MERCENARY UNITS, some thoughts here. PLS NO FLAME, KEEP IT CLEAN, AND REDUCE THE TROLL

[Sunbird Alkibijad]

I've put this subject into discussion in a wrong thread, which was about effectiveness of Greek Cities in combat(a pointless Q)...

Anyway...

Mercenary units, they are more or less available in all regions in RTW/rtw expansions/mods.
They are very useful. They are a bit expensive. Are they worth the money?
What's their purpose? When to use them? Should they be used as cannon fodder, or actually being cared after by Your generals?

Well:

Primary the mercs are intended for is filling up the ranks of the regular armies.

Secondary mercs are troops that can add to the versatility of your faction's armies. Greeks for example are not much of horseback riding nation, thus having limited cavalry(greek cities here-not seleucids, macedon)...

Tertiary mercenaries are there to do the specific jobs in specific areas of warfare, which your faction is limited, or your army atm lacks of...
examples: you are for example roman army attacking greeks/egyptians/easterners... Even with the high manouverability of your legionary troops, u still got a problem with chariots, phalanx and enemy numbers(east likes to use a bunch of cheap spearmen units to wear u down)...
That's why u recruit merc hoplites. If u're greek, u need those archers, slingers and cavalry. missile mercs u need for sieging cities, and supporting your thick hoplite lines...For sieges too, thin out the defenders, kill their morale(flaming arrows). NUMEROUS OTHER USES.(bit drunk atm, pls forgive )

Not to go on too deep into this subject, I hope the readers will expand this topic further, deeper and wherever else it needs to go.
But...

There are different opinions on how to use the mercenaries, and how to treat them.
As in any other possible discussion between two or more human beings(or RTW players) there can be 1, 2 or more sides!

The use of mercs greatly depends on the current campaign situation, but also the battle situation as well.
3 ways of using the mercs that I can think off are:

1. buffer, gun meat, cannon fodder(usually my favourite, forgive me oh poor Soldiers of Fortune)...They are there to soak up the punishment Your naive enemy is happy to deliver, while wasting it's energy on mercs, u get Your chance to do some punishment up their rear entrance, if u know what I'm talking about...

2. this use is a most common for most RTW players:
Oh, sweet I got this cash lying around, imma get me this sweet little unit of cretan archers to give additional punch to my infantry/cavalry stacked army.(same goes for merc elephants...) These units, if recruited with this kind of idea, are there to stay, and are to be kept safe and used with care.

3. Main army, if composed well, can be made even better than Your own faction army, if u have enuff time to compose it properly. Should be used the way u use your regular faction armies(survival and their life time depends on your commanding ability/inability!)

Also...
There are two or three kinds of mercenaries, distinguished by their price/upkeep...

Elite mercs...
Elephants, bastarnae mercs, sarmatian cavalry, and a few less expensive, but still more than worth the money u spend on them, such as: cretan archers, rhodian/balearic slingers, and that iberian infantry guys(the ones with javelins but counted as heavy infantry)...

Scrapheap mercs...

In this group I feel more than free to put 99% of the mercenary skirmisher units, barbarian warbands, light cavalry units, and a few other, can't be bothered with checking each unit name by name...

For the elite mercs, like it or not, even I feel sad if I lose a sole unit of those, let alone a few. So, I try to avoid that...But do remember, they are MERCS! they are paid to do the tasks u gave them and u're paying with your nations money. It includes dying instead of letting your own compatriots.
Elephants are the best example of this. They are such a brutally effective tool of destruction if used properly and with care. But they are also a majestic distraction tool. Why? well, set that bunch of elephants to try and go as far as possible to the flanks/rear of the enemy line...get your main battleline close to your enemies...CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS* OF WAR(I JUST FECKING LOVE THIS QUOTE)...
*dogs=elephants in this particular case!
Once your elephants start rampaging and laying waste to the enemy line, use your main line and the rest of your troops to make best of this majestic distraction!
Even if this move is likely to be very deadly for your own elephant unit, by keeping that unit on the move thru the enemy ranks, there is hope of keeping some of it out of the harms way and that dreaded BERSERK condition...(refer to pelenor battlefield in LOTR3-check youtube)

Finally...
Mercs, or SoF, honour and strength onto You, brave men of war...

[Sextus Molestus]

Very interesting take, but sadly, I have nothing to contribute. +rep though!

[Sunbird Alkibijad]

WOOT!

To be honest, I could have made the entire first page be the initial post. ATM, I'm a bit concerned that some of my friends in EVE-online might hold it against me for spending this much time out of EVE and spamming the forums. thx for the rep Sextus!

[Entropy Judge]

Any cavalry mercs you can recruit (and most-if-not-all archer types) should be in either the Elite or a second, midrange category (standard, perhaps?), along with Illyrian Skirmishers, who are better light infantry than Heavy Peltasts. No cavalry unit that I'm aware of is bad enough to be called 'scrapheap.'

[Sunbird Alkibijad]

Any cavalry mercs you can recruit (and most-if-not-all archer types) should be in either the Elite or a second, midrange category (standard, perhaps?), along with Illyrian Skirmishers, who are better light infantry than Heavy Peltasts. No cavalry unit that I'm aware of is bad enough to be called 'scrapheap.'

Ya I was thinking about the midgroup(standard). The phalanx and the light cavalries would belong there. Not sure about the javelin cavalry(like numidian merc one) they suck badly for me...
and this grouping depends on the factions, for greeks, any cavalry goes to medium or elite group. for romans not so much, as they get their factional heavy cavalry(pretorian and legionary)...for romans i think it's the phalanx units that can be moved to elite group, same would go for barbarian factions.

