Is there any reason troops refuse to follow a LD?

[OG_Gleep]

I have a situation where my Van Hirdman refuse to group under an indie commander. He doesn't have any afflictions, and I checked his leadership, its 35...and says he can lead 35 normal troops when I right clicked it. They were perfectly happy to group up under a Vanjarl I had in the provence 2 turns ago. I just moved the Vanjarl back and tested it, and they will form up under him....just not this indie commander.

I just moved the indie to a different provence and none of the troops there would join under him.

He has 0 equipment, 1 star of experience, and is just a regular indie commander.

Anyone know what is going on? I did a search for a couple different keywords (trying to get something in the buglist..not reading 75 pages), but nothing came up.

[Arralen]

Zip up the save game and attach it to your post, please. I'll have a look and maybe add it to the known issues thread ...

[OG_Gleep]

The Name of the commander is Burelk. He is a standard Indie commander, and is in prov 43. Attatched is the savegame. I am pretty sure the map is cradle of dominion, and I only have CB 5.2 active.

Thanks

[Turin]

He is the mercenary captain of the city guards. So you can´t give him troops.

[NTJedi]

True... you can never move or take troops for mercenaries.

[Arralen]

Turin, you're right. It's amercenary commander.

The whole thing is buggy, though: If you select an inf unit, all 3 commanders are and the province are shown as accepting it. Shouldn't the merc commander not be high-(down-?) lightened as he cannot accept troops from a player? This is at least missleading ...

[OG_Gleep]

Oooo jesus I feel stupid. I just figured out why I thought that. I had a indie commander that I was moving to that provence, and the time between game sessions, thought that commander made it there and he was it. I had stopped paying for mercs so didn't catch it.

And ya, when I went to give him troops, he was highlighted like he was a legit target.

But ya I feel stupid regardless.

[Chazar]

I always wondered why mercenary commanders reject new troops. Why? I can see why one should not be able to separate mercenary troops, but if leadership permits, where is the reason?

I think it is just a technical glitch: mercenaries have their all their toops locked for simplicity of coding, no? If so, why is adding troops bad? Ok, you might not be able to get your troops back again, but that is true for most battles as well. Or is this in turn due to a simplification of the different routing mechanism of troops belonging to a mercenary leader?

Hopefully DomIII is better there, having a "mercenary" tag for all troops governing their behaviour (which could also be useful for troops recruitable by magic sites, summons or the gladiators). One effect means routing equals vanishing, another could be cost, a reduced priority if food is scarce and locking to a commander if assigned once.

[Cainehill]

Hmm. That'd give a new way to poison mercenary troops though - add something to the merc troop with a disease / cold / poison aura, so that it kills the merc troop _and_ potentially the new paymaster's troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Wish]

i hope in dom 3 you can mercenary out your own troops, as a way to gain extra funds

you can already give the merc that amulet that plagues the land on the last turn you have them, or something that makes them diseased or the such, and when others buy them, they get the plagues... so thats already not impossible.

[Chazar]

Cainehill said:
Hmm. That'd give a new way to poison mercenary troops though - add something to the merc troop with a disease / cold / poison aura, so that it kills the merc troop _and_ potentially the new paymaster's troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

No, for your own troops do not carry the mercenary tag and thus return to the current province's garrision if the mercenary commander returns (like for any other vanishing commander (personal teleport, wind ride, assassinations,...)!

So there is nothing new that you could not already do in terms of nastiness. Of course, you can already use another commander and place disease spreading creatures next to them on the battlefield, as Wish_For_Blood_Slaves already pointed out.