Okay so my idea something like a adventurer’s guild or Inn, that will house mercenaries(mercs) and give jobs for your own group of adventurers, it will be and early to mid-game structure and has two main functions:
Mercenaries.
The first function is the ability to hire mercs as soldiers, due to this they don’t require any equipment as they have their own and allow people to build up quick defence. To stop it being over powered all mercs require payment from the start and have a higher upkeep to maintain, as well as there will be a set amount you can hire depending on the size and fame of your town (large/rich town = lots of mercs).
Adventures.
The second function is to provide a place for you to house your own adventurers/mercs and pick up quests for them to do, again with this the bigger your town as well as the more famous your adventurers the better and more difficult the quests you get.
i like the general idea here, in that there’s a tradeoff in acquiring an immediate military presence… would these mercenaries only be accessible as random units that wander into town, and offer their services, or would be eventually be able to “tech tree” up to a merc?
they would be a more expensive unit to acquire, but have the benefit of being outfitted with better gear, etc.
The mercs will be random units that enter the town and can be hired from the guild/Inn and once hired can be controlled but not upgraded. However something that could be done is that if you upgrade the guild/Inn you can hired ‘famed’ mercs or mercs armies which would have better equipment, with the armies taking a few days to arrive, as well as set soldiers to be a mercs and earn the town money, but with a greater risk of death.
I, for one, would love to be able to create specific guilds within my towns, like aformentioned Mercenary guild. I doubt it’d end up in the game initially… but I’ll use my most despised excuse.
Yeah, the main reason I want this is because it gives the option for trade or production themed towns to gain an army if only temporary, but also allows military strong towns to earn more by ‘renting’ their soldiers as mercs.
Perhaps start the basic concept in a tavern / bar / inn where just random dudes show up and can be hired or give quests. Then if you grow big enough, maybe a person shows up to said tavern and asks / offers his guilds services if you build him a guild hall.
Similar to DF nobles, he’d have requirements about size, features (beds, armor racks, archery range). Then they’d pretty much do their own AI thing but you could always go hire them.
As another balancing idea, they could go out and do their own quests, stirring up goblins and such on their own accord, which could bring trouble back to your nice little town that you weren’t expecting. Or maybe their guys get way too blitzed every 3rd or 4th winter out of boredom and go looting the town, tearing up some farms, breaking windows, and generally pissing your people off.
Even more advanced, they could occassionally ask you for stuff like hey we’re running low on food and want some bread. Don’t give it to them and they get mad. They get mad enough, they start a fight with you and you’ll have to battle them. But keep them happy and they might just help defend the city without being hired if you get invaded.
That actually sound quite good, they way I was thinking about it was like an adventures guild in a mmo and how it works like a middle man between the to groups (client to hired swords).
Since it’s not a micromanaging game hiring mercenary forces would be for large military operations, so clicking on a single adventurer that wandered into town might not be the best way to go about it.
Maybe neutral towns can help you out for payment.
to counter that you could use a menu like the ones used for crafting, as to see what each merc’s equipment is and if they’re a band of mercs. The actual idea came to me because of mercenary groups from medieval times where a warrior of band of warriors would accept payment from a lord to help in a war/siege.
i like the basic idea of being able to build something that would attract more (prefab) combat related units to your settlement… this obviously opens up the management aspect of “hiring” those units, but if you go that route, you can then start to customize it, and give players the choice of picking the type of units they prefer (archers, vs, infantry, etc.)