Ya. definitely, you're right Entropy, standard group needs to be filled with a few units from the scrapheap group...

[General Nuisance esq]

Best value for money merc in my opinion Illyrian mercs a crucial early game merc if they are available to you

[Xantrip]

Cretan Archers are the cost-effectively best offensive archers in the game, although Archer Auxilia are the best overall.

And Cretans are everywhere. Use them! Care for them! If the Seleucids had them in MP, they would be Egypt incarnate.

In the battles on Sicily, Cretans are good enough to help you beat the Romans as Greece on Hard and maybe Very Hard.

Elite mercs are usually not that great of a value, though. Your own troops are more cost-effective. Just get them for novelty, fun, or emergencies.

[Roman_Wolf]

In vanilla, I only get mercs in case of emergencies. The only ones I hire all the time are cretan archers and slingers (unless I'm a Roman or Egyptian faction).

In RTR, I just love mercenaries.

[aznflea]

i hire mercenaries to boost my city population and for cannon fodder. it doesnt matter how elite they are i just throw them into enemy fire and waste them all. any soldier not from my native faction can go to hell for all i care.

[ben331]

i hire mercenaries to boost my city population

I heard that garrisoning with mercs causes unrest though? Or by that do you mean you hire them, send them to the province that needs citizens, and disband them?

[Rogue]

I heard that garrisoning with mercs causes unrest though? Or by that do you mean you hire them, send them to the province that needs citizens, and disband them?

I don't think garrisoning with mercenaries causes unrest. Both barb and eastern mercs are very good for raising pop (cheap, 120 man unit on large)

I use Cretans and Rhodian or Balearic Slingers for my missile component of many armies (especially Carthage or premarian Brutii, who have easy access to range mercs and in the case of Carthage no archers.)

Merc elephants I hire immediately, unless I can train war elephants already. I use mercenary desert cavalry when fighting eygpt, as they are easily replacable - your cav force will frequently suffer due to chariots. Merc Hoplites used as Rome invading Pontus (scythed chariot counter, as they frequently have more than I can make rune amok in time.) or Eygpt (also chariots) I use skirmisher mercs if I'm fighting elephants.

I also found fighting Pontus that Eastern Mercs are decent for bogging down Scythed Chariots - the fear effect will make them rout quickly, but it allows my legionaries to throw their pila and then enter melee before the Scythed Chariots can get a charge bonus.

2. As for garrisoning and pop boosting, and unrest, I really never figured the issue out completely. One thing that needs to be paid attention to is position of Your capital city. If u start with any faction off the center of the map, u will have a lot of unrest problems due to distance of Your capital. Moving Your capital mid thru the campaign to a bigger city and closer to middle of the map, will reduce those problems.

That's a different penalty. Unrest is caused by the city changing hands (wears off eventually) or a spy inside it. Some regions have a "natural" unrest level when they change factions - Jerusalem has a permanent 30% unrest penalty for non-Eygptian factions, for example, and a lot of cities have 15% penalties. (Which is a pain for my playing style, as I am a big fin of high-populations.)

[Sunbird Alkibijad]

Nice post there Rogue!
Almost exactly the same use of mercs as I've been applying!
And regarding disbanding the mercs to gain population...ummm...one thing I forgot to mention is usually, u look for ways to reduce the number of those rioting bastards!
Keep 'em coming.

One question: Can someone tell me how to give rep to someone?(me is noob!)

[darthbane7]

Lol, on the person's pic/avatar, you'll see a little light bulb below, at the bottom left, and you click on the little green button with a plus.

[Rogue]

Nice post there Rogue!
Almost exactly the same use of mercs as I've been applying!
And regarding disbanding the mercs to gain population...ummm...one thing I forgot to mention is usually, u look for ways to reduce the number of those rioting bastards!
Keep 'em coming.

One question: Can someone tell me how to give rep to someone?(me is noob!)

More people = more taxpayers. Also, mercs help with rushing population in Italian cities to get the Marian reforms - Julii can get Marian *very* fast by hiring dozens of barb mercs. They can also be used to save a couple turns if a city is a couple hundred pop away from expansion.

Also, I usually play on huge unit scale. Training new units can really take a toll on pop - especially in newly conquered regions which I usually have to exterminate for pop happiness

[Entropy Judge]

I heard that garrisoning with mercs causes unrest though? Or by that do you mean you hire them, send them to the province that needs citizens, and disband them?

He meant disband them to boost population. Although Merc garrisons don't cause any extra unrest anyway..

[Sextus Molestus]

i hire mercenaries to boost my city population and for cannon fodder. it doesnt matter how elite they are i just throw them into enemy fire and waste them all. any soldier not from my native faction can go to hell for all i care.

I'm feel the exact same way!

[SonOfAlexander]

I agree completely
+rep!

[Legio]

I agree, the merc peltasts are my main form of cannon fodder. Sometimes it is good to upgrade your fodder to silver weapons, and then they take most of the enemy down with them! In ALX, I had a unit of merc peltasts like that rout two units of sparabababababa and kill the entire Persian general unit.

[C-Rob]

Great post. I simply use them to add some diversity in my line sometimes. Espcially as Scythia, fighting with just horsearchers is boring! so I add a few hoplites or soemthing when the opportunity arises.

[Lord Dakier]

Mercs are good if you have billions to spend... like myself and you require cannon fodder. Forget pigs ear... human limbs!