How will CK3 feature the mercenaries

[Will Steel]

There are interesting differences between how PDS games like CK2 and Imperator handled mercenaries.

Crusader Kings 2

Spoiler

- CK2 had fixed mercenary companies based on presets in the game, as well as ability for lords to create mercenary companies.

- Lords could assemble their own mercenary companies with martial-education courtiers and then increase their power by spending large sums of money. Nomadic Khans and people with rare bloodline, got the ability to send their kids to prove their worth as mercenaries.

- In CK2 as soon as you hired mercenaries, they would be dropped on your home county, or nearest safe county. It did not matter where they were based, only that they were in your diplo range.

- Once disbanded, mercenaries would disappear from the map and become available to hire again. They could be disbanded at any time.

Imperator

Imperator took a bit more realistic approach to mercenaries than other PDS games.

Spoiler

- In Imperator, mercenaries are all dynamic (and mostly randomly generated). They are private military companies owned by one individual/family. They aren't titular titles with their own courts that people can simply "join". They have no unique flags or anything.

- Monarchs can give an army to a loyal character and ask them to "go adventuring". This turns the army into a new mercenary company led by said character, and will go around as a mercenary until he decides to come back on his own.

- Disgruntled sons and uncles who have been left out from succession but are wealthy, can also sometimes leave and seek new fortunes and power. They would use their personal funds to start a new mercenary company.

- The biggest difference from other games is that mercenaries are all physically present on the map, and their armies are standing in whichever city they use as a base. The more populous and developed a place is, the more mercenaries will be present (can be a bit annoying in places like Egypt/Mesopotamia/India).

- Another huge difference is that mercenaries don't instantly drop near your capital. You have to bring them from their base to your lands yourselves. So if you hire a Misthios mercenary company from Greece based on some island, it is your responsibility to send a fleet to bring them to your lands.

- Mercenaries don't have huge maintenance costs comparison to CK2 mercenaries of the same size. This means they get hired and used by minor nations and even small rich city states as well. They aren't giant money drains, although they have a different cost attached in the end to kinda balance it out.

- Mercenaries being mercenaries, seemingly get events about sacking towns/looting/pillaging and hurting the populace a lot more than regular armies do. Not sure if it is just my game, but I find that quite realistic actually. Rulers of any era used mercenaries reluctantly (and some outright hated them), precisely because of their self-serving rowdiness and brash behaviour against the public.

- Mercenaries in Imperator also demand a severance pay (based on their size) before they disband, so you cannot disband them without this sendoff fee. Mercenaries can thus become a trap if you become too poor at any point during a war.

- Once you disband them, they don't disappear. They march back to their base.

Sea-based mercenary fleets

Spoiler

Mercenary fleets in CK2 were all preset as far as I've seen. Things like "Victual Brothers" or "Treasure Fleet" and so on, for example. Sometimes land mercenaries come with fleets attached. They drop down to sea close to the capital, and can be used like regular troops. Their size increases over time like land mercenaries too IIRC.

In contrast, mercenary fleets in Imperator are actually fleets owned and run by pirates and marauder characters, also physically present on the map occupying ports around the world. They go on pirate raids when not given a contract, but once they are back at port they can be hired as sellsail mercenaries. The rest of the mechanisms are similar to Imperator's land-based mercenary armies.

Likewise, I have seen their fleets increase in number as they raid and bring back loot.

In Imperator, if you make piracy illegal, you can destroy them from your ports. This means no pirates, but also no mercenary fleets.

For example - If you are playing a historical Rome and eradicate piracy from Mediterranean world, you wouldn't have ability to hire any mercenary fleets...except the few small pirate fleets that may or may not exist among the ports of nearby border tribes.

Considering CK3 is a CK game, but has the same engine as Imperator, I wonder what changes it will bring this time.

Personally, I think CK3 could probably leave out having to manually ship/march mercenaries from their distant bases like in Imperator. That's because Imperator has actual proper fleets and professional navies in the game to do it for you, CK3 doesn't. If CK3's mercenaries have a similar cost scale to CK2, nations like England or Scotland would go bankrupt just trying to bring some Swiss or Italian mercenaries to British Isles.

...But then, they could also keep the feature in and simply make them not cost anything/cost very little before foreign mercenaries arrive your lands to serve you. That would be better than instant-spawn mercenaries.

On the other hand, and fleets are no longer present, so I wonder how sea mercenaries will be represented. Venice and Genoa made huge profits off the Crusaders by making their ships available for hire. Hanseatic ships were used by many in the Baltic region. Military fleet chartering is already represented in the new fleet system of CK3 (or rather, old fleet system since it is same as CK1), but that doesn't allow profits to maritime city states. Maybe we'll get to see that in some merchant republic expansion later on.

CK3 should still have preset mercenaries with flags and banners in my opinion. This was the time when mercenary companies became famous, and it is great for mods. At the same time, they should expand dynamic mercenaries (and related concept of adventurers) further. The end result would be a better system than CK2 ever allowed.

And then there is the question of whether the player should be allowed to send unlanded non-primary-heir characters to join existing mercenary companies and holy orders, or not.

