The life of a mercenary...

[Munchkin9]

Is a tough one to say the least.

I know this is a general vanilla warband thing, but since it would have to be modded to be fixed and this is the only mod worth playing I have found:
Something needs to be done to make being a mercenary more worthwhile!
Some potential ways to do this:
1. Pay as a mercenary should increase based not only on amount and quality of troops but also on your reputation.
2. Pay should also increase every time you renew a contract. (This should be going into positive gain after the first or at most the second renewal of contract.
3. It would be really nice if the player could form an encampment for his men. This would work just like the 'wait here for some time' command, with the little tent and all, except the player would be able to leave the area, leaving some or all of his men. The danger with this is that anyone pissed at you could attack your troops, potentially taking out your entire merc army. I'm not sure about whether or not troops left there should count as garrisoned, so I leave that up to whoever makes this (if anyone does of course).

Being a mercenary is what I like doing best in Mount and Blade, but the system so bad that you just end up hurting yourself. This becomes no fun very quickly. I mean simply having ONE village will usually pay for a large, if not you entire, army. So being a merc should pay as much if not more. Just my opinion of course.

Cheers,
Munchkin9

EDIT: One little thing I forgot: If you have a high enough reputation, other lords could try to outbid your current pay and of course accepting this would be up to you. Seriously consider this, being a mercenary could actually become a serious and interesting part of the game instead of just a formality.

 

[Marius_Imperator]

Being a mercenary is what I like doing best in Mount and Blade, but the system so bad that you just end up hurting yourself. This becomes no fun very quickly. I mean simply having ONE village will usually pay for a large, if not you entire, army. So being a merc should pay as much if not more. Just my opinion of course.

PoP allows you to be a true merc. Not as a errand boy for a faction but as a truely rogue knight.

Step 1: Find Two lords fighting.
Step 2: Join the battle with the side who will win. (Native wouldn't let you)
Step 3: Loot all, capture all, recieve +rep from winning lord, recieve -rep from losing lords faction.
            If the lord calls you a dog, capture him. If its a king, capture him.
Step 4: Sell all loot, sell all prisoners. Should get 5-10k.
            Random lord for 5k, ransom king for 25k.
Step 5: Go to a lord on the same faction as the losing lord. Bribe him 600 to become neutral.

You've gained gold, xp, rep, loot, renown. You can do this with nobody in your army if you want. Being a Rogue Knight is the most profitable stage of the game in POP. Abuse it.

 

[WuTaNiSt]

Being a mercenary is what I like doing best in Mount and Blade, but the system so bad that you just end up hurting yourself. This becomes no fun very quickly. I mean simply having ONE village will usually pay for a large, if not you entire, army. So being a merc should pay as much if not more. Just my opinion of course.

PoP allows you to be a true merc. Not as a errand boy for a faction but as a truely rogue knight.

Step 1: Find Two lords fighting.
Step 2: Join the battle with the side who will win. (Native wouldn't let you)
Step 3: Loot all, capture all, recieve +rep from winning lord, recieve -rep from losing lords faction.
            If the lord calls you a dog, capture him. If its a king, capture him.
Step 4: Sell all loot, sell all prisoners. Should get 5-10k.
            Random lord for 5k, ransom king for 25k.
Step 5: Go to a lord on the same faction as the losing lord. Bribe him 600 to become neutral.

You've gained gold, xp, rep, loot, renown. You can do this with nobody in your army if you want. Being a Rogue Knight is the most profitable stage of the game in POP. Abuse it.

Except that that isn't being a mercenary.
The whole point of being a mercenary (besides the loot) is being paid to fight on someboy elses behalf. In your situation you're (in real world terms) holding a nobleman hostage & then bribing his peers not to take revenge. That's more like banditry (although I don't deny that many mercenaries would occasionally turn to banditry).

 

[Munchkin9]

Thank you WuTaNiSt, a what you described,Marius, is not what I meant at all. Read the Black Company series, that is really what I would like to do, minus the magic. I never mentioned anything about being a rogue knight. But thanks for the response none the less.

Would is be possible to do the things (at least the first two) that I outlined.

 

[ManOfHonor]

1. It would be nice, and make sense, that if you had a reputation of getting the job done you should be paid more for your elite services (incentive to work for faction A vice faction B). Who do you pay more, bubba who is selling watches out of his coat pocket, or Rolex?

2. Pay is based on troop quantity and quality, so this more or less already happens, it's still up to you to balance your budget, really expensive troops can still drop you into the red, faction troops are cheaper than mercs.

3. This would be good for anyone, not just mercs, especially if you need to sneak into a city, if you have nowhere to stash your troops, you are pretty much guaranteed to be discovered, especially during the day for one of the spy missions, even if you have somewhere to put them it takes an awful lot of clicking to garrison them all, and ungarrison them later, and who knows what distance between your garrison and your target. I don't try to sneak into town with my entire army right behind me, if I did they would be there to kick some ass when I get discovered!

 

[Fawzia dokhtar-i-Sanjar]

There has always been inequity in merc pay (both in M&B and in Warband) because the game bases mercenary payments on the size of your party, rather than the quality of your troops.  A small band of higher level troops will not get as good a payment as a big band of raw recruits.  That's why if you have a small band of companions and Adventurers, you can actually lose money on a mercenary contract.

