Cost so much to upgrade unit

[BgT]

Is there any other limit related to XP 10? I thought I was really smart and sent few musketeers to attack some barbarian city. Basically there was no war, no fights and I needed a level 5 unit for West Point. So I thought that one of my musketeers (8/10) would just attack the city every few turns and gain the required points. I let the barbarians build new archer units and then destroyed them. I reached 10, but after that the XP doesn't go anywhere. Perhaps a level 4 unit gains XP only with fights against stronger units than Archers?

[Arrian]

Units with 10XP cannot get any more from barbs. Just like units with 4 (or is it 5?) XP can't get any more from animals.

I think it's in the manual... I could've sworn I read it last night. Anyway, there's a limit to how much training up you can do on the barbs, and it's 10XP.

-Arrian

[PBN]

animals can bring you to 5
barbs to 10

[Proteus_MST]

Yep,
to reach more XP you have to attack any AI-Civ.

[BgT]

Thank you. I never read manuals. The only one I read was the Capitalism one. Stupid I guess, but I can't read if the game is on my PC.

[Theseus]

I haven't played yet, but an idea occurred to me about obsolete units, at least in SP:

Gift'em to an AI civ that can't handle the economic burden!

[Volstag]

Nope, upgrades just cost a lot now. The idea is to kill the old CivIII style mass upgrade approach.

I performed three or four mass upgrades in my last game. Just zero your science and culture sliders for a few turns to amass the required cash. Bulk upgrade. Go a few more turns to replenish your treasury (if necessary), then return to previous sci/culture levels. Depending on the game situation, this might not always be advisable/feasible, but it doesn't seem any more difficult than Civ III.

[Arrian]

It's more expensive, so the effect isn't as powerful (at least vs. CivIII with Leonardos).

-Arrian

[Derelict]

I've played quite a bit as the Japanese using an early through mid-game aggressive strategy that results in hulking armies that can present a real problem on upgrading, either directly or through production of replacement units. Keeping them up-to-date (via purchase upgrades), particularly the hordes of swordsman I typically end up with, was resolved in an easier way than you might suspect.

The secret for keeping a cutting edge military, en masse via upgrades, is to focus one or more cities on producing merchant great people. Of course, this also relies a bit on the idea that you have contact with at least one other civilization that you aren't at war with...

The proceeds from sending a great person/merchant to a foreign city will generally reap enough to upgrade a significant portion of your military. Having at least one city dedicated toward this goal can help to keep an aggressive momentum going.

All in all, I can imagine the merchant GP to be extremely useful in other contexts, given the sizable amount of cash it generates. The combination of aggressive/organized from Japan alongside some attention toward generating merchant GP has produced some of my most successful games so far.

In one case, for example, I had invaded a George Washington led neighbor that literally made my early civilization to be more expansive than I might've expected--certainly without the organized trait, and the resulting courthouse upgrades, I would have been in a lot of trouble financially.

About the time that I had finished popping courthouses down (and noted the huge point lead I now had), I had finished teching out my ability to make Samurai and, almost perfectly timed, had my first great merchant jump out. A handful of turns later I had a huge pocket of cash which subsequently turned much of my existing force into samurai and obviously primed for an offensive push, which is exactly what I did.

Since that game I've always made it a point of focus to work on generating a merchant GP in my aggressive games, and I expect it would have a shining value in other strategies as well (I'm still refining my aggressive play so I haven't really tested or found use for such a focus in other respects).