How did town hall work like in TPR? You paid with gold to acquire a mercenary. Then he was treated like your average soldier, i.e. you provided food to him. This, if I understand correctly, is considered against spirit of the game because you may get a working army by only producing food and gold.
I think quite many of us knows how it worked. For the second part, you will never get a working mercenary army in multiplayer since you can't train soldiers before pt's end... And then, you can equip a maximum of 5 troops (rebels, and it could be multiplied by building more town halls), but compare things before you do anything: You can easily do equipments for 5 axemen in pt. Which would you choose? 5 axemen, or 5 rebels/2 militia/2 rogues/1 vagabond/1 warrior/barbarian? And imo it would be a waste of gold to "abuse" town hall in multiplayer. There are cases when players run out of gold in long games, then they have to trade for it. I think no-one would use the town hall (in multiplayer!)... It's only "role" is to be used in singleplayer in some missions like Gogoud's Campaign's (The Cruel King) 2nd mission, where you can train only mercenaries (Barracks, leather, iron and wooden weapon-production blocked).
I have thought for a while about repurposing town hall while not making it something completely different. I ended up with following basic idea:
mercenaries require gold all the time, not only at the point of acquiring them, because you are supposed to hire them at critical moments of gameplay and fire them directly afterwards. This naturally caused a cascade of consequences in treating the mercenaries:
- The mercenary units become more powerful than in original game. This could be implemented differently with different units, of course, and more powerful doesn't necessarily mean just with more powerful stats. We could make up a maneveur or two. Some units could even not need food at all, eating stuff in forest and so.
- To provide contrast with regular soldiers, payment is delivered to the town hall, not to the mercenaries.
- Units differ in their "wage", of course.
I expect some of you to detect flaws, possibly major, in this way of dealing with town hall. However it is some starting point for discussion, isn't it?
As I wrote above, their price in gold is already doesn't worth spamming, so I think I don't have to explain it again against the wages you mentioned.
As for the first point of your list, just to tell you it would be quite a bad idea to give the mercenaries more stats (to make them more powerful). Let's see their actual:
- Barbarians/Warriors: Attack Strength: 75 (Most powerful units), Defense: 2, Speed: 1 (relatively), Health points: 4. Ability to do Storm Attack. Price: 5 gold chests/troop. Already the most powerful unit, doesn't need further buff imo.
- Vagabonds: Attack Strength: 40 (Higher, than any leather melee troops'!), Defense: 1, Speed: ~1,7 (relatively, mounted), Health points: 4. Quite useful to chase archers. Price: 3 gold chests/troop. Already (a bit) more powerful, than leather troops, and their role is to flank the enemy. 40 is better, than Scouts' (35)!
- Militia: Attack Strength: 35, Defense: 1, Speed: 1 (relatively), Health points: 3. Ability to do Storm attack. Price: 2 gold chests/troop (at town hall, or 1 gold chest + 1 axe/troop at barracks). Weak, but quite easily spammable unit, also can be trained at barracks, this is the main reason it's not needed for them to be here, raising their stats would mean that they would be better, than the "barracks-kind", or they would be better to mass, than leather units.
- Rogues: Attack Strength: 60, Defense: 1, Speed: 1 (relatively), Health points: 1. They have the same attack strength as Bowmen, just a bit slower, than them. Price: 2 gold chests/troop. Already a "cheap" ranged unit, buffing them would make them better, than Bowmen.
- Rebels: Attack Strength: 25 (+60 against mounted), Defense: 1, Speed: 1 (relatively), Health points: 3. Quite useful and cheap unit against horses, attack power is the same as Lancers', they can easily counter a couple of horses (They might be the answer of the massive horses question, if there is something like that). Buffing them would make them far better than Lancers, even in price, even in combat.
I hope my review of their stats was something that explained you why don't they need buffing or stuff to make them more powerful. Good luck with thinking of ideas about Town Hall. I played TPR a lot as well, and I'm still playing (Ben's campaign, called For King and Country) it, so I can help you about how they do in combat if you want me to.
Bence791