Mercenary Contract's weekly budget question.

[Muglos]

Hey all!

I've noticed that sometimes when I am under contract as a mercenary for a kingdom I earn more money weekly than I have to pay for my troops wages. Obviously, this is a good thing as it pays for my troops expenses for the exception of having to feed them. Other times, I am in the negative for weekly budgets and I still need to pay my troops money out of my own pocket.

I am wondering what determines the weekly income as a mercenary as I am quite confused. Is it determined by how many troops of that faction troops I have in my party?

I have not tested it out but It appears that I make more money weekly if I have more faction troops than say mercenaries or manhunters in my party. For example in my current game I am a mercenary for the Rhodoks and my party consists of about 90% Rhodok troops and I am currently making 300+ more denars weekly than I have to pay for troops wages. It does not seem to matter what tier level of Rhodok troops I have as the money is consistent. Should I try to avoid having mercenaries/manhunters in my party so I can maintain a positive income?

 

[Windyplains]

Check the wiki and it has an itemized breakdown of how your payment is calculated.

 

[Muglos]

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Edit*

http://floris.wikia.com/wiki/Mercenary_Contracts

 

[Leifdin]

Mercenary troops take 50% higher pay. I disabled this-I paid them to join me, why I should pay more for keeping them?

 

[Kinsume]

Mercenary troops take 50% higher pay. I disabled this-I paid them to join me, why I should pay more for keeping them?

Because they aren't loyal or of your faction, they're trained mercenaries who fight for money not for your lands. Disabling it is basically the same as cheating. >_>

 

[Leifdin]

Well, if you hire Veagir recruit as Nord commander, they are basically mercenaries. Warband uses mercenary-type army, so all your men are mercenaries.

 

[Duh]

Warband natively has the 50% extra for merc units, so the intentions regarding the what is what are pretty clear

 

[Muglos]

I guess if you wanted to be hardcore about it you could only hire mercs until you became a lord of a faction. That way the village recruits could be treated as vassal levies or something. Perhaps conscripts? I'm not sure what the proper term would be.

 

[Kinsume]

I've been rescuing and using manhunters only along with my companions. Its quite effective and nets you a s*** ton of money with prisoner selling. Not sure what causes it exactly but as you upgrade them you start getting additional points in prisoner management as well.

 

[Xenomion]

Not as you start improving them, but when you start recruiting more. 40 Manhunters (or improved) leads to +3 Prisonner Management.

See this link for more informations: http://floris.wikia.com/wiki/Stat_Units

 

[Kinsume]

Oh I see, wasn't aware of that. Well I've found a pure manhunter party to be quite overpowered thus far lol... I'm 91/93 for my current troop count, about 15 of those are companions. Rest are Slave Crushers, Slave Hunters and Slave Drivers... I'm quite literally rolling over everything... they even work wonders in sieges, the vegirs took Dhirim from swadia and only left like 90 units in it to defend. So I roll up with my little group here and take it from them with only a handful of deaths. Those huge shieds are basically anti anything ranged and take ALOT of his to tear down.

 

[Muglos]

Yeah... Slave trading is pretty much win in all aspects. You can earn money hand over fist.

 

[Kinsume]

I think its a bit overpowered though... my same 90 man army just took on a Bandit Lord backed with about 300 forest bandits and completely mauled them. Granted I'm only playing on 53% difficulty and a battle size of 250, but still that is pretty ridiculous. Maybe I'm just too used to not having cavalry since I typically play pure Nord, but this army seems pretty much unstoppable and only costs like 2k denars upkeep per week.

 

[Kinsume]

I take back my previous statement... I KNOW they are overpowered... I'm cleaning up lord's armies left and right. 3 khergit armies attacked Dhiram, I'm looking at them thinking to myself, my little group couldn't possibly take that on. But for the hell of it I save real quick and charge into them. The battle is 89 vs 284, they had a total of like 40 t7 units combined. End of the battle rolls around, we win. 2 of my slave hunters were killed, 3 others were knocked unconscious. That was all we had for casualties.... we were out numbered 3 to 1 and still walked over them. W T F?

On a side note, whoever thought up the slaver chief, I just got one and I laughed pretty hard when I saw it.

