Remove mercenary distance limits

[Lefanis]

Title: Remove mercenary distance limits

Summary: when travelling away from the realm, we usually switch out to mercenary setting. The army I'm on dwilight journeyed south, from Iashalur to Chesland in Terran. We'd set to mercenary setting, and were about 1280 miles from Iashalur. However, the morale of our troops kept dropping every turn, from between 15 points and 35. I originally thought it a bug, but turns out its not.

Mercenary setting *reduces* penalties of being far away from home, it does not remove them. There is nothing wrong, no bugs here. Your army is simply too far away from home.

I believe on an island the size of dwilight, such restrictions need to be scaled to cater to its size- the numbers that might work on EC won't on Dwilight. Even better, do away with the distance restriction altogether for mercs (does it serve a purpose?).

Here's what the Help page for unit settings has to say-

Mercenary
Mercenaries are men hired to fight your war, with no loyalty to you or your realm beyond their pay. Their morale stays high while far from home, but 50% more expensive than regular army (this is the only designation available to traders).
When pursuing your Leader's agenda far from home, a Regular Army will get homesick before the week is out. Their Morale will suffer. When Morale is less than 50%, it can be a real problem. Combat Strength goes down, as does Cohesion. Morale can usually be salved with gold as a Regular Army will get a boost from regular payment. If, however, you discern that this will be a problem again, sooner than would be convenient, the Mercenary setting may be your choice. No morale concerns, so Combat Strength stays high, and your Unit is more effective in battle.

There doesn't seem to be a mention of any restrictions on this page either.

So I would like to request the restrictions be done away with, as mercenary troops are already being paid much higher than regular armies purely to avoid these morale problems. These are sellswords who don't care about loyalty to anything but coin.

Benefits: It allows the undertaking of campaigns across distances on a continent the size of dwilight. It makes sense because mercenaries shouldn't even care about distance as long as their pockets are full. Plus, RP benefits! Long glorious campaigns to distant lands to fight those heathens  :D

Possible Exploits: Might overpower rich and large realms who can bully others. However, I feel there are already limitations in this. An army travelling a long distance has a long time between consecutive campaigns, and it is decently expensive to have a troop as mercenary for 3-4 consecutive weeks.

[MediumTedium]

If morale drop is too high, maybe make it so that the more distant your troops are from your home province morale drop is higher and the closer they are morale drop is significantly smaller and "Mercenary" option just lowers penalties like it does now. Mercenaries without morale drop would be too powerful i think...

Sorry if i am blabbering i didnt get enough sleep ....

[Eldargard]

I think the main concern is Dwilight. It is a huge continent. I think that there are really two options.

1. A realms reach, even when using mercenaries, is limited as intended and nothing needs to change.
2. A realm on Dwilight should have greater reach and the numbers need to be tweaked to mercenaries will allow it.

It really comes down to what feel we want. Perhaps historical precedence could help decide? How far could an army effectively reach in this time period?

[pcw27]

I agree that the penalty is a little much. Ten points a turn is one thing but 20 or 30 is way too prohibitive. I had always assumed that the game was tailored to make very distant wars difficult but not impossible.

Part of the problem is that the drastic moral drops came as a surprise to many of us. My unit's moral hovered at around 50% the entire journey down, then dropped to 12% within a couple days of sitting around.

Also if you start heading home will the moral penalties get reduced, like significantly? If not then there's no motivation to turn back when moral is low, after all you'll lose the unit either way.

It really comes down to what feel we want. Perhaps historical precedence could help decide? How far could an army effectively reach in this time period?

The Crusades had troops traveling from France and England all the way to the middle east. The Mongols waged war from East Asia all the way to Eastern Europe.

[Lefanis]

It really comes down to what feel we want. Perhaps historical precedence could help decide? How far could an army effectively reach in this time period?

Paris to Jerusalem, is around 2000 miles.

Iashalur to Candiels, is 2000 miles.

