Mercenaries I think became really a problem that people will certainly appreciate if it will be solved.



Current state of mercenaries:

Right now mercenaries are determined for each country depending on base, force limit modifier. This limit tends to be big so it's no problem to have purely mercenaries infantry in armies (which looks especially ridiculous at later dates) and no point going regular at all. Even worse - mercenaries don't end... at all. They can restore in number endlessly and quite quickly. Add to this problem amount of money countries usually have after some time after start and you will understand that cost isn't a big price to pay and you can sustain them easily.

In MP it leads to very long World Wars that hard to end since no one can lose their army (since manpower involved only for cannons and maybe cavalry).



Way to solve it:

Below I will present 2 ideas I came up with to limit mercenaries usage and make them more valuable and as spare resource as countries manpower. Feel free to criticize them and present your own ideas!



Suggestions (2 ways to solve the problem):

1) Condottieri mechanic replacement (since I really think this mechanic is weird and will contradict/make no sense with this idea).

* Countries would not be able to hire mercenaries until they will get manpower for them through diplo-option with other countries (mercenaries manpower would be separate or mercenary limit would be granted same way).

* States around them would be able to provide mercenaries by diplo-option (just like condottieri) by spending their manpower (for example, if they will give you 2K you will get 2 regiment) and in exchange you will give them money.



2) Regional mercenaries manpower pool.

You will be able to hire as many as you want, but manpower is limited depending on sum of manpower of provinces in region (+ maybe some other factors) and once your mercenaries manpower will reach zero, you will not be able to reinforce these regiments.