Hello everybody,
I would like to know your opinion about the mercenary units in the game: wouldn’t it be better if they were restricted to letters from the metropolis only?
When I started playing vanilla around 2007/2008, I remember that units were only available through cards, gaining access only after leveling up your hometown. With the release of expansions came the possibility of creating them in a specific building.
I don’t particularly like the idea of being able to train them like regular units.
“I don’t particularly like the idea of being able to train them like regular units.”
You don’t have to like every aspect of the game, but most people would disagree with you on this, including me.
In real, I don’t use them, but I had faced some players (specially Dutch and Germans) who play only with these units. Once they only need gold to be produced, specially in the late game, I feel it’s a little unfair with other civilizations.
I believe the reason for the devs making mercenaries trainable in the tavern was because they spent a lot of time and effort designing these unit and no-one in vanilla was really using them (bar Germany).
Mercenaries are still harder to obtain (in DE) as you can only train them from one build which makes them harder to mass quickly (unless your Sweden). You also don’t know which mercenaries are going to be available on each map so it makes it harder to plan an entire strategy around them. (Unless you choose mercenary contractor to age up with or send certain home city shipment).
I’d be quite keen though for certain civs to be be able to send home city shipments that allow for the training of civ specific mercenaries (in the tavern) that have an historical reference (i.e British Highlanders, French Fusiliers, Ottoman Mamelukes, Chinese Iron Troops etc.)
I get what you’re saying and to some extent I do agree and in fact I say they don’t seem as ‘special’ as they randomly appear alongside with outlaws in the Tavern. Though since they’ve been established way back in the original War Chiefs expansion many years ago so I’m rather used to it. Maybe there should be some Mercs that are only exclusive as shipments and will never be part of the Tavern random selection? There was definitely coolness with shipping in these limited special tough units (my thoughts of the Mercs many moons ago!).
Well I guess we’ve already kinda got this with Spahis for the ottomans. (not saying they are mercs but just stating that they are elite troops only available trough shipments.)
Haha I used to feel the same way. I’d be devastated if I ever lost them in battle so would only use them very sparingly which was probably a hinderance. Allowing them to be re-obtainable is a big pro in my eyes.
That random training is really not good…
For competitive gameplay no doubt randomness is always bad.
For casual gameplay, if I want to get a certain unit, most of the time I cannot.
In fact the only good mercenary plays are those that guarantee you constant access to a certain type.
I think at least any civ should get it’s own fixed mercenary slot just like the castle units in AOE2.
I certainly agree with competitive gameplay in mind. I’m not sure what the solution could be, of course with taking-away accessablility and not forgetting the traditional Merc shipments,
Maybe instead of random mercs assigned to the Tavern at the start if the game, their ‘slots’ have a different icon and name - Mercenary Contract I, Mercenary Contract II, etc. When you click on one of them they show a random pool of many mercs than what would normally be available. You select the Merc for that slot and that now becomes the permanent (‘contracted’) Merc unit button. I don’t know - not sure on this one.
That’s what the Mercenary Contractor is for. If you want to go for a mercenary you should have a commit to certain cards and age ups to make it viable.
I prefer that kind of options to be put elsewhere other than a politician.
For politician most people care more about immediate benefits, and the mercenary contractor is pretty bad in that sense. The only slower-payoff politician that is good is the logistician (for some civs) because it synergizes with some other options.
It would be better if this is an expensive button in the tavern.
We should keep their training on standard buildings as Swede bonus, not to any civ. Germans are fine through taverns becoming camps (and tge fact they were original merc civ)
I really hate the Taverns becoming camps thing. Taking the Tavern away from the most beer loving civ is just wrong.
Camps shouldn’t replace the Tavern. It should be an additional building your Explorer can construct that just trains mercenaries and doesn’t trickle resources.
It could be something the Mercenary Contractor enables too. Cards like Dutch States could enable Envoys building camps instead of enabling units at the Barracks/Stable.
There is a simple and decent way: after the mercenary units are shipped (via cards or church technologies), they will be available at the Tavern.
This allows you to use the type of mercenary you want every game, as long as you have cards for them in your deck. Tavern can still randomly provide a few initial types of mercenary like it does now, as a surprise.
The Theater card should also be changed to provide the mercenaries related to the civilization itself, or the other random types of mercenary units, rather than fixed Japanese Ronin.