Mercenaries in armies need to gain influence to cover the cost

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XivaKnight

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Presently, being a mercenary for a kingdom is pretty awful. For one thing, you're barely going to turn a profit even if you're locked in combat 24-7. Either your enemies are too weak to be valuable, or you're too weak to take on higher value targets. Assuming you enter the middling range, you're just going to be leaking denars 24-7, struggling to maintain. But I actually wouldn't mind all that terribly much, if it weren't for the fact that joining an Army (The thing you're supposed to really be doing as a mercenary in times of war) is a nearly guaranteed way to **** yourself.

You don't get any influence while in the army. So if you're stuck in a siege, you're just going to be bleeding denars by the thousands. If the army runs out of food, which is almost guaranteed will, it will consume your food, and the influence gain isn't nearly enough to cover the costs of even the food alone. By the time the siege breaks up, you the player are left with no food, no money, no battle, and no immersion.
 
Merc payments do need revising. I largely ignore them because they're useless. At the beginning of the game when you're looking at moving towards clan tier2 working as a merc in the meantime is the only realistic thing to do (otherwise grind tournaments to increase clan tier instead). The payment is useless because of the size of your band (it will be small because you will be unable to support a larger one) and it will largely be insignificant even if you are supporting armies - as you say. So whats the point?
I did want to rp a merc band, but with the way it works now - f**k that.
 
I guess it'd be okay to add something for mercenaries in armies since I guess people who don't know better will probably join them... you're right in "the thing you're supposed to really be doing as a mercenary in times of war" is probably what people some people think.

Although being merc in M&B is more just a license to attack lords, caravans and villages and this is the most rewarding thing to do. An alternative fix would be just to disable the player from join armies as a merc since it is very troublesome and unrewarding.

If you build a party to take down lords you can make massive money as a merc and then when war end just change to a new war. This is the real advantage of being a merc, you can choose who you're fighting much more freely.
Presently, being a mercenary for a kingdom is pretty awful.
It's not though, it lets you defeat lords as rank 1 clan without having to start a full war solo and it lets you use forced recruitment against the enemy allowing an alternative way to gather noble and advanced troops early. It's really good.
 
But early on, as rank 1 you won't be able to build a large enough army to make an impact on the battlefield. Attacking caravans and villages have a long-term negative effect. Highly unlikely to build a large and trained enough clan tier one band to take on any opposing lords which is why it would help to join an army and get influence which obviously converts to currency.

*Personally I can't see why you shouldn't receive cash payment/influence for fighting in an army, all the other Lords have mercenary troops counted in already. It makes sense from an RP perspective, and it also makes sense from a gameplay perspective.

Additionally, the only other alternative to progress your clan tier is to grind tournaments.
 
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But early on, as rank 1 you won't be able to build a large enough army to make an impact on the battlefield
I can make a party to crush any lord or small army at clan rank 1. It's all in the prep work and sequence.
0-1
1: get the money, I do deliver the herd quest and keep the horses, It varies from game to game but I quickly have a lot horses to sell, I buy chargers instead, the most cheap warhorses, of course I also do tournament and fight looters with auto resolve (yes) to build medicine to 25 on the way and do easy non-return quests like trains the troops and look for any wanderer that I need if they exist. It's you're on sandbox you need to find a swift or spicevendor or wife ti high steward or invest yourself and buy food variety to build it up early on you MC. On campaign your bro will work thhe best.
By rank 1 I'm in this situation

I've got the money and warhorses to build an unbeatable field party, and it's about day 20 or sooner, it's not a long drawn out tinker-roo fest like
trading or smithing.
Now I can get married now or later, sooner is better.
If I'm on campaign I gotta rescue brother, if not I'm good to go.
With bro as quarter master I have 85 party size, with a wander I have about 65, spouse-depends, MC quartermaster probably 60ish, any are fine as I'm going for troops quality not bulk.
2: Now I need the troops, but I want the best so I either become a merc for a faction fighting khuzaits, or I just eat a relation hit and mess with a village, then I use force recruitment on al thier villages to steal all thier noble troops. I used whatever 20 something troops I have form running around to defeat the militias and replace them as I go with real troops.
Soon it's like this by day 40-60 depending on if I did marriage 1st and other rando stuff

*In this particular game I kept my starting xbow men as they just never died against the militia and I couldn't bare to waste them, usually I have crappier troops and toss them for more khuzait nobles, but vlandian xbows are great soldiers*
This is fine for defeating lords and once they're khan's guards it's even easier and I can manhandle a smaller army if I need to. Of course I I drop merc contract and take a new one to fight easier prey. I've fight khuzait in dozens of games and now that snowballing is fixed I don't want to fight them anymore!

Anyways I just like to type out what I do, not trying to argue, sometime I want to refine it into some guides.
 
