Remove mercenary distance limits

[pcw27]

They are also in the center of the map, and potentially surrounded by enemies.
You have me confused with someone else. My character is a priest.

Oh, right. It's Sergio's unit. Regular army with 100% moral in Chesland.

That's part of the problem, the penalty seems to go from "totally fine" to "crisis" based on either a days time or a single region moved. I made it all the way across the sea and kept 50% moral, but after a day in Larur my unit was deserting. Again, having soldiers that are about 50% worse at tolerating home sickness then a ten year old at a sleep away camp is not fun.

[Eldargard]

The idea of mercenaries gaining moral by looting sounds super cool to me!

[Lefanis]

I was at 100% morale in Chesland. Two turns, and poof, unit gone.

[Chenier]

I was at 100% morale in Chesland. Two turns, and poof, unit gone.

That's my experience as well.

[Tom]

"poof" does not help the dev team one bit. Actually posting the messages you got, and the % lost each turn, would.

[Lefanis]

Unit Status Report   (7 days, 1 hour ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 14 points.


Unit Status Report   (6 days, 12 hours ago)
Wear and tear causes 3 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 32 points.

Unit Status Report   (6 days, 1 hour ago)
Wear and tear causes 3 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 27 points.

Unit Status Report   (5 days, 13 hours ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 15 points.


Arrival   (5 days, 13 hours ago)
You have arrived in Chesland, a Townsland region and allied territory.

Unit Status Report   (5 days, 1 hour ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 13 points.

Unit Status Report   (4 days, 13 hours ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 25 points.

Unit Status Report   (4 days, 1 hour ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 26 points.

Unit Status Report   (3 days, 12 hours ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Your men are complaining about not having been paid for 4 days.
Morale of your troops falls 24 points.


I begin moving out of Chesland, after treating men to entertainment a final time...

Unit Status Report   (3 days, 1 hour ago)
Wear and tear causes 2 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 23 points.


Unit Status Report   (2 days, 12 hours ago)
Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 36 points.


Unit Status Report   (2 days, 1 hour ago)
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 21 points.

15 have cowardly fled your unit!


Unit Status Report   (1 day, 13 hours ago)
Wear and tear causes 2 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Morale of your troops falls 1 points.

Your men desert en bloc, leaving you alone! Word of your bad leadership spreads and your honour drops one point.

In Chesland, I was spending all my hours on entertainment (the more expensive variety). Treated them on the turn I moved out as well, though to the one that doesn't use up all hours. Within a day and half of moving out, they deserted.

[Lefanis]

Most interestingly-

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Back on Dry Land   (7 days, 13 hours ago)
personal message
Your ship has arrived at the coast of Chesland and is putting you ashore.

Unit Status Report   (7 days, 13 hours ago)
Your men enjoy having a few hours for themselves. Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Switching your unit to mercenaries would at least reduce the morale penalty they suffer. Morale of your troops falls 5 points.

I set to merc then, as I had forgotten to do it earlier. The morale loss as regular army (5) seems manageable, compared to the 36 point drop on the last day.

[Tom]

Hm. I tend to agree that 30%+ is too strong.  But to reach those values - wow. You are off the scale, this is the last, most extreme message.

[Lorgan]

Where are the days that your men were happy to be away from home?

[Marlboro]

Where are the days that your men were happy to be away from home?

Three to five days a month.

If you're spoiling for a fight, move to a realm that is next door to enemies. That's generally my advice: go where the action is. Realms at war have good turnover for various positions, and you can advance a lot more quickly than at times of peace. That said, anything more than a 5-10% drop to morale every turn while paying out the ass for Mercenary status is kinda bogus, especially considering you're generally losing morale from battles as well if you're projecting power.

You Dwilightians do realize that this mechanic is basically the only thing keeping Aurvandil from marching/sailing on whoever they hell they feel like, right? They could punch into basically anyone's capital as an organized unit and nobody would be able to stop that without a few days (Weeks, really) of notice.

[egamma]

Most interestingly-

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Back on Dry Land   (7 days, 13 hours ago)
personal message
Your ship has arrived at the coast of Chesland and is putting you ashore.

Unit Status Report   (7 days, 13 hours ago)
Your men enjoy having a few hours for themselves. Wear and tear causes 1 % damage to your unit's equipment.
Your men are fed up and lonely, far away from home and quite unhappy about it. Every evening, they complain loudly and yell at you that they want to return home. Switching your unit to mercenaries would at least reduce the morale penalty they suffer. Morale of your troops falls 5 points.

I set to merc then, as I had forgotten to do it earlier. The morale loss as regular army (5) seems manageable, compared to the 36 point drop on the last day.

Tom/Devs--is the morale penalty of mercenaries higher than for normal troops, at a certain distance? Surely the merc penalty would be 1/3 that of normal army, or something sensible like that--it would be bad if normal troops scale out gradually, versus merc with a 'morale shelf'.

[Tom]

Tom/Devs--is the morale penalty of mercenaries higher than for normal troops, at a certain distance? Surely the merc penalty would be 1/3 that of normal army, or something sensible like that--it would be bad if normal troops scale out gradually, versus merc with a 'morale shelf'.

No, the penalty is guaranteed to be less. However, there are random fluctuations, so on an individual day, it might seem that it is higher.

To illustrate (NOT REAL VALUES), if the penalty for normal troops is a random value between 10 and 20, and the penalty for mercenaries is a random value between 6 and 12, then on some days, the randomness could give you a higher value with mercenaries than with normal troops.

[pcw27]

Three to five days a month.

If you're spoiling for a fight, move to a realm that is next door to enemies. That's generally my advice: go where the action is. Realms at war have good turnover for various positions, and you can advance a lot more quickly than at times of peace. That said, anything more than a 5-10% drop to morale every turn while paying out the ass for Mercenary status is kinda bogus, especially considering you're generally losing morale from battles as well if you're projecting power.

You Dwilightians do realize that this mechanic is basically the only thing keeping Aurvandil from marching/sailing on whoever they hell they feel like, right? They could punch into basically anyone's capital as an organized unit and nobody would be able to stop that without a few days (Weeks, really) of notice.

Even if they devoted all their mobile troops Aurvandil would have only the slimest chance of taking anyone's capital let alone every capital on the map. We're talking about landing penalties coupled with attacking a fortified position. They'd get crushed. However if they did invade any capitals that would be AWESOME. Basically all this is stopping them from doing is launching Viking style raids, which would also be awesome.

[Marlboro]

Even if they devoted all their mobile troops Aurvandil would have only the slimest chance of taking anyone's capital let alone every capital on the map. We're talking about landing penalties coupled with attacking a fortified position. They'd get crushed.

Step One: Land 40K CS in donut townsland as a single unit, unannounced and unheralded.
Step Two: (March on the capital, which is cut off from its armies)
Step Three: Profit

[Chenier]

Even if they devoted all their mobile troops Aurvandil would have only the slimest chance of taking anyone's capital let alone every capital on the map. We're talking about landing penalties coupled with attacking a fortified position. They'd get crushed. However if they did invade any capitals that would be AWESOME. Basically all this is stopping them from doing is launching Viking style raids, which would also be awesome.

Hardly. Aurvandil has a large mobile force, sure, but if they send it all to crush another realm's capital, all of the other realms have free reign to burn Aurvandil to the ground.

Only difference: Aurvandil only has one capital, while the allies have a whole bunch of them.