Mercenary wages rising & garrisons

General ACKS Forums General Discussion
1

Hi, I'm new around here. I recently bought the Domains at War PDFs and I'm really impressed with the level of detail there. However, there's a particular rule that's giving me quite a bit of headache. I'm referring to this one:

"If more than 50% of the crop of mercenaries available in a realm is hired, prices for that type of mercenaries throughout the realm increase by a percentage amount equal to the percentage over 50%. is represents prices rising due to scarcity. Prices will remain elevated even when a new crop of mercenaries becomes available, until less than 50% of a crop is employed in the realm. "

Specifically, I have some trouble with how this rule interacts with the domain garrison rules. Let's say a PC owns an indipendent wilderness realm of 960 families. His garrison must be, at least, 960*4=3840 gp/month. A crop of mercenaries for a domain of 960 families seems to be:

Light Infantry 17 (102 gp)
Heavy Infantry 8 (96 gp)
Slingers 7 (42 gp)
Bowmen 7 (63 gp)
Crossbowmen 7 (126 gp)
Longbowmen 3  (54 gp)
Light Cavalry 3 (90 gp)
Horse Archers 2 (90 gp)
Medium Cavalry 2 (90 gp)
Heavy Cavalry 2 (120 gp)
Cataphract Cavalry 1 (75 gp)

This entire crop costs 948 gp/month in wages, which is far from reaching the minimum garrison of 3840 gp/month. To assemble the garrison we will have to hire, at least, 4 such crops. But, if I'm getting the rules well, that will raise the wages by an astounding 350%! The domain will never be able to afford such an expense.

I'm probably getting something wrong. It doesn't seem right to me that, just to fulfill the minimum needed garrison, mercenary prices in a small realm are going to climb so ridiculously high.

2

Hi Olrox! Thanks for the kind words on D@W. 

The mechanic you have mentioned is designed, more-or-less, to penalize rulers who attempt to rely solely on mercenaries and/or solely on one specific type of mercenaries within a category. (E.g. "I'll just hire cataphracts!") and/or always buy the max every month. It also attempts to model a measure of supply and demand so that if, in a particular campaign setting, one type of merc became hotly demanded, cost will rise in the near term. But they don't stay high because the assumption is that supply eventually equalizes.

The impact is not as bad as you think, though! The wage for mercenaries does not increase above a 50% penalty. The prices increase on a crop-by-crop basis. In the first crop, if all are hired, wages will climb by 50% for hiring the entire crop. They will then stay there during the second crop, third crop, and the fourth crop. In the fifth crop they will drop to normal price because your ruler won't be hiring a full crop again. 

So:

Weeks 1 -4 (first crop): Wages are +50%

Weeks 5-8 (second crop): Wages are +50%

Weeks 9-12 (third crop): Wages are +50%

Weeks 13-16 (fourth crop): Wages are +50%

Weeks 17+: Wages drop to normal.

So basically your ruler has to pay a 50% premium for about 4 months, representing the gold rush period when he's establishing his realm and paying extra to get mercenaries to travel to his wilderness domain. 

 

3

Yeah, I knew I was getting something wrong! Thank you very much for the quick answer!