Anyone else have the major AI powers buying up huge standing armies of mercenaries? Austria and France both have something like 80,000 soldiers and half of them are mercenaries. Spain also has a huge number of mercenaries. Why does the AI do this?
The AI mercenary legions
- Thread starter anomanderus
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Also, do mercenaries replenish independently of your manpower pool? Because when I was fighting France their manpower was depleted, but their mercenary armies were always at full strength- which ended up wearing me down, though I still won the war anyway.
Mercs replenish through thin air, it's their purpose. You still pay replenish maintenance though.
In the early modern era mercenary armies was very common if my knowledge is correct for example the 30-years war Sweden armies and other armies too was largely merceneries.
In the game, atleast in the early part of it you will likely come to face manpower shortage, getting mercs to cover this may be needed.
The wiki say that mercs don't add to your country's war exhaustion however Im not sure about this, if correct this is a great advantage for mercs even if you have enough manpower, no WE is great and may be a reason why ai countries will use mercs.
In the game, atleast in the early part of it you will likely come to face manpower shortage, getting mercs to cover this may be needed.
The wiki say that mercs don't add to your country's war exhaustion however Im not sure about this, if correct this is a great advantage for mercs even if you have enough manpower, no WE is great and may be a reason why ai countries will use mercs.
Yeah, instead of costing manpower to replenish, they cost money. That's why if you're making a lot of money you want to make use of at least some mercenaries, so that your manpower lasts longer.
So the AI strategy is better? And the NIs to get less mercenary cost is better?
I am also hiring huge mercenary armies, works wonder for manpower allowing me constant war in all directions, especially for fighting in Russia...
Everyone knows the AI is not afraid to run their nation with many floating loans. Something a human player tends to try and avoid. If you tag switch you will usually notice those other nations have many loans out. They are ok with doing this especially during war. I have noticed that the AI seems to be less reluctant now to go over their force limits...and not slightly, its way over the limit. I will see a Spain with a 70FL running around the globe with 100 troops. Definitely costs them money, but again I don't know if that is something new or I just never noticed before.
The AI strategy of using mercs is good.
And you want reduced maintenance. Reduced mercenary cost is not as useful (i.e. Administrative > Innovative).
The cost of units also affects the maintenance cost afterwards. So they are both useful together.
This is a perfectly valid strategy (although the AI tends to go overboard with loans), even more so if you have limited manpower. Once you snowball enough for manpower to become a nonissue mercs are less useful, but the early game is where the challenge is anyway (and keeping a 50K merc doomstack for assaulting forts is always handy).
We have to keep in mind, however, that the AI also is cheating in a few ways. If i'm not mistaken, the AI will make a little bit more money than you do, in a similar circumstance.
Pretty sure you are mistaken about that. Wiz published a list of all the ways the AI cheats, and I don't remember anything about economic cheating in there.
Actually, as long as you only use mercenary for infantry (and use your own cavalries and cannons), your army will not cost much more than before.
Merc maintenance is 2.5 times more than base unit. So basically, a merc inf maintenance is that of a canon, and more than regular cav. Saying it's cheap is quite wrong. Overall, if you wan tot play with merc and aren't filthy richy, in which case you won't care, you should keep a decent a mount of inf around and all the cav/canons you could want, and be under FL in peace time. During war time, fill in extra spots with mercs and then go ahead. Overall though, unless going crazy with wars, I'd say merc spam should be the solution when you're desperate. Alliances in themselves are enough to protect against major threats most of the time and merc spam is a good way to destroy your economy. The AI might just wage one war every 50 years, so it has time to recover. You probably won't want to do it that slowly. I would only advise occasionnaly a couple mercs with your regular infantry when in need of extra manpower, or to siege high attrition places (the wiki is lying about merc and WE btw).