Mercenaries shouldn’t get upgrades

[Jets]

Currently on AoE3 most mercenaries are affected by some, if not most, of the arsenal/homecity upgrade techs. I see this quite upsetting, since normal trainable units should be the only ones to upgrade and improve through time with the advance of their colony, rather than some hired mercenaries.
A full upgraded skirmisher wouldn’t be dealing as much damage as a Jaeger, but if you have a fully upgraded Jaeger what’s the point of training skirmishers?
Same goes to the mercenarie cavalry, mameluks with hp buff would be a total chaos.
Of course Germany is a mercenary based homecity, I see them cards unique in this setting.

[n0el]

Currently on AoE3 most mercenaries are affected by some, if not most, of the arsenal/homecity upgrade techs. I see this quite upsetting, since normal trainable units should be the only ones to upgrade and improve through time with the advance of their colony, rather than some hired mercenaries.
A full upgraded skirmisher wouldn’t be dealing as much damage as a Jaeger, but if you have a fully upgraded Jaeger what’s the point of training skirmishers?
Same goes to the mercenarie cavalry, mameluks with hp buff would be a total chaos.
Of course Germany is a mercenary based homecity, I see them cards unique in this setting.

Well, for the example of the jaeger/skirmisher, a skirmisher is clearly better in that situation because you can get 2 of them for 1 jaeger.

[dansil92]

Mercenaries are still vastly outscaled later on in the game. With the exception of manchu, idk if any merc is worthwhile in imperial due to pop

[Jets]

This is mainly directed to treaty matches, mercs should be a quick and strong force. Maybe reducing their training time, and removing their upgrades could make them more viable to some MU.

Mercenaries are still vastly outscaled later on in the game. With the exception of manchu, idk if any merc is worthwhile in imperial due to pop

Late fortress age end up with buffed mercs too.

[dansil92]

So? Its still reasonable to use mercenaries in fortress age and should be. No need to make everything unviable by 12 minutes

[deleted_user]

I think ollie has been playing too many RE 3v3s

[helln00]

I think the list of combat cards that affect mercs are pretty small, its mostly team hp/attack cards and universal cavalry combat. It will probably be pretty strong in team games where you can buff your whole team's mercs but in 1v1 its never really makes a difference

[TNT333]

Mercenaries are still vastly outscaled later on in the game. With the exception of manchu, idk if any merc is worthwhile in imperial due to pop

Mamelukes

[harcha]

I'd argue neither of the above are cost effective in post-imperial. No mercenary is. The above may only be cost effective in post-industrial, assuming you get gold from whales.

[deleted_user]

you also only get one building so re-massing is almost impossible.

[fei123456]

Are mercenaries abused in 1v1 now? I don't get it.

[harcha]

@fei123456 no, it's just the focus of this thread

[fei123456]

This is mainly directed to treaty matches, mercs should be a quick and strong force. Maybe reducing their training time, and removing their upgrades could make them more viable to some MU.
Late fortress age end up with buffed mercs too.

People are using mercenaries in TREATY nowadays?

[duckzilla]

I'd argue neither of the above are cost effective in post-imperial. No mercenary is. The above may only be cost effective in post-industrial, assuming you get gold from whales.

I think Manchus can be cost effective (or at least pop effective) in post-imperial when spammed by a German player.

220c/2pop for 480hp/40% MR/39dmg/1.5 rof is not too bad, especially the damage output and the pop efficiency. Imp. cav archers can reach a max of ~29dmg, so German Manchus have a ~33% higher dmg output.

[Astaroth]

Mercs are fine

[Riotcoke]

Mercs are fine, you can't produce them quickly, it's a lottery for which one you get and you tend to only really have one unit type . Also if you're playing Vs someone in sup that's able to get in all the Merc up cards, theres three, and pay for the upgrades whilst the other player is on mines still you probably deserve to lose.

[Plantinator]

Also mercs reward good micro its so easy to overkill with units like Highlander/fusilier

[bobabu]

Honestly, most mercenaries strats are already bad.
The unpredictabilty and the new meta often makes them useless. Mercenaries strats are all in strats and switching back to a normal strat is in most cases not possible. So i do think that merc should get the upgrades otherwise you can't compete at all.

[007Salt]

You can only make them for a saloon and sometimes you get garbage options for mercs.... You can also ship them once or twice lol

[Kaiserklein]

Mercs just suck in late game. They're good in middle fortress cause some upgrades scale well on them, but that's it. In late fortress you already can't spam enough of them with just 1 saloon, and many regular units already stack more upgrades than mercs at that point (e.g the typical triple carded units). Not to mention they cost gold which is a sad resource in late fortress.

And obviously in the later ages it's only gonna get worse because of lacking guard and imperial upgrades

[crankifzz]

merc is so bad
playing merc is like -5 pr or let your opponent +10% handicap
once I won a game with merc and I felf I am on the top of the world.

[Riotcoke]

merc is so bad
playing merc is like -5 pr or let your opponent +10% handicap
once I won a game with merc and I felf I am on the top of the world.

Shit have I been playing -5pr all this time

[ǝɯɐuɹǝsn]

only 1 saloon, cost a lot of gold, cost a lot of pop, are produced slower than regular unit, nothing is op on them

[amiggo1999]

Mercs are just really unreliable, when you get the right ones it's more like +5pr, else -5pr or even -10-20 pr. At their current status, I don't think a nerf is needed. Since I however dislike the random aspect, and would like them to spawn specifically on certain maps, they might have to be nerfed if that ever happens.

[Rohbrot]

Maybe we will get new mercs anyways since sweden (will?) be a merc civ and it would be dumb to play a new DE w/o new mercs when we only have (2-3?) Mercs who are from scandinavian.