Mercenaries, Morale and Munchies

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Saxon:
Bump!

My old observation still stands. Over multiple re-hiring, the price of a mercenary seems to go up. If I stick at the offer of about 55% of their asking price, they will eventually leave. They do not go to another nation, they go back into the pool.

Have others noticed this or, as many would suggest, am I living in my own reality?

I have not noticed this. If I ever manage to find and hire, say, the Eternal Knights, I do my best to keep them forever or kill them off. And they always ask for 50 during rebidding time.

Since the original posters mentioned this, I would also like to add that it would be wonderful if computer-AI nations would either bid more competitively on mercs or that mercs would be less frequent and/or numerous in the early game. And they will actually ruin themselves by spending insane amounts of money on, say, Guiseppe IV who normally commands 100 men but now commands only 2 because I killed them all.

And one (tiny) bug (?): I purchased Guiseppe at some point in a SP and when I wanted to change some gems around, noticed that he had "-1" fire gems. How can he have negative gems?

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Zen:
There is quite a bit of strategy when dealing with mercs in MP as opposed to SP. I would hope that in the near future they make more merc companies availiable in a staggered fashion, and of course fixed some of the irritations (like auto-bidding if you have them, or maybe a reminder the turn they are looking for more cash. Autoset at the 'half' price if you already own them etc)

Yep. Another thing that would help 'fix' mercenaries would be if they recruited when their strength was down. Possibly not while actively hired, but ... What mercenary captain, out of work and out of men, isn't going to recruit?

In MP, I've noticed there'll sometimes be 4 or 5 mercenary companies open for employment. Sadly, they're all combat companies, and they've been used and discarded, sometimes with no men, sometimes with 1 or 2 out of a full complement of 20-60. And still asking very near full price.