Evenstill, they need to be nerfed hard, perhaps even just left back at manhunters with no upgrade tree. The only downsides to using them are their upkeep costs (which are moot compared to how many prisoners you get to sell) and the fact they kill everything too quickly so your main guy only gets a couple kills in x_x

 

[Leifdin]

Also, after I checked, I realized that their skill is too high. According to level, slaver chief should be t6 unit, but he has higher skill than some t7 units. Slave driver has roughly similar skills as Vaegir C4! Slaver chief 312 one-handed and 270 two-handed weapon skill, while Vaegir C7 has 268 for one handed and 282 for polearms. Sarranid C7 has 302 for both, Khergit 299/266, Swadian 208/316. All C7 units are level 40-42, while slaver chief is level 34.

BTW, can you write your army composition?How many of each unit you have?

 

[Kinsume]

I've been steam rolling things before I had even multiple Crushers, now I have 3 chiefs, like 25 crushers, and the rest the unit before crusher and its a complete joke lol.

 

[Leifdin]

Well, then you have 3 C7 units, 25 C6 units and rest C5 units...quite formidable force, however, beating army with 40 T7 units...but it may depend on strategy of AI...do you have formations AI turned on? Without it, AI tends to just charge, thus separating their cavalry from infantry and possibly weakening themselves by half, as you easily defeat cavalry and rest of army doesn't put up much of a fight.

 

[Kinsume]

I don't think it is turned on, they tend to just make one big line and slowly advance towards me. Since all of my units are heavy cavalry they tend to close the gap before enemy archers even get 2 shots off.

As for the quality of the troops, I believe having mercenary type troops that are capable of reaching tiers as high as a faction's t7 is a bit ridiculous. They definitely need to be nerfed down. Especially with the fact they all use blunted weapons which means you are guaranteed to make bank after every fight. Hell I took Dhirim and just left 50 low tier units in it then camped a bit away from it. Enemy lords come in to try and siege it and I run them down and wipe them out. At once point I had 11 enemy lord prisoners in my party (I'm with the swadians for the lulz and they're at war with the vegirs and khergits).

In any event, the slave chief is a cool unit but I think it needs to be removed. That would be the simplest method of fixing things. Or perhaps drop down the tiers of the units by 1. For example the upgrade tree is Manhunter - Slave Driver - Slave Hunter - Slave Crusher - Slave Chief.

I understand why manhunters have good stats for a t3 units since they're the only real form of bandit control on the map and they need those stats for the auto calcs since they are often outnumbered. However I don't believe manhunter parties ever get the higher tiered units do they?

 

[Leifdin]

I believe having mercenary type troops that are capable of reaching tiers as high as a faction's t7 is a bit ridiculous

It's even worse that this. They are basically T6, so they need much less exp and take much less money than T7 units while being maybe even stronger.

 

[Xenomion]

Actually, I am a King of my own faction. I have an army of 300 men:

Me, and 6 companions.
One bishop and 5 surgeons (10 leadership, 10 surgery for Jeremus).
And 287 improved manhunters... 110 slaver chiefs, 150 slave crushers, and some slave drivers.


I can defeat any Lord, even a King with 500 troops. I can take any castle with less than 400 units in it. More: I defended a castle with only 40 Slaver chiefs in it, no other unit or archer (and I got nailed by an arrow at the beginning of the fight, quite frustrating).

Plus, Slaver chiefs are incredible against infantry (on field battle), they have 250 charge... Against cavalry, seeing their Tier, they are powerful too. I'd say their only weakness is enemy archery, but I take care of that during battles.


The problem is the following: For me Slaver chiefs are extremly too easy to have. I have 110 of them!!!
Plus, the fact that they are so easy to have makes enemy units very, very easy to capture. That's why I always have 150 or so prisonners in my main castle, of T5 and more, waiting for being recruited. So I have more than 40 "C7 Baron Mineures", 25 "A7 Swadian Retinue Longbowman", and I won't tell you about all my T6...


So maybe not removing them, but at least making them much more hard to have. They are ever extremely powerful, and allow you to capture more powerful units! Crazy, isn't it?


PS: Didn't speak about all the money I make selling T4 prisonners...