Some humble Tips and Advice for beginners

[Taqwus]

An interesting bit with mercenaries is that while when first joining your service, they appear in the province you bid, when merely continuing their employment you can bid in a safer province e.g. your capital. They will not relocate, and unlike Dom I you can have multiple mercenary bands hired from one province. Another bit is that they're good for compensating for national weaknesses (lack of heavy cavalry, say) or jump-starting expansion -- e.g. you can hire Hector's Heavy Horsemen and get a bunch of knights for cheaper and faster than you can hire them yourself, esp if you have Sloth scales or otherwise low resources.