Insane Merc recruitment...

[iimstevo]

Summary: I started a war against Western Empire as an individual clan, trying to get a start on the ladder for the quests before actually doing them. I've spent years in-game fighting them from the outset (Winter 13, 1086). I've inflicted thousands of casualties to their armies, and never succeeded in taking a Fief from them due to the insane number of Mercs they've hired.
If a player were to do that, they'd be spending near 8,000 gold per day, just on Merc armies. Now, the Western Empire is also at war with the Southern Empire, Kuzait, and Battania. They were also at war with Vlandia.
Instead of them actually prioritising what war to contend with, the entire cast of AI Mercenaries come and hunt me down. If I try and siege a castle, you can guarantee that their entire mercenary army will trickle down on me over and over and over, before I can manage to sustain the siege and take a Fief.

This empire seemingly has unlimited gold, because as soon as an army is wiped out, its instantaneously back up to 40~ strong again to attack again. My clan parties start at 1, struggle to reach 10, before being captured and imprisoned.

This has to be a bug, surely? For reference I've already exterminated the "Forest People", but that's still 11 mercenary armies, with 4 parties a piece... that's 44 enemy parties that shouldn't realistically be just attacking me - especially since Western Empire has lost 4 major settlements while pressuring me for a single castle.
How to reproduce: I have no idea... play a campaign, start a war?
Screenshots:

 

[Crossbow Pig]

This is kinda cool tho, the entire faction is just mercenaries XD, maybe we should be able to pay mercenary groups to change sides.

 

[Cleo]

yes i noticed that AI priorotize attacking player more than anything and its so bad .. i keep fighting huge wars destroying armies . while other factions eat all the land from the other side with me struggling with grind to get my troops back ( that i lost from all the fights )
meanwhile they get an new army out of thin air and come back to attack me within days

 

[Haikon]

I'm not sure if this is a bug but more of a balancing issue. Mercenary troops aren't recruitable, so it follows that mercenary parties don't assemble parties in the same manner as other lord parties (i.e. recruiting from settlements). I assume they get free troops in some manner, like companions used to.

This of course is a balance issue. With the recent changes to mercenary contract deciding, one nation tends to hire every single mercenary faction on the continent, which is an upwards of 40+ parties. I captured over 40 party leaders in 3 battles yesterday, over half of which were mercenary party leaders. They were all gone from my prison within 5 days, and very soon were flooding me again with parties of 11-25 soldiers. The soldier counts are low, but the sheer number of parties has some consequences:

1. Raids go off the charts. In the war I was in, the Battanians (who only had a 2000 man force vs our 9000 man force, and they only had 1 town) had 65 successful raids while we had 4. The mercenary parties were constantly raiding every single village on cooldown, and they couldn't be stopped because they are incredibly numerous with very small parties that are capable of wiping out a village militia and also escaping from any party that tries to engage them. Then, as soon as one party gets chased off, another resumes raiding the village in its place seconds later.

2. Map flood. There are almost always 10-20 individual enemy parties following me around during sieges when at war with a weaker power due to this mercenary flooding issue. This isn't necessarily a balance problem, but it becomes quite annoying very quickly. And, like I said before, they seem to almost instantly escape imprisonment and come back with parties of 10-25 soldiers. Having 10 of those following you around at any point (with high speed because of small party sizes) is in fact a balance issue.

I haven't experienced the problem you have in regards to mercenary parties only targeting the player, though. I've definitely seen them going after a number of other targets, namely raids. It could be that due to the sheer amount of parties, you're perceiving them as only targeting you. There are, after all, 40+ of them running around all over the map.

It may however be a bug or unintended consequence (or oversight, even) of the last patch with the changes to mercenary contract decisions. It seems common sense that the larger nation with over 30 fiefs could pay more money than the nation with 3 fiefs (only one of which is a town). Yet, the nation with almost no income is paying every single mercenary band in Calradia to fight for them against a massively more powerful enemy? You would think they would get discouraged and discontinue the contract after a large amount of subsequent losses. Or that the more powerful country, which is surely richer, could pay them more. Of course, that exacerbates the snowball issue (which this honestly directly helps to counteract).

Perhaps a limit should be imposed on the number of mercenary factions a kingdom can hire, or provide more incentive for competing kingdoms to outbid for mercenary factions when a single nation is hiring many of them. This would prevent one single kingdom from amassing every single merc faction on the map.

 

[Crossbow Pig]

Mercenaries do recruit troops from villages sometimes, I have seen it.

 

[Haikon]

That's a good point, but it's also true that every mercenary band consists of some amount of unrecruitable units (skolder brotva warrior, arboreal, etc.), which must come from some source. My guess is free recruits.

 

[Crossbow Pig]

I don't think is entirely free tho, heroes seems to have some sort of treasury and they use the money to buy and upgrade troops, sometimes I find mercenary groups that only have low tier units, probably because they are not in a contract with a faction, thus not getting any money making them unable to upgrade.

 

[iimstevo]

Mercenaries do recruit troops from villages sometimes, I have seen it.

I don't even think that comes into play considering AI just spawn with around 40 units anyway if they have the money... they only have to go fishing in villages beyond that. Its when their income and gold is 0, they just run around the map constantly getting taken prisoner.