Mercenaries

From HiveWiki

Mercenaries are hired for a contract period of 1 week. Their fee is taken automatically by the system. Mercenaries can be bought at the tab entitled Market, which has a drop down menu item Hire mercenaries. If you are a sovereign player, you can opt to serve as a mercenary by clicking on the 'serve as mercenary' button on the same page. It will cost you 1% of your mercenary fee to list. If you are not hired within three days, you will automatically delist and lose the fee.

Mercenaries can be stolen from you, like any other vassal, and in this event their contract timer is suspended until you rescue them.

If you seize a mercenary vassal and the former owner doesn't rescue they will only be your vassal until the contract timer expires (so check their history BEFORE seizing them).

The essential points of mercenaries are shown below, extracted from the Devs announcement:

• Mercenary is a sovereign which desires to sell his vassal services for money

• Soveriegn player must not be on a loyalty timer to former liege

• Mercenaries are sold in 1 week contracts
• Mercenary weekly salary is taken from buyer right away
• Mercenary CAN be stolen just like any other vassal
• When Merc is stolen his contract timer is unaffected, but will not show until rescue timer lapses. His contract owner gets normal 3 day rescue timer
• Rescue expiration makes him a mercenary vassal of new owner until the contract timer expires
• Before contract expiration there will be an option to renew contract and change weekly salary prior

It will cost you the same fee to offer to renew a contract as it would to relist yourself. If you don't have enough gold to do so, you won't be able to make the offer.

Before you become a mercenary - keep in mind you CAN be stolen like any other vassal!

Your mercenary fee will appear on your history so expect to be raided if you are in war mode. While 'under contract' you will be unable to release any vassals (even squirrels) and you will be unable to list any vassals for sale. This is not a bug. You will however be able to have vassals seized from you by other WM players in your attack bracket. You will also be UNABLE to rebel from a liege who seizes you from your original owner, even after the 3 day rescue timer expires. Take these points into consideration for your strategy if you are staying in WM.

Recent maintenance fixes (early June) appear to have solved the 'not remaining free after a week' issue. Even after you are seized, if you don't agree to prolong the contract with your original liege or the new liege that has seized or trapper caught you, you will become sovereign at the end of the 7 day contract. The contract timer is not paused while you are on the normal 3 day rescue timer, so you will be released after 7 days. If you are released by the new liege before the 72 hour loyalty timer expires, the liege who hired you can reclaim you.

Deploy changes 18 Apr 08 Developer's announcement topic.

[edit] Tips on Mercenary Fees

Reasonably priced mercenaries usually are hired very quickly. Therefore, when you look at the market, the mercenaries, and their asking prices, that you see, are the people who are asking to be paid far too much. Do not use those people as a guide for hiring a mercenary.

When listing yourself as a mercenary, look to see what mercs near your Power are listing themselves for, list yourself just below the least expensive one. Occasionally, a "wave" will occur, when a Marquis or Duke wants a Vanity Bump, and then the market becomes almost empty. During those times, prices will rise, and newbie mercs should adjust themselves accordingly; again, as the least expensive if they want to be hired fast.

_____________________________

First of all, a merc hire for building should ALWAYS be targeted for staffing in the castle. Ideally, the merc will become your most powerful vassal in the castle. This will give you the maximum value out of your merc.

Let's say that I am in peace mode, and I have a size 6 level 5 castle, and my workshop and marketplace are the same.

Let's say my top vassals are as follows: 100, 98, 95, 95, 94, 91, 88, 85, 84, 80, 79, 79, 76, 73, 70, 69, 65, 62.

My maximum efficiency for building and resulting product means that I should have 100 - 91 in my castle, for a building power of 716. My workshop comes next with a production power of 619. My marketplace comes last with a power of 519.

If I hire a merc of 110 power, and put him in my castle, he will take the place of the 91 power. My castle's new power is 740. The increase in production is only 24 hammers per hour, 576 hammers per day, and 4032 hammers per week, equal to 40,320 gold.

The addition of the merc also contributes to greater workshop production, as the 91 now goes there, replacing one of the 79s. The workshop production increases by 12,600 gold worth of anvils for the week.

The marketplace production then increases as the 79 moves down, and total additional gold produced is 3528.

Thus, the total increase in production is equal to 56,448. This is the total product. Of course, if you have this much money on hand, you can simply dump it into the construction itself, and get the same product, much faster. Therefore, the actual value of hiring a merc depends on you getting this work done for LESS then that amount. Therefore, a merc of 110 power would only be worth about half of that, or 28,224 gold.

_____________________________

Mercs have a different value to the warmoder, and that value is difficult to calculate. You may hire big mercs to change your Attack Bracket by raising TAS or Power, or hire smaller mercs, no bigger than your top TAS vassals, to fill gaps in your defenses and other buildings. If hiring a merc helps you to seize and keep even one vassal equal in power to the merc, you may consider the merc's price a great deal when compared to the price of buying such a vassal on the Vassal Market.

Each player's needs and circumstances will offer different number values then those above.