buy them?

 

[fatih pasha]

Good point. Worth a bump because I don't know it either and I need some ships, urgently.

 

[Dragnar]

Some mercs do have a contingent of ships for hire, but there's sadly no mercenary regiment that's just ships, so you have to pay for the troops as well.
The moral being, get a coastal province if you need ships, as hiring thousands of mercs just for their ships is prohibitivly expensive.

 

[Sir Garnet]

'Tis a shame the historical hire-ships-from-Venetians-or-Genoans approach is not available as a diplomatic option with the mercantile naval republics.

 

[Geredis]

I was looking for that diplomatic option as well, Sir Garnet, which is what threw me off.

That said, luckily, I DID find an all-galley mercenary company that was relatively cheap and had 36 galleys attached - no army to speak of. That said...I've come across a second problem - is there any way to break a levy down into even smaller parts, so say I can move only a few hundred men at a time if the companies are either A) too large (I've had a few 4500 man companies show up), or the navies too small (coastal levies only being 5 ships per province it seems). I already knwo how to detach wings and the like provided they have a commander, but that's not really my problem.

As for the mercenaries thing - yeah; it would have been nice if the Navy/Army tab also changed which levies you saw - so you saw companies with ships in Navy and those without in Army; for instance.

 

[Sir Garnet]

The split and reorganize armies buttons will let you move companies around as needed, but the mercenary companies are single bodies which means you need to group a large-enough fleet together OR have them fight someone and take enough losses to fit on the ships OR march overland.

Since they DON'T split up, also be careful about who you group with them in an army and how strong your non-merc divisions are, since the mercs may beat what is in front of them but small divisions can get mauled and routed by their initial opponents (probably not good for the safety or reputation of the commander of that division).

 

[Von Graff]

EDIT: I was silly, ignore me.

 

[BillBear]

Why not just walk there?

 

[Pallen]

Why not just walk there?

Time = money
Walk = Attrition = Loss of troops = money

 

[Mizzle]

'Tis a shame the historical hire-ships-from-Venetians-or-Genoans approach is not available as a diplomatic option with the mercantile naval republics.

So is there really no way to do this? I decided to join a crusade and hired the Knights Hospitalier, and now they're sitting in Ireland eating my food and spending my money while my troops do the actual fighting. There are 7000 of them and I only have 65 ships. No way to split them up or hire 5 more ships. It's pretty frustrating.

 

[fenwayb]

It seems like this is something they'll need to fix...I only know of one mercenary band with ships, and they're localized to scandinavia and nowhere else...adding a ship only merc company would be the obvious solution here.

 

[neondt]

Certain areas really should have ships for hire. Besides (obviously) Italy, there were a lot of mercenary fleets based in Ireland which were hired by just about everyone in the British Isles at some point in history.

 

[Laffertytig]

So is there really no way to do this? I decided to join a crusade and hired the Knights Hospitalier, and now they're sitting in Ireland eating my food and spending my money while my troops do the actual fighting. There are 7000 of them and I only have 65 ships. No way to split them up or hire 5 more ships. It's pretty frustrating.

same problem here playing as scotland. im also having difficulty raising the amount of galleys i can recruit.

 

[zxc]

So, all that needs to be done, whether through patch or a mod, is to add some ship-only mercenary bands, with names to do with Genoa/Venice etc. Sounds good to me.

 

[Mizzle]

So, all that needs to be done, whether through patch or a mod, is to add some ship-only mercenary bands, with names to do with Genoa/Venice etc. Sounds good to me.

Ok, that was surprisingly easy to do. I threw a mod together and there don't seem to be any major problems. The upkeep cost is zero (the costs are automatically generated, I can't find a way to change them) which is pretty abusable but I'll just have to not abuse it I guess. They do have an upkeep cost, it's just separate so I didn't see it. It appears to be save-game compatible - the new merc companies won't have leaders if you load a vanilla save but that doesn't seem to affect anything.

I've uploaded it in case anyone else wants to use it/turn it into a proper mod/whatever. Use at your own risk etc. etc.