I still think it's a pathetic cop-out: what's the actual difference between a player donating treasure to their bank to buy mercs and a player spending all that treasure by themselves to buy mercs? Nothing besides who does the majority of the work, a single player or everyone. But sure, now two flights are patting their backs how they aren't using those dirty dirty bad mercs despite my flight's merc group having standing orders from multiple people on BOTH sides.