I can make a party to crush any lord or small army at clan rank 1. It's all in the prep work and sequence.
0-1
1: get the money, I do deliver the herd quest and keep the horses, It varies from game to game but I quickly have a lot horses to sell, I buy chargers instead, the most cheap warhorses, of course I also do tournament and fight looters with auto resolve (yes) to build medicine to 25 on the way and do easy non-return quests like trains the troops and look for any wanderer that I need if they exist. It's you're on sandbox you need to find a swift or spicevendor or wife ti high steward or invest yourself and buy food variety to build it up early on you MC. On campaign your bro will work thhe best.
By rank 1 I'm in this situation

I've got the money and warhorses to build an unbeatable field party, and it's about day 20 or sooner, it's not a long drawn out tinker-roo fest like
trading or smithing.
Now I can get married now or later, sooner is better.
If I'm on campaign I gotta rescue brother, if not I'm good to go.
With bro as quarter master I have 85 party size, with a wander I have about 65, spouse-depends, MC quartermaster probably 60ish, any are fine as I'm going for troops quality not bulk.
2: Now I need the troops, but I want the best so I either become a merc for a faction fighting khuzaits, or I just eat a relation hit and mess with a village, then I use force recruitment on al thier villages to steal all thier noble troops. I used whatever 20 something troops I have form running around to defeat the militias and replace them as I go with real troops.
Soon it's like this by day 40-60 depending on if I did marriage 1st and other rando stuff

*In this particular game I kept my starting xbow men as they just never died against the militia and I couldn't bare to waste them, usually I have crappier troops and toss them for more khuzait nobles, but vlandian xbows are great soldiers*
This is fine for defeating lords and once they're khan's guards it's even easier and I can manhandle a smaller army if I need to. Of course I I drop merc contract and take a new one to fight easier prey. I've fight khuzait in dozens of games and now that snowballing is fixed I don't want to fight them anymore!

Anyways I just like to type out what I do, not trying to argue, sometime I want to refine it into some guides.

This is a very specific strategy that you've come up over many many hours of play and someone who doesn't have as much experience won't know all this, or someone may know it and not want to play that way. I think the point that is being made is that atm being a merc needs to be more lucrative without resorting to this kind of playstyle.
 
Presently, being a mercenary for a kingdom is pretty awful. For one thing, you're barely going to turn a profit even if you're locked in combat 24-7.

This is problem that persist from pervious MB games. Although it must be said that Warband saw the improvement in that mercenary payment is at last made dynamic.

Anyway, do no why since I have newer looked on the numbers of it, but in my experience keeping your army small helps. If I keep my army under 50, I am able to maintain balance or even to do some profit. I still can't make it on mercenary contract money alone thou.
 
Playing as mercenary is a great source of money IMO, and you can easily get +1000 daily if you manage you keep influence high. What I usually do is to fight (simulate battle) every single bandit party I find in my way, plus defeating enemy lords and participate in sieges (without joining armies). There are some days when you can get 3K or more some days if you manage to reach 50 influece or so.

Mercenary is not the best way for getting money though, but it is fine.
 
This is a very specific strategy that you've come up over many many hours of play and someone who doesn't have as much experience won't know all this, or someone may know it and not want to play that way. I think the point that is being made is that atm being a merc needs to be more lucrative without resorting to this kind of playstyle.
Absolutely, however you can also use any decent troops like vlandian Xbow or khuzait raiders and begin defeating single lords as a rank 1 clan without needing the warhorses. My point is that say "you're not big enough" at rank 1, just isn't so. As long as somebody is the quarter master you are evenly sized against many single lords.
 
Never did bother with the quests, I imagine though by day 40-60 you are clan tier 2 so you probably won't bother with choosing the merc path. I guess I'll have another go at SP and explore the questing.

Playing as mercenary is a great source of money IMO, and you can easily get +1000 daily if you manage you keep influence high. What I usually do is to fight (simulate battle) every single bandit party I find in my way, plus defeating enemy lords and participate in sieges (without joining armies). There are some days when you can get 3K or more some days if you manage to reach 50 influece or so.

Mercenary is not the best way for getting money though, but it is fine.
What clan tier are you while you're making large sums of cash?


Absolutely, however you can also use any decent troops like vlandian Xbow or khuzait raiders and begin defeating single lords as a rank 1 clan without needing the warhorses. My point is that say "you're not big enough" at rank 1, just isn't so. As long as somebody is the quarter master you are evenly sized against many single lords.
I didn't even know the quartermaster would increase your troop cap.

*I also can't help wondering what difficulty you guys are playing on. I like to play "realistic", so I don't have an unfair advantage over the AI.
 
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To be clear the quartermaster needs to have steward skill to give the party size boost.
I see, ty for clarifying that. Never really assigned anyone as Quartermaster - to be honest I haven't got particularly far while playing SP as I hit the "half-baked wall", end up feeling disappointed and create a new character or walk away from SP for a while until certain aspects are completed.
In fact the only time, where I really did feel fully invested in a character was with the freelancer mod :/

I couldn't help wondering, what difficulty do you guys play SP?
 
