hmm.. Its an interesting thought that all players will see the same mercenaries in their "mercenary building". Then if the building suddenly is empty, you that someone will feel some heat soon. And there is competition in who will hire. Some times you would hire them only to make sure that noone else does

surely having Taverns, Brothels, and other such things will increase your chance of gaining the attention of mercenaries. Whereas a Tavern or Inn would attract individual adventurers, Large Beer-halls and Brothels would be more likely to attract a whole company of Mercenaries.

I could never get enough mercenaries in MoM.  I hope if mercenaries are a "thing" we have a setting where we can make them super common or super rare based on  game setup.    (of course "fame" or whatever can still influence it, perhaps exponentially)

I like the idea of mercenaries! This was a neat little feature in some fantasy strategy titles. [Including MoM IIRC]

I like the assassins idea Tasunke. 

Considering the lore of Elemental, specifically the Cataclysm and that civilization is basically getting a fresh start, there wouldn't be mercenaries until after there has been some civilization development. This makes sense with the backstory, and prevents the problem of getting hit too hard by mercs early on.

Dude these are great ideas!

In some other rts/tbs games you can have generals recruit mercs for battle. Well for elemental how about the sov, general, and heros units can recruit mercs.

Heros can recruit small groups of mercs and they have a small chance of getting mercs for free(if this happens the mercs will loot a little more on the battlefield.) Also since Heros units most likely will get around the map more so than any other unit with the exception of Sov, beasts and cavalry, they get more types of Mercs early on in the game than the sov and generals. They have been around doing adventuring and know where to look.

For General units they can recruit whole armies(if ya got the money.) Generals also get the least amount of different mercs to hire in the beginning of games.

The Sov can recruit more different types of mercs than the general in the beginning, but he cannot recruit as may units as a Hero. The Sov can pay money to the mercs, or he could give them magic/essence. If you give them essence theres a chance that you might not need to pay them money.

As games go on more types of mercs open up. Also some times you get only certain types of mercs in different game. Maybe even events also unlock new ones too.

Another thought came up. In some events merc companies might come to you and ask if you could build them a fort or castle. And if you do, you could get a discount from hiring their mercs or hiring certain merc units in general...

Buying structures could make hireing cheaper, make mercenaries come to you first and other effects.

Mercenaries are always an interesting idea, however there are quite a few "question marks" all around. I've just been to a 10h lan-party, and my mind isn't working the way it should, thus I will just post a couple of short ideas:

• Upkeep of a mercenary should be higher than of a typical (comparable) unit which you could train in barracks. The hiring cost should be similar.
  
• Mercenaries would be divided into two groups: elite and normal.
• Normal units would have a basic 'growth' level. Example: the basic units growth is 5. That means that every day, 5 new units could be hired. There will be a MAX amount of units - i.e., how many units can be cumulated. Let's say that our max. amount would be 50 mercenaries. That meas that if we don't buy any units for 10 days, no new will come.
• Elite units could only be hired during an event. During the course of game various super mercenaries would offer their skills and every player would have to offer a sum of money. It won't be an auction! You can't see 'bids' of other players. You write down your number & pray that you will hire this unit. In case of very low offers, the elite unit may just decide not to join any faction.
  
• Elite units should comparable to heroes, in terms of strength.
• Normal mercenaries would have a few distinct units. Depending on their strength, some units would be available always (at least very often), and some - only once a month. The system would work similarly to a development system - it would roll the D100 dice X times (X is the number of units available each day - "growth rate"), and depending on the score, a corresponding unit would be available.
• Unit types will be constant - no unit creation system.
• There should be a possibility that every mercenary unit will be spawned with higher level of experience (1, 2 or 3, instead of 0 - i.e., untrained unit). Of course, such units would be more expensive.
  
• Mercenary system would be 'boostable' - you could improve every aspect of the system building special buildings & developing special techs. Here are a couple of examples:
  • By building 'guilds' (special buildings), you could increase the MAX amount of mercenaries.
  • By developing particular techs, you could gain access to higher level mercenaries (think of changing all lowly burglars into dread knights) - i.e. you could upgrade the basic types of units.
  • Techs would also help you in decreasing the upkeep of your mercenaries.
  • Some ultimate tech (for example available only for the person, who first develops it) would for example allow you to set the mercenaries that you want - for every city. This way you could basically compose your army only of mercenaries.
• There will be 3 basic unit (mercenary) archetypes:
  • Tank
  • Range
  • Mounted
• Each archetype will have 3 levels (which will be unlocked by meeting special conditions). Generally each new level of the mercenary unit will be stronger, but apart from just being stronger they will bring a new set of skills/possibilities to the battlefield. Here are the archetypes and their levels:
  • Tank: Fighter ---> Berzeker ---> Martial Artist
    
  • Range: Sharpshooter ---> Axe Thrower ---> Ballista
  • Mounted: Swift Rider ---> Mounted Archer ---> Fallen Knight

Summary:

In my opinion such (or similar) system would bring completely new types of forces into the game. Mercenary units could not be trained anytime in any amount - their number would slowly (depending on techs, buildings, etc.) increase every day, but they could be hired in 1 day! That means that if your city was to be attacked, and you couldn't defend it with your forces, you could always hire some mercenaries. Upkeep of mercenaries would be higher, in comparison to normal units. Thus, it wouldn't be recommended to keep those units for too long. While mercenaries couldn't be 'designed', they could be of such quality that you couldn't be able to reach in a 40 turns. In other words, you could hire much superior units to your lowly Joes. Due to lack of specialization options, rather limited number of mercenaries and the fact that their highest level units wouldn't be as strong as for example dragons (however elite units would be very powerful), mercenaries wouldn't be the bulk of your force, at least in the late game. However, they are invaluable when you have to muster some forces fast and when your need to have access to some specific units (that you can't train your own). All that said, there is one thing more to add - if a player so strongly desires to have an army composed of mercenary unit, he should have such opportunity; this could be achievable by building tons of special buildings, developing high-end techs and some other things that I don't have time to think about .

Red 1101 out!

And I'm sure they'd be mad if they spent a long time building a civilization and you just spammed units at them. No one cares if either of you are mad.

What is a problem is if they are unbalanced. The things that make them unbalanced would be low cost and/or being summonable anywhere at any time.

The basic premise is always that they are inefficent, expensive troops, that are usually used only in emergencies. With foresight their army would have been bigger if they just spent that money on building an actual army instead of a mercenary one.

I really liked the way dominions did it. Everyone saw all available mercenaries and then everyone bid for them. This was very fair, but very rich players could easily monopolize them. Total War series has it so anyone in a region can just buy them at will. I would prefer some mix of the two where anyone in a region can bid for certain mercs.

Instead of having your nation be designated a mercenary faction I would prefer that you can be offered missions by other players to do X, with a reward on completion. Maybe like Sins, but with less suck.

I also think nations should be able to merc out, or at least ask for exorbitant amounts of money for joining in a war (or territory, tech, ect ect)

The higher your military rating and reputation, the more cash you should be able to ask for.

Mercenaries are only loyal to the money they are making, i hope we see a loyalty factor if we have mercenaries. Yes, money can buy you troops, but it doesnt guarentee that they will remain loyal to you throughout the war.