Mercenary Buildings?

[magian]

I read somewhere that mercenary buildings will be introduced in the next beta. No warlords game I have played used mercenary buildings. However, both the HOMM (Heroes of Might and magic) and Disciples series made pretty effective use of them.

In HOMM (at least HOMM 1 and 2), mercenary buildings had a limited amount of a single unit type. These units could be hired by a visiting army. The number of units available would slowly increase over time.

In Disciples, there were usually multiple unit types available at each building, and the supply of units was inexhaustible, but they so expensive that this was not really an issue.

What mechanic will the B5 mercenary huts use?

[piranha]

We have the graphics for the mercenary buildings (we bought it for the city buildings that we ditched).

But the mercenary buildings wont be in Beta5.

Still its worth some discussion since we want to have them in the game.
When we bought the buildings the idea was that there is 3-4 possible units from each building. So for example the "enchanted forest" building that was supposed to train scouts, elves, unicorn and archon.

Not sure if the unit available should be one of those types randomly decided per game or per turn and if the limit should only be gold based or based on numbers.

[magian]

Every unit already has a build time. Mercenary buildings could populate at the same rate. Using that system, a building that sells griffons would have a new one available for purchase every 3 turns. Might be wise to have a maximum number of units as well, and to stop production once that number was reached.

So, there are multiple building pictures? That could certainly add some flavor. Still, I suspect mapmakers would like to choose what units a specific building produces. They may want to provide mercenary elves without also handing out archons as a side-effect.

Pricing could be tricky. It would likely be better to simply buy a 4-5 turn unit outright, than to spend the money on production, and then have to wait for the unit to arrive. One turn units are a different story, I doubt too many people want to spend 200 gold on a single heavy infantry.