We are looking at a possible alternative payment scale now on the Dev Team -Treebeard has some ideas on how to fix this.

 

[noosers]

The impression I gained was rather that you´d get more coin if you had a ton of succesful noteworthy fights against declared faction enemies.
Still the main advantage of mercenary work was the loot you´d gain rather than the pay. But right becoming a mercenary has no benefits compared to become a vassal or go independet.

I reckon, swichting back negative relations upon finishing contracts  to moderate levels (-5-10) may make it far more worthy. That way you could even purchase your way out of a war situation and get zero relation again with your former enemy as it´s usually one of the largest drawbacks that you keep the negative relations you acquired upon finishing a mercenary contract.

That would even outweight a raised salary as it´s far more practical and war´s usually profitable enough.

 

[ManOfHonor]

Still the main advantage of mercenary work was the loot you´d gain rather than the pay. But right becoming a mercenary has no benefits compared to become a vassal or go independet.

Well, when I started out my current game, becoming a merc was one of the first things I ended up doing, and all but one one of my paychecks that month were 1-2 grand above my expenses, it was very useful in building up my army and my purse and buying better gear early on. When I ended that contract I had plenty of cash, good relations, decent equipment (for that level), and a powerful non noble faction army. True you can go farther by being a vassal or independent, but being merc is a good way to start off and get rolling.

As for relations, I swear that all of my faction relations went to 0 when my contract was over (I was sad, I wanted to keep the + relations w/ ravenstern)

 

[Treebeard]

Is a tough one to say the least.
Cheers,
Munchkin9

The mercenary initial payment has now been modified to take into account renown, honor, troop costs, player persuasion skill level, faction relation and the personal relation between the offering lord and the player.

The contractual weekly payments have received an update too.

Since the initial payment is more generous than the weekly payments the player is encouraged to decline contract renewal (after 30 days) and instead go looking for new mercenary work. These features are going to be in the next update (along with a few other fixes and new features).

Since the player can already break a contract by talking to the king, we have not added other factions asking the player to join them (by outbidding) while the player is currently a mercenary of a kingdom since there may be some bad side effects to that.

 

[Marius_Imperator]

Huzzah! <3 Treebeard

Hope you do the same for a king denying you a requested fief. 900 is sucks.

 

[Fawzia dokhtar-i-Sanjar]

You can't have everything handed to you on a silver platter.

New Patch is up on stickied Download page - both Filefront and Rapidshare links.  It is compatible with V 3.204.

 

[The Horse]

I am very happy that it is compatable.
I'm doing the best I've ever done in PoP on this save. Have Marleons and four castles near it.

 

[HUtH]

Very nice changes, because when I'll finally get WB, I'll aim to be bad guy and of course life as a mercenary is perfect for it

 

[Faegrin]

Very nice changes, because when I'll finally get WB, I'll aim to be bad guy and of course life as a mercenary is perfect for it

It gets quite monotonous over time)

 

[ManOfHonor]

You can't have everything handed to you on a silver platter.

Well you can make it your Kingdom's policy that lack of a silver platter results in war and mass rape of towns 

King Fool Ulric denied peace until I had taken every town and all but three of his castles from him!

"Peace!" "NO! F*** YOU!" "No, f*** you!" "NO! NOT AVENDOR!!!!"
The town of Avendor has been awarded to Lorde Andre of the Kingdom Of Sol


A fief is worth more than a silver platter anyways.

 

[Faegrin]

You can't have everything handed to you on a silver platter.

Well you can make it your Kingdom's policy that lack of a silver platter results in war and mass rape of towns 

King Fool Ulric denied peace until I had taken every town and all but three of his castles from him!

"Peace!" "NO! F*** YOU!" "No, f*** you!" "NO! NOT AVENDOR!!!!"
The town of Avendor has been awarded to Lorde Andre of the Kingdom Of Sol


A fief is worth more than a silver platter anyways.

You should have taken the rest castles from him, thus killing Sarleon faction) I once had a game, where Sarleon had only 1 town left - Sarleon. I expected nothing from them, but after 40-50 days of doing nothing, they declared war to Fierdsvain (which owned roughly 3/5 map) and with 1200 army took back 4 castles. I mean, better do not give them chance to recover and to annoy you later.

 

[ManOfHonor]

I needed to focus on Ravenstern, who were pretty much permanently sieging something or another with 1k+ armies.

Sarleon has since been annihilated.

 

[manekemaan]

in warband let them keep 1 town/castle; then all lords without a fief will lose 1 relation/week with their liege and make them ripe for defection.

not sure if it works like this in pop tough?

 

[Faegrin]

in warband let them keep 1 town/castle; then all lords without a fief will lose 1 relation/week with their liege and make them ripe for defection.

not sure if it works like this in pop tough?

After their faction annihilation, they will join other faction anyway. Better have good relationship with lord with high renown (high renown=big part size) - most likely they will join your faction. Or you can recruit them via prisoner feature.

 

[manekemaan]

normally they don't join the faction that defeated them...