Well, I thought about going with "The Best way they could Implement Mercenaries in Wh3", but I thought that would be too long.

Now, I know I've made a thread or two about the Dogs of War and mercenaries, but I just can't stop loving the idea of those guys and making mercenary armies and all. But I do think that I never really was able to explain it as well as I could've.

But I realized that that it's the ways in which they could be be implemented that I want to talk about. Because the more I think about it, I don't really think that the old 5th and 6th Edition DoW rules of that allowed most factions to field/hire most of the RoR or generic mercenaries would hold up as well in Wh3, so I want to explain the different but still related methods the devs could do to effectively bring mercenaries into Wh3.

I think that I'd describe the different methods as Standard Mercenary Recruitment, DoW Mercenary Recruitment, Mercenary Armies, and Internal Mercenaries.

Standard Mercenary Recruitment: This one's fairly basic. It should be the standard TW formula for how mercenary units are recruited, but with a slight twist.

Sure, there could be some nice regional recruitment, like if you conquer Araby, you'll get far greater access to the Arabyan mercenary units, but the difference from other TW games would be that for a good number of races, there'd be a chance that random bands of mercenary units could just show up in one of your provinces' mercenary pools, though I would say that they should always be in groups, like 2 Tilean Pikemen and 1 "Mercenary Crossbowmen" units, and maybe even be required to be recruited in the groups they come in, as that could be a fairly interesting twist on recruiting mercenary units as well.

And I think that aside from a few smaller building effects, if a faction gets more powerful, it should greatly increase the chances of mercenaries showing up in their provinces, but that kind of leads into another method, so I'll just stop here.

And I would also say that maybe you could possibly recruit mercenary heroes as well, at least the ones that fall under the mercenary captain umbrella, each of which could have different buffs for mercenary units.

DoW Recruitment: Now, I give the Dogs of War their own separate spot not only because I want to see be their own race, which would allow us to field crazy mercenary armies, but because they really should have their unique way of dealing with mercenary units, as mercenary armies is kind of their thing.

And simply put, the DoW factions should have standard mercenary recruitment, but on steroids. What I mean is that mercenary units just show up in their provinces' mercenary pool every turn, but it's still mostly random, just with higher chances for more standard units and such.

But I think that the DoW factions should  really only have two recruitment building chains, one building chain to recruit artillery, war machines, and the like and a main "Mercenary Camp" or something that greatly effects the chances and numbers of mercenary units that can show up in their provinces. 

And it might be a slightly unpopular opinion, but I would really want Borgio the Besieger to have is own unique 5 tier "Tilean Mercenary Quarter" building chain that he can build in provincial capitals that have an even bigger effect on the chances toward mercenaries than the more basic tier 3 "Mercenary Camps" building chain.

Mercenary Armies: This is kind of the end result of the standard mercenary recruitment, in that you might see mercenary armies show up in your provinces, but they're starting chances should pretty low, as that could be potentially be game breakingly OP if you could get a fairly powerful mercenary armies on turn 1 or 2.

Now, I will take a second to say that I'm not entirely sure just how they should implement mercenary generals beyond just the standard "Tilean" mercenary generals for most cases, and I say that because while some races could work just fine as mercenary generals, like humans and ogres, it kind of feels limited in just how great of a range in terms of which races you could have mercenary generals from and still have it make some sense.

Now don't get me wrong I think that you could have basically a X lord type leading a "mercenary army" from another faction, like a a Khorne lord approaching Archaon at the head of a random Khorne army, but I just can't see how you can effectively give whole mercenary armies to factions like the Empire and others and not have them all just be Tilean generals, at least outside of the DoW factions anyway.

Maybe most mercenary armies could be akin to the secondary WAAAGH! armies, but ones you can actually have some more control over, in that you can recruit more mercenary units into it and a mercenary captain leading them. And that's kind of why I think that the possibility of having mercenary heroes be the ones to grant buffs to mercenary units, as you could just slot in a single mercenary captain and grant buffs to all mercenary units within an army.

If any of you guys have any ideas of how the devs could possibly implement whole mercenary armies without it just being a bunch of armies from different races and such, please share them. Because I would really like for the devs to do expand beyond the allied outpost system a little, but I'd rather have it work than just be a big a mess.

But I feel like this method might possibly be partly tied in with the 4th method, so I'll just get into that.

Internal Mercenaries: Admittedly, I realized that while this sort of thing isn't just about the Skaven, but would also factor in the vampire and chaos races as well, as well as a few others.

But what I mean by internal mercenaries is stuff like how the major Skaven clans are all known for basically hiring/selling their weapons and troops to each other, and that could allow them to have a bit of a internal mercenary  system of their own, which I think could done by each playable clan getting its own version of Clan Eshin's Clan Contracts and Clan Skryre's Forbidden workshop, but with the buffs being specifically for the things their particular clan is known for.

