Mercenaries

[gfzgfx]

In previous Total War games I enjoyed mercenaries and they made up a large part of my army. Has anyone thought to bring them back? I for one was disapointed with their absence as recruited troops take to long to arrive.

[Ataegina]

well you've vanilla aor, wich pretty does the same.

[ladiesman]

I miss them too, one of my biggest dissapointments. Which makes no sense too as I was fairly certain that during this time mercenaries were used more so than ever before. Hessians, for instance, shouldn't be a buildable unit but rather one working for the highest builder. Natives as well. Makes no sense that you produce Natives from your barracks.

And there's ALOT of potential for naval mercenaries with the Pirates around.

[gfzgfx]

It annoys me that they removed such an important function. One the mod tools come out I may try to mod them back in.

[MattHelm]

Couldn't agree more...Mercenaries should be in the game. I think CA went a bit crazy for the whole nation-state thing, which isn't really historically appropriate for the timeframe. National armies were certainly in development, but the genreal parctice was still the levying of regiments by nobles. Even more so with navies, and I'll say nothing about the great trade companies.
A great academic book on the matter is "Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns" by Janice Thompson, if anyone is interested.

Brief note on the Hessians: They weren't "proper" mercenaries, but conscripts sold (or rented I guess) by their princes (mainly those of Hesse-Kassel, hence the name) to the British. So they were not on the free market, but available only to the Brits, so I guess the recruiting function makes some sort of sense.

[Andivh]

Perhaps CA didn't want to have to figure a way to phase them out. Because by the time Napoleon comes to power nationalism is sweeping Europe and mercenaries are becoming things of the past.

[Boer]

It should not have been difficult for CA to make it so different types of mercenaries were available at different years, there by allowing mercenaries to keep up with the times and them stop being around when that's appropriate.