How to stop a faction recruiting mercenaries?

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Is it possible to stop a single faction from recruiting any mercenaries?

[MasterOfNone]

No, mercs are globally recruitable - it can be faction-specific in Alexandar: Total War but the feature is not portable.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

bugger, oh well, if Dwarf players want to recruit ork mercenaries guess I can't stop them then.......

although, could I have a script running which halved the size of the army containing mixed troops?

[MasterOfNone]

I do not know what you can do with scripts. Personally I do not like scripts running because they have to be activated by the player, create more interaction when loading up saved games, can cause CTds and also slow down the game in both load and running time.

I do not think Dwarfs would recruit Orkish mercs - or Orcs Dwarfs comes to that. You could always have no mercs....or you could have a different merc file depending upon who was playing as the human player. The AI never seems to recruit mercs (though I may be wrong).

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

I do not think Dwarfs would recruit Orkish mercs - or Orcs Dwarfs comes to that. You could always have no mercs....or you could have a different merc file depending upon who was playing as the human player.

that would work (ie. orc mercenaries if you played orc but none if you played Dwarf - how do you do that?

[MasterOfNone]

You would tell the player to fiddle with the file or you would set up a duplicate campaign folder or it might be possible to do it through a batch file (I keep on meaning to look into the latter for switching EDUs).

[Mad Hoplite]

Just go to export_descr_unit and check the ownership line of all your mercenary units. Removing the dwarven faction there should work.

Take this example from the judean mercenaries I downloaded somewhere and I put in my campaign:

type merc judean
dictionary merc_judean ; Judean Mercenaries
category infantry
class light
voice_type Light_1
soldier judean_merc, 60, 0, 1.2
mount_effect horse +1, chariot +1, camel +1
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, hardy, can_sap, mercenary_unit
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 5, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 9, 9, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 0 ,1
stat_pri_attr spear
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 2, 9, leather
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 2, 1, 2, -2
stat_mental 15, impetuous, untrained
stat_charge_dist 40
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 490, 200, 50, 80, 490
ownership barbarian, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian, roman, slave

As you can see, these mercs are recruitable for everybody except for the greeks. You can do the same with all the mercs and the dwarves could not hire anything.

This should work not only with cultures but with factions too.

[makanyane]

Mad Hoplite, that is a nice logical sounding idea, unfortunately it is more logical than the game engine.....

On the campaign map any faction can recruit any mercenary that comes up in the mercenary pool for the region (as set in descr_mercenaries.txt) all mercenary_units actually need in terms of ownership is 'slave', adding / removing the other factions or cultures in the ownership line just changes whether they can recruit them in custom battles as well....

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Mad Hoplite, that is a nice logical sounding idea, unfortunately it is more logical than the game engine.....

On the campaign map any faction can recruit any mercenary that comes up in the mercenary pool for the region (as set in descr_mercenaries.txt) all mercenary_units actually need in terms of ownership is 'slave', adding / removing the other factions or cultures in the ownership line just changes whether they can recruit them in custom battles as well....

the more I dig into the code behind the game the sadder I get for all the great options that could have been available.....

that being said, it is still a pretty impressive paremeter driven bit of code

[MasterOfNone]

And, Makanyane, it affects bribing too I believe.

But Mak. is quite right, would that it were that easy Hoplite!

[Mad Hoplite]

Uuups, I thought that worked because the custom battles (actually, I never reached Judaea with my greek armies while in campaign), my fault.

Something new to learn each day!

[Turk]

Maybe you can delete all mercenary pools and make hidden resources

That would be extrem much of work as far as i know

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

but hidden resources are province specific so I think that would only control which mercenaries spawned in a province, not who could recruit them?

[Squid]

I think Turk meant add the mercenaries into EDB, with appropriate recruitment lines limiting them to specific faction in specific locations.

This will potentially bring you into conflict with the max number of units recruitable in any one settlement, and does nothing to limit the number of mercenaries available since you can recruit as many mercanaries as desired from a settlement while the mercenary pool takes times to regenerate those units in it.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

yeah, I think I'm just going to have to leave it as a 'house rule' for playing the mod - if you are playing the dwarves it's pretty stupid to recruit orc mercenaries and vice versa.

Or, I might just remove mercenaries altogether - Orc players would still be able to bribe rebels (which will only be orcs) to join their armies if they really want to.

[MasterOfNone]

Yes, the bribe option is best. Leave the merc file blank.

[Turk]

What the Hardcoded Limit of how much Units can be recruited in one City?

[makanyane]

You will find that and other useful information on hard-coded limits in this post
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=28608

In the Tutorials section for stickied threads.

[Turk]

Thanks
It is 32
Maybe Tac you could add 64 Hidden resources on your map for mercs

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Thanks
It is 32
Maybe Tac you could add 64 Hidden resources on your map for mercs

but that only restricts recruitment by province, doesn't stop a faction recruiting