As for the chaos and undead.

I would say that for many of the chaos factions could potentially make use of mercenary armies from different chaos factions/races, such as the previously mention Archaon example, but it would need to be limited by which factions are in play. Like you won't be getting any Slaanesh "mercenary" armies showing up as a Khorne faction, but you might get a Nurgle or Tzeentch army, but the latter would be a bit rarer. And things would be kind of free game for the undivided factions. But I also think that that would need to factor in the Norscan, BM, and CD factions as well.

And it could probably be pretty similar with the vampire bloodlines and factions, in that maybe there could be some expansion to the current bloodline system and you might have some more interplay between the major bloodlines and even the VCoast as well. And heck, maybe whenever Nagash is added in, he could kind of have a semi mercenary like system with the different bloodlines and how to deal with them.

But I think that some similar things should probably be done with races like the greenskins and ogres, but to a lesser degree. Because while I could see either race possibly hiring groups from the other to help in fighting, I can't really say it makes all that much sense for them to bother hiring a bunch of weak humans and such to fight their battles for them.

I'm sorry the OP is as long as it is, but I had a lot that I was trying to explain.

I'm going to use the first comment to list which races should probably get which kinds of mercenary treatment and to what degree.

Well, I kind of wanted to list off the levels I guess of which each race's ability to interact and/or recruit mercenaries.

Now, I shouldn't really have to say that things like factions from the Empire shouldn't be able to hire a a chaos army nor should a Khorne faction be recruiting units of Tilean Pikemen and such, but I do feel like there isn't a need to worry about possible mercenary systems being overly limited either.

Though I will be lumping a some races together since they would have roughly the same levels of how often and how many mercenaries they might hire and so on.

Chaos Races​: I think that it's safe to say that the for the various chaos races would have more of a focus on inner workings between the chaos factions, for instance, a WoC faction could possibly be approached by an occasional BM, Norscan, or Chaos Dwarf army and visa versa, which could depend on just how powerful their faction becomes. And maybe it could vary a bit between them.

Skaven: I would say that the Skaven wouldn't make much use of "foreign" mercenaries beyond ogres so much as they'd make use of "mercenary" units from the other major skaven clans, which could be done with a little reworking of some of their existing mechanics and assets.

 Empire, Kislev, and Cathay: While these human nations should certainly be able to hire plenty of and various kinds of mercenaries, they would probably wouldn't be using that many full mercenary armies all that often. 

Bretonnia: Bretonnian factions would only have limited access to mercenaries, but mainly just human, dwarf, and ogre mercenaries, and mostly only infantry ones at that.

Dwarfs: The Dwarf factions would also be limited in what mercenaries they hire, as they're experienced enough to only really hire human and ogre mercenaries, but with a slightly wider range than the Bretonnians.

High Elves, Dark Elves, and Lizardman: These three races could hire mercenary armies, but only for a limited time, as that's all they'd be useful for to those races, but the mercenaries would know better than to stick around the Dark Elves for too long anyway.

Greenskins and Ogres: These two races would probably only really be able to hire mercenary armies from themselves and each other rather than hiring mercenaries from other races.

Tomb Kings: These guys could probably hire some living mercenary units and such, but it would probably be fairly limited, as not too many races would be overly eager to work for undead, but treasure does speak a lot.

Vampire Counts: The Vampire Counts would probably only be able to hire human and ogre mercenaries, but mainly human mercenaries from TEB, as most other humans aren't known to be overly fond of the undead.

Vampire Coast: I would actually think that Vampire Coast factions could have a fair bit more room to hire more mercenaries, being able to hire pretty much all human and ogre mercenaries, and that might be because they're somewhat less serious and sheer ambition driven vampires, somewhat.

Wood Elves: I honestly think that the Wood Elves are probably the only race in Wh3 that might not not have any use of mercenaries, but maybe, just maybe they could make use of limited time mercenary armies. I'm not really sure how that one would work.

And while I think there's probably little bits of stuff that the devs could work in here and there, I do think that  this sort of stuff could be a fairly simple but effective way to allow the difference races to possibly have access to mercenaries in some form or another, but without overshadowing the base races themselves.

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DarthEnderX-#6513 wrote:

​Well, that's what the first part is.

Ok, I'll give you that, but what else do you think they could do to make mercenaries interesting and fun to use within Wh3?

How do you think they can improve things like the Wh2 mercenary camps and such?

I know I said this already, but I kind of like the idea of having most factions use mercenary armies as secondary WAAAGH! like armies, but ones that can be improved upon and maybe upgraded through the mercenary heroes that lead them. I would also like for some races to have access to mercenary like mechanics so that they can also have some fun extra flavor to play around with.