Slightly More Complex Mercenary Events

[unmerged(98596)]

If you're at all curious on how to make mercenaries feel a bit more dynamic, I wanted to post some work I did. Now, as the topic states, this only slightly more complex, there's another method I played around with using percentages to determine which provinces the mercenaries are coming from, this just uses mercenaries from a few areas though. The idea is to give them a more mixed feel with their tech (so, say if you pick up some Welsh mercenaries, they don't all come from the same province in Wales and might be armed or armored differently), and to get more provinces into play. I'm sure some one must've done this before, but if not, or if it's not been written about, here we go.

Let's take a look at an example. Don't worry about the archer_cav or the numbers or costs or whatnot, I was just tinkering about, Wanted to test the effects of horse archers under various conditions, toyed with the idea of giving tiny numbers of them via event or mercenaries to represent some of the raiders used in the British Isles from time to time, but it's probably just best done with regular light horsemen given they didn't really fight like eastern horse archers. So, I made the event kind of quicker to come up for me and such, hence things like time factors reducing their arrival to almost nil and so on. I'm more just interested in sharing a basic idea on how to make mercenaries a bit more fun; as said then, the numbers you see are really about testing purposes. Sorry if this looks ugly, not the best with tags. Changed the Welsh Bowmen Company here to have some militia with them, and brings them out of two provinces instead of one.

#############################
# The Welsh Bowmen Company   #
############################# 

# Level 0, before 1150
character_event = {
	id = 1202
	
	picture = "event_mercenaries"

	trigger = { 
		condition = { type = ruler }
		condition = { type = atwar }
		condition = { type = gold value = 20 }
		condition = { type = religion value = catholic }
		condition = { type = not value = { type = year value = 1150 } }
		condition = { type = not value = { type = capital condition = { type = is_besieged } } }
	}

	mean_time_to_happen = {
		months = 100

		modifier = {
			condition = { type = ai }
			condition = { type = difficulty value = 2 }
			factor = 0.9
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = ai }
			condition = { type = difficulty value = 3 }
			factor = 0.8
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = ai }
			condition = { type = difficulty value = 4 }
			factor = 0.8
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = not value = { type = prestige value = 100 } }
			factor = 2.0
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = gold value = 500 }
			factor = 0.75
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = culture value = welsh }
			factor = 0.1
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = culture value = norman }
			factor = 0.5
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = culture value = english }
			factor = 0.5
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = culture value = irish }
			factor = 0.5
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = stability value = 1 }
			factor = 0.9
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = stability value = 2 }
			factor = 0.9
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = stability value = 3 }
			factor = 0.9
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = not value = { type = stability value = 0 } }
			factor = 1.1
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = not value = { type = stability value = -1 } }
			factor = 1.1
		}
		modifier = {
			condition = { type = not value = { type = stability value = -2 } }
			factor = 1.1
		}
	}

	action_a = {#Let us hire them!
		ai_chance = 80
		effect = { type = gold value = -20 }
		effect = { type = add_regiment
				tech_prov = 64
				culture = welsh
				mercenaries = yes
				strength = {
					militia = 125
					archer_cav = 25
					archers = 100
				}
		}
		effect = { type = add_regiment
				tech_prov = 18
				culture = welsh
				mercenaries = yes
				strength = {
					archer_cav = 50
					archers = 200
				}
		}
	}
	action_b = {#No we don't need them!
		ai_chance = 20
	}
}

In this modified example, we have Welsh mercenaries coming from two provinces. Now, with these provinces, we can assign each individual traits. So, for example, if I wanted one to be giving Polish mercenaries for some bizarre damn reason, I'd just change the culture. Troops can be assigned individually. When they appear, after they've been bought, they do not appear as a single regiment though, but as two separate regiments. This can, I think, actually be fairly useful. You can make this more complex yet, if you want, by adding chances for additional regiments, as such, by adding this to the effects of buying the regiment;

		effect = { #Extra mercenaries
			type = random
			chance = 25
			effect = {
				type = add_regiment
				tech_prov = 18 
				culture = welsh 
				mercenaries = yes
				strength = {
					militia = 100
				}
			}
		}

In this example, the potential is for some cheap militia to come along (afterall, the additional guys are basically free, don't want to give loads of knights). Of course, you can change the tech province and all. Here's an example of a variant where the potential additional mercenaries are just 25 Norman adventurers as knights (easily changed to heavy_inf or whatever if preferable though).

		effect = { #Extra mercenaries
			type = random
			chance = 25
			effect = {
				type = add_regiment
				tech_prov = 97 
				culture = norman 
				mercenaries = yes
				strength = {
					heavy_cav = 25
				}
			}
		}

Of course, this is just give some ideas. You can definitely make mercenaries more complex, or utterly randomize the provinces, within reason, from which they come using more complex set ups, but I like this. I know it's not the best stuff, but I figure some one might had not thought of it who could probably build on the idea or use it in some way for themselves.