The other day I was playing Age of Empires and I got a pretty interesting idea. I thought I would share it so it may be of some use to someone(since I am not making an RTS in the first place) It would be an interesting concept if you could hire mercenaries in the game when you need troops. Instead of building troops and spending precious time and resources you could hire pre built units of mercenaries. The mercenaries will not be as effective as regular units and will not have much morale but they will get the job done when you are low on troops. Now why just not make the troops yourself: Well because troops take a time to produce and require certain resources that you may need for other things. You could hire mercenaries from allies in exchange for raw materials or gold. Or you could hire them from other places for a greater cost. I have never really seen this used before. I wish I had mercenaries when my poorly defended civilization came under heavy attack while my infantry was off getting sliced to pieces. With mercenaries I could fill the gaps in my units. Another interesting concept would be Auxiliaries that other civilatitons could give you in exchange for friendship or other things.

Crusader had that option where you could hire mercinaries. You had to build a post first but after that you could do so.

Master of Magic was the first game I played that had mercenaries. I loved that game.

Quote:Original post by CodeTitan
I think you can already do this in Warcraft III.

Yep, you can hire various mercenaries, and there is a limit on the number of each kind(but more come, so there might be 3 to start, and if you 'buy' one the 'shop' will have +1 for 3 total again in a few minutes).