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JaydedOne said:
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Cainehill said:
One improvement that would really be nice : An option to _not_ have any mercenaries show up for the first 10 (or X) turns. An awful lot of Dom2 games had to use "no hiring mercenaries the first 10 turns" as a house rule, just because early game mercs could be so imbalancing.
And it's looking just the same with Dom3 : the nation that gets the first mercenaries is often getting the first three or four mercs, because of the leg up on expansion & thus gold income it gives.
The mercs are wonderful for SP games, but can add too much of a luck factor to MP : getting a full 20-60 temporary troops in place of 3-10 regular troops is a huge boost.
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I can readily understand your point and might even agree. I do tend to find that the mercs really -do- make a huge difference in early expansion. That said, one balancing factor might be that the bidding system helps check this somewhat. If I put half of my starting gold towards a mercenary, I'm necessarily also gutting my magic research or my early expansion if I -don't- win the bid.
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Which is yet another reason why the person who wins the mercs gets a big leg up : anyone else who bids is generally setback compared to if they hadn't bid. Mind, I'm not sure that losing 4 points of research is
gutting research, especially with the longer research times in Dom3.
I think an awful lot of people bid, because of the large advantage, and for a good merc it might just be the person who alchemizes his or her fire gems to bid 415 instead of 400 who wins the mercs.