I see, ty for clarifying that. Never really assigned anyone as Quartermaster - to be honest I haven't got particularly far while playing SP as I hit the "half-baked wall", end up feeling disappointed and create a new character or walk away from SP for a while until certain aspects are completed.
In fact the only time, where I really did feel fully invested in a character was with the freelancer mod :/

I couldn't help wondering, what difficulty do you guys play SP?
I play it on Bannerlord which is hardest setting AFAIK, which really just means equal damage formulas to other npcs and no extra recruit slot or map speed, it's not extra hard or anything.

I don't use ironman unless to test ironman, which I'm done with for now. Not having multi saves make many bugs very hard to report and is still a very bad idea IME in the state of the game. I still find bugs very often.
 
I play it on Bannerlord which is hardest setting AFAIK, which really just means equal damage formulas to other npcs and no extra recruit slot or map speed, it's not extra hard or anything.

I don't use ironman unless to test ironman, which I'm done with for now. Not having multi saves make many bugs very hard to report and is still a very bad idea IME in the state of the game. I still find bugs very often.

I'll have to try out the quests and broaden my play style then by the looks of it, ty.
 
Absolutely, however you can also use any decent troops like vlandian Xbow or khuzait raiders and begin defeating single lords as a rank 1 clan without needing the warhorses. My point is that say "you're not big enough" at rank 1, just isn't so. As long as somebody is the quarter master you are evenly sized against many single lords.
From Askey's responses it seems he didn't realize that quarter master made such a difference in party size. I still feel like that the player should have more ways to play merc without going for a min max build. Even though you can play as trader or a merc or even technically a brigand that's more of an illusion because there is little incentive and TW has done next to nothing to add any depth to those play styles. I guess that's par for the course because playing as a lord or king is pretty shallow too. :wink:
 
Never did bother with the quests, I imagine though by day 40-60 you are clan tier 2 so you probably won't bother with choosing the merc path. I guess I'll have another go at SP and explore the questing.


What clan tier are you while you're making large sums of cash?



I didn't even know the quartermaster would increase your troop cap.

*I also can't help wondering what difficulty you guys are playing on. I like to play "realistic", so I don't have an unfair advantage over the AI.

To make decent sums of cash as mercenary, tier3 is enough. Anyway, what I usually do at clan tier1 is to keep a really small party (20-30 units), have 20-30 horses in the inventory, and play as “manhunter” clearing bandits hideouts and defeating bandit parties. It is easy to keep influence over 10 and get 400-500 daily which is more than you need to pay your wages while getting influence for leveling up clan tier.

Anyway, this is just one approach to get some money, and not the best way for getting rich. If I want a lot of money, I play as merchant and mercenary at the same time.
 
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I find it fairly easy to get profit out of mercenaries job. First You get paid for influence. Second You have battle loot.
And there's an "exploit" of taking escort merchant Caravan while being contracted as merc. From this quest fights You can easily get up to 30 influence and there's battle loot plus quest payment.
Also You get influence from.most quests done when being contracted as merc as long as they involve fighting somone.
Droping prisoners Also gives influence and for some.lords You can get up to 15 influence per lord.
 
To make decent sums of cash as mercenary, tier3 is enough. Anyway, what I usually do at clan tier1 is to keep a really small party (20-30 units), have 20-30 horses in the inventory, and play as “manhunter” clearing bandits hideouts and defeating bandit parties. It is easy to keep influence over 10 and get 400-500 daily which is more than you need to pay your wages while getting influence for leveling up clan tier.

Anyway, this is just one approach to get some money, and not the best way for getting rich. If I want a lot of money, I play as merchant and mercenary at the same time.

This makes a lot more sense, hunting down bandits and maybe selling them off as slaves. It seems to me that TW never really intended mercenary work early days to really be involved significantly in faction war. More as a clean up guy, clear these bandits out, there is a lord there with a small band of troops, or if your up for it - raid caravans and villages. I guess more like privateer.
I guess later days when your clan tier is higher you could rp as a large merc band, but like you say - whats the point when the cash is limited. Almost feels like a missed opportunity for TW, but what do I know - I haven't managed to complete SP yet.
 
This makes a lot more sense, hunting down bandits and maybe selling them off as slaves. It seems to me that TW never really intended mercenary work early days to really be involved significantly in faction war. More as a clean up guy, clear these bandits out, there is a lord there with a small band of troops, or if your up for it - raid caravans and villages. I guess more like privateer.
I guess later days when your clan tier is higher you could rp as a large merc band, but like you say - whats the point when the cash is limited. Almost feels like a missed opportunity for TW, but what do I know - I haven't managed to complete SP yet.
You used to be able to clear 20,000 denars a day but people kept broadcasting it over streams and complaining that there was nothing to spend their millions on.
 
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