A post dedicated to the discussion of Mercenaries, Outlaws and balance/issues around them.
I wanted to start by looking at Outlaws. I can’t help but notice that South America and much of North America have historically inappropriate outlaws. Spanish outlaws are spattered in all sorts of places they shouldn’t be, even in the Yukon. I think for Alaska/Yukon a Claim Jumper might be a good outlaw (he could be a raider type who has high siege damage and deals increased damage to settlers as he drives them off the land)
Central American and southwest American outlaws are reused in South America. When there are many unique ones that could be made such the skin we just got: Cangaço.
Asian outlaws have many weird names and prefixes that could be improved and there have been at least two great posts talking about them made by other users.
Balancing issue: Inquisitor.
everyone play teamgame in upper team rank bracket the past few months know exactly what i am talking about.
personal balancing idea to it, make a cap to the number of Inquisitor. If they are healer getting benefits from healer related enabler, they should be capped just like other healer for a reasonable drawback.
A whole (Civ-worthy!) Empire/Confederation that fought Mughal, Mysore, British and countless other kingdoms and sultanates as well as boasting some of the best naval capability of the region… summed up by an outlaw and an outlaw on a raft.
That prefix should just be removed. Why even add that. Dacoits and Thuggee have nothing to do with the Maratha. If there was a Pindari outlaw, i could understand as they were part of the Maratha army, but there isn’t…
Outlaws are the least popular unit type in the game, with a few exceptions. There are also some almost useless mercenaries, but in general almost all mercenaries are really good.
Outlaws cost a lot of population, they are expensive and most of them are not that good. Almost no one would prefer an outlaw over a standard unit that performs much better within the same role.
I think they should cost little and be cheap, but be weaker than the standard units.
It could also have its own creation limit without the need to cost population, but you would not create them as such, but instead you would “hire bands”, which would be a predefined batch of units. They get hired instantly, but it takes a while before you can hire a band again. (as if it were a passive ability).
Perhaps these bands could also cost shipping, plus the addition of a few coins, and would open a new type of opening in the meta of the game.
Necesitan un poco más de amor los forajidos americanos como el renegado, pistolero, comanchero y pirata. Quizá una habilidad pasiva que de monedas por cada unidad derrotada.
By their nature Outlaws are more criminally-inclined, so some sort of Outlaw-only Coin quirk would be good.
Mercs and Outlaws are, whether people care to admit it or not, broadly confusing units that kinda overlap. There’s zero help for new players to work out the difference when they train them other than cost and population. There should be a more clearly defined, super-obvious role for each groups.
Mercs are fine as their role has generally been an upgraded, powerful but costly version of an existing unit, hireable in army shipments or singuarly in taverns. Powerful when first available to you, but on the whole, don’t really scale compared to your standard roster. In recent years this has been broadened to have weaker units (Irish Brigadiers for example), which I think dilutes their niche, but hey ho.
Outlaws on the other hand are odd. Originally they were high pop and low cost (compared to mercs) and had always had a looser niche. It would be nice if their use was more obvious (cheap ‘local’ hired forces) with some kind of gimmick solely attached to outlaw-tagged units. A bounty system? You kill an enemy outlaw unit and you gain a tiny amount of Coin - and if your own outlaw unit kills any unit (other than another outlaw) they gain a tiny coin bounty? I don’t know… especially when you factor in how broad Outlaws are now - we have exclusive outlaws for Fed State civs as well as some European ones that would really be considered as Mercs rather than bandit.
I think the Crabat should’ve been a mercenary. There are plenty of European criminals who could’ve replaced such a unit including the Croatian ###### an anti-ottoman pirate, Kirdzhalis and more. There also should be more of an incentive to use outlaws beyond just Africa and some rather gimmicky/specific build orders, such as the Dutch highwayman strategy that I barely see anymore.
Also the Americas need more outlaws. All maps in all North American and South American maps use the same 4 outlaws.
South America needs unique outlaws (Such as the Brazilian revolutionary Jagunço, the Cangaço (just released as a Portuguese explorer skin for some reason) and many more
Seeing Mexican/Southern U.S. outlaws all across the Americas is really strange. Yukon, Northwest Territory and Alaska could have a claim jumper (a raider type infantry who deals extra siege and damage to settlers), there could also be a rustler, a more traditional Western U.S. style cattle thief.
Haiti could also have the Caco a sort of bandit/insurgent class that arose in the mountains following their independence from Spain. Could also be used by the Haitian revolution.