So, how do you think CK3 will handle mercenaries? What new things should be added? Any views on this topic?

 

[Torngasuk]

There are a few distinctions I'd like to make to start with. Firstly, you have adventurers. Not in the CK2 sense of a freebooting conqueror, but rather men of distinguished lineage who travel alone or with a retinue to offer their sword to a foreign prince for gold or glory: look no further than the brothers Hauteville for a prime example of this archetype. Secondly, you have your career soldiers and captains, men of high ability and low origins who may rise high into power and patronage in the military service of an appreciative monarch, men like Falkes de Breauté, George of Antioch, or El Cid. Then you have your true mercenary captains and companies, Mercadier and Lupescar, John Hawkwood, Roger de Flor and the Catalan Company. To address the third category, mercenaries were definitely a measurable phenomenon in the medieval period, even before the formation of the more famous free companies and condottieri.

In 1945, Jacques Boussard put forth the argument that Henry virtually transformed English armies by preferring the shield-tax or scutage over the still-functioning feudal levy. Boussard found large quantities of mercenaries in the Pipe Rolls, peaking at just over 6,000 effectives during the Great Revolt of 1173–1174. He therefore concluded that Henry had reshaped feudal armies into paid, professional forces that were faster, better-organized, and more effective in both battle and siege operations. In 1962, Michael Powicke called attention to the ramifications of Boussard’s study by arguing that Henry’s association with mercenaries was ‘on a scale not perhaps matched again in intensity until the Hundred Years War’; eleven years later, W.L. Warren declared that mercenary footmen were indeed the mainstay of the king’s military power. A departure from such judgments is Michael Prestwich’s more recent counter: because the overall percentage of hired soldiers was rather low in Henry’s armies, any transformative influence of mercenaries occurred after Henry’s death, perhaps in the reigns of Richard (1189–1199) and John (1199–1216).

England is going to provide a fair few examples of note: Henry II, Richard, and John were all frequent employers of mercenaries in their endeavors. It also offers us an excellent image of the first, adventuring type in the form of William of Ypres, bastard grandson of Robert, Count of Flanders, who was forced to flee to England after a failed scheme to seize control of the county, where he became a prominent military commander in Stephen's war against Matilda during the Anarchy, at one point being rewarded with effective control of the earldom of Kent, if not perhaps the title itself.

It's not the English alone who made generous use of mercenary troops, however. When Frederick Barbarossa crossed the Alps in an attempt to subjugate the Lombard League, it was an army of Brabantine mercenaries that he marched with. Turkish mercenaries were a recurring feature of the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, much to the detriment of their employers. The Teutonic Order not only fought with knights under its own banner, but also what we might call "guest crusaders," foreign noblemen traveling to fight in the name of God, as well as substantial numbers of paid mercenaries. The Byzantines employed Alan mercenaries, and in medieval Iberia, we find those who straddle the borderline between paid mercenaries and aristocratic adventurers in ways not seen until the Italian baronage took up mercenary service as a profitable hobby.

In these circumstances of protracted dynastic strife and political upheaval it was hardly surprising that the competing factions should have sought to enhance their military capability by recruiting Christian mercenaries into their warbands. 'In the subsequent decline of their empire', al-Makkari would observe later, 'they came at length not only to hire the enemy's troops, but to surrender to the Christian kings the fortresses of the Moslems, that they might secure their aid against each other'. Just as the would-e caliph al-Adil and his rival 'Abd Allah al-Bayyasi in 1224-25 recruited continents of Christian mercenaries into their armies, so al-Adil's brother, al-Ma'mun, who had proclaimed himself caliph in Seville in the winter of 1227, crossed from al-Andalus to Marrakesh with a continent of some 500 Christian knights the following year in an attempt to consolidate his power on the throne and displace his rivals.

So, in short, there are three types that might be considered mercenaries that I'd like to see incorporated into CK3. Foreign noblemen, fleeing into exile or venturing forth in search of adventure, perhaps lacking any hopes of inheritance, offering their sword to a distant relative or sympathetic ruler in exchange for the opportunity to make a name and fortune for themselves in a new land. Then, the petty nobility or men of obscure origin, skilled at the art of war, generated by decision or brought into existence by events or raised from baronial courts, granted military commands and perhaps even landed titles once their worth is proven, earning them the enduring enmity of the established aristocracy.

And finally, of course, the traditional mercenary companies, Brabantines and Catalans, and Alans and Flemings. These, I would split into two subgroups. One, the handful of standing companies, with a few thousand troops to their name, expensive to hire, expensive to import (I would indeed be a proponent of having to move them from their native land to yours at your own expense), and expensive to keep in the field, but offering a substantial material advantage in exchange for their fees. Representative, if not of the later great companies, then at least of the substantial bodies of foreign troops employed by the aforementioned medieval monarchs. And two, private mercenary retinues, more ephemeral entities with fewer troops, formed by unlanded adventurers or the lesser nobility as a source of income in uncertain times and either disbanded upon retirement or succession passed off to a comrade-in-arms, as prone to pillaging the lands they pass through for their own profit as occupying them.