Mercenaries constitute a special group of units which has important place in the structure of forces of Men. Though mercenaries can be hired (for a decent amount of money), they themselves decide when and where to emerge. However one thing is certain - the chances of their arrival grow with the expansion of your empire.

Mercenaries of the race of Men are ordinary units with standard weapons and armour, but they do come with extensive combat experience and therefore with superior fighting skills. Almost any unit can become a veteran, but chances are not that high as it requires to survive a lot of battles and enemy rarely gives the chance to recover if some of your forces are victorious. It is very hard to accumulate veterans and even harder to gather several of them fresh and healthy in one group. That is why mercenaries are invaluable units and together with knights they constitute the elite forces of the race of Men. Note that due to their different nature or better say motives, mercenaries and knights do no stack together.

Mercenary swordsman is a heavily armoured veteran unit armed with an ordinary sword. Having gone through numerous battles, he became tougher and perfected his weapon skills along the way. If compared to a regular swordsman, veteran strikes more often and better parries as well.