[jaune]

I would like to say, if you are at friendly land, morale loss should be much smaller. So you could travel long distance as long as you were on friendly zone, but going deep on enemy lands could cause more major morale loss. It would be realistic to think that if you are deep in enemy lands, fear to being cutoff and sacked causes more morale loss. Sitting at friendly city, even thought far from home, should let the morale raise a bit, cuase fear of being slaughtered aint there.

Just my 2 cents for the issue.

[Tom]

The dev team has a TODO item regarding an island-specific distance scaling factor open already (more things than mercenary distance are involved). But it's low priority. Not because it's not important, but because there are many things that are more important.

[Foundation]

The dev team has a TODO item regarding an island-specific distance scaling factor open already (more things than mercenary distance are involved). But it's low priority. Not because it's not important, but because there are many things that are more important.

Scaling for distance is already in place for these calculations.  Are you talking about additional factors other than ensuring distance is consistent across all islands the same as travel distance?

In this case, it *is* actually 1200 miles.  The request would be asking to decrease the effect of distance penalties across all islands for such large distances.

[egamma]

http://bugs.battlemaster.org/view.php?id=7490

This may have been what prompted the feature request. This might not be a problem anymore.

[pcw27]

It's still a problem. My unit moral seems to be dropping to 0 every turn. I pay for lots of entertainment which gets it up to 24% then it drops down again. Its impossible to get ahead.

[Anaris]

It's still a problem. My unit moral seems to be dropping to 0 every turn. I pay for lots of entertainment which gets it up to 24% then it drops down again. Its impossible to get ahead.

And if you're 1200 miles from home, that's not a bug.

[Indirik]

One of the nice things about Dwilight is that a realm on one end cannot project power all the way to the other end. I kind of like that. It's not like EC where, theoretically, Eponllyn and Sirion can have a war, even though they're at opposite ends of the island. So, sorry, Iashalur, but it looks like you can't actually send troops to fight in Paisly. As a dev, I'm OK with that. (Although IC, it sucks! >:( )

[pcw27]

I hardly think sending 3k support troops counts as "projecting power". Dwilight needs the ability for long distance campaigns.
For realms deep in friendly territory long campaigns are necessary to get involved in any wars at all. This is called battle master after all, it kind of defeats the purpose if your realm can't get into battles. It's one thing to say that long distance crusades should be difficult to wage, it's another to say they should be impossible. Right now they're very close to impossible. The other TLs in my army are able to keep moral hovering around 60% but since my character's older and has fewer hours I can only get it up to 20% only to have it drop again. Which incidentally doesn't make sense, when I pay for entertainment I'm not necissarily going out and partying with my troops, they could spend a full 12 hours drinking while Turin takes a nap.

If Iashalur wanted to invade Paisly all by itself it would be a completely wasted effort. Even if it had larger armies and could spare a more impressive force it could only field it for a matter of days then would need to return. Once back all the TLS would need to save up more gold for the next wave. By the time the next expedition is ready all the damage they did on the previous attack would be repaired. This would be totally impractical. However if the entire Astrocratic federation had beef with a single realm it certainly does make sense for even the most distant realm to send a few troops.

As has been pointed out, the distance from Iashalur to Aurvandil is the same as the distance from Paris to Jerusalem. Why should crusades be impossible in battle master?

[D'Espana]

I'm going to honestly say that I do not understand the problem with removing the penalties here... I can find some reasonable logic here:

I would like to say, if you are at friendly land, morale loss should be much smaller. So you could travel long distance as long as you were on friendly zone, but going deep on enemy lands could cause more major morale loss. It would be realistic to think that if you are deep in enemy lands, fear to being cutoff and sacked causes more morale loss. Sitting at friendly city, even thought far from home, should let the morale raise a bit, cuase fear of being slaughtered aint there.

But even taking that into account, aren't mercenaries expected to don't give a !@#$ about anything but gold?

[Chenier]

Seems to me like the benefits of setting one's troops as mercenary aren't worth the costs of it... Morale loss reduction doesn't seem to be all that great, if it drops that much at such distances. Imo, the morale loss reduction for mercenaries should be greater on all continents...