What do you do with obsolete units?

[ShaneB]

I never seem to have enough money to upgrade my units (more than one or two at a time anyway). Is it better to build new units and disband the old ones? Or maybe send the old units off to die in war? I am interested to here what other people do.

[Velociryx]

Lightly baste them with butter, and cook over an open flame.

Actually, I generally upgrade everything I have...build it once, is my philosophy. And besides, if they're older troops, they likely have some experience under their belts. It would be a shame to lose that, simply because I did not take the time to upgrade, and so, wound up with an inferior unit giving battle to a rival.

If you lack gold for it, then turn your research off for a few turns to do some upgrading. If you are leery of that, then review the structure of your economy. It is probably the case that you do not have enough cottages--the rule of thumb here is "when in doubt, cottage it!"....just keep building cottages until you have a sufficient amount of money to do everything you want to do...whether that's build a tech lead, or have scads of money for upgrades, or whatever...

-=Vel=-

[eris]

I upgrade units one or two at a time as money becomes available. I also push hard for a Great Merchant, by finding economics first, if nothing else. Then, the cash from the Great Merchanting goes into as massive an upgrade as I can arrange. It is interesting to look at the power graph at the end of the game and see that big bump. ("I know what that event was!") It seems to put a stop on demands from aggressive Civs as well.

[Quillan]

Generally speaking, either I upgrade them if they are experienced or disband and replace if not. Normally I make a practice to upgrade one defensive unit at each city once I get a new tech. As finances allow, I do others. However, later in the game I'll have the ability to build more experience units (perhaps the barracks are now finished, or I have stables/Pentagon/West Point/settled great general/Vassalage/Theocracy) and usually if I can build better than the upgraded unit I'll just trash it and build new ones.

[rah]

Agreed. Later you can usually build more experienced units. The real high promoted ones have either died or been promoted already.

I used to use them for fodder to sap the enemies moving force but if your units are that obsolete, they usually die easy and just provide promotions for a stack that you're going to face later, so I've stopped doing that.

Cheap happiness during HR is also an option but it always gave me a false sense of security and ended up spending tons of cash if that area got attacked, when it wouldn't have taken that many turns to have better units there. If I'm going to pay support in the mid game, I hate wasting it on warriors.

[Stickyman]

I usually disband un-promoted warriers, archers and spearman, but make an effort to upgrade everything else.

[rah]

Upgrading those axes to mech inf is kinda expensive

[Saurus]

I use gold I get from trades and from great merchants for upgrades. But I mainly only upgrade in cities witch are potential targets for the A.I.

Generaly though I'm not too happy about the whole upgrade-concept.
Occassionally, the whole concept of cheap upgrades for A.I and expensive for human can even compleatly destroy a game whitout the human beeing able to do anything about it.

I remember one partical game where the English started to gather troops and parked them right beside me city. After awhile the A.I had gathered 32 Knights, 21 cannons, and 12 riflemen. Everything this in one big stack. I had a force of similar strenght defending my city.

Then suddenly the A.I upgrades all 32 knights into Cavalries, all the 21 cannons into artilleries and all Riflemen units into Infantries.

Well, I had the same technology available but the upgrading cost for my defenders in that city would have been something like 15000 - 20000 gold!!! Or the income of some 7 to 10 great merchants!
(Actuallt the cost would have been even higher... I did not bother to calculate.. )

But anyway, the point was that I was NOT out-teched by the A.I, nor outnumbered.
The A.I simply used his ability to upgrade for (almost) free. Then a few turns later declared war and killed me. (if someone describes for me in detail how to counter this kind of a situation I would be very happy)

[Quillan]

The only way I can think of to counter that situation is to be proactive rather than reactive. When you see the English assembling the stack of doom on your border, destroy it first. Don't wait until they declare war on you.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Quillan
The only way I can think of to counter that situation is to be proactive rather than reactive. When you see the English assembling the stack of doom on your border, destroy it first. Don't wait until they declare war on you.

That would probably have been the best thing to do in most cases. In my case, English had a defense pact with both Spain and Asoka (both my Friendly neighbours) so I would have been invaded from 3 directions if I was the one that would have attacked first.
I also at some point tried to deflect the English to use that stack for something else (by bribing Hyuana to attack the English) However, that war was a dissapointment and the stack standing next to my city just kept on growing even during the war.
I also tried to increase my relation with the English to "Friendly" but realised this was impossible due to several past matters hurting our relation.
My last card was to also sign defensice pacts with both Asoka and Isabel and hoped that it would scare the English enough so that they would think twice before attacking. Ultimately the English invasion begun but with the help of Isabel and Asoka, the English lost the war in the end. Too bad I was hurt so badly during the first turns of the war that recovering was no longer possible and I lost the game.

[Addled Platypus]

for battle front units :

no promotions -rip their hearts out for sacrafice

build the new ones

if they are fortified way back home: leave'm alone

[Blake]

Firstly I do like to use them as garrisons if possible, altough I also like to have the security of real units (spears/pikes especially since mounted units are the most likely to infiltrate).

Now if an obsoleted unit has less than 4exp and isn't needed for a +1 happy somewhere then I usually disband it during peacetime. They have a somewhat less pleasent fate during wartime, while they MAY be upgraded in an absolute emergency, more usually they'll be used in a cannon fodder role either offensively to soften up the enemy or defensively as chaff (basically chaff is a unit which eats some collatoral damage and helps hold the tile should all the real defenders by badly damage).

I find upgrading to be expensive... or finely balanced. It's somewhat worthwhile if the unit has 2 promotions. That said, most of my units usually do have 2 promotions, since I consider Theo, Vassalage or Pentagon to be nearly essential, as such most of my obsoleted units will indeed by upgraded, except for those from the start of the game.

Something worth noting is that the value of upgrading depends on the relative cost of rebuilding. Ships are unique since they get an extra +50% build rate (Dry Dock), this tends to move the balance to replace rather than upgrade. I only upgrade Ironclads if I'm desperate.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Saurus
Generaly though I'm not too happy about the whole upgrade-concept.
Occassionally, the whole concept of cheap upgrades for A.I and expensive for human can even compleatly destroy a game whitout the human beeing able to do anything about it.

I remember one partical game where the English started to gather troops and parked them right beside me city. After awhile the A.I had gathered 32 Knights, 21 cannons, and 12 riflemen. Everything this in one big stack. I had a force of similar strenght defending my city.

The AI's ridiculously cheap upgrades are probably the thing I dislike the most about Civ 4. Although I think they may have to pay higher unit maintenance costs than the player, they seem to be able to upgrade for pennies. I've never seen a case as bad as that, though.

For the AI stack above, the human would have to pay :

(32*((120-90)*3)+30)) + (21*((150-100)*3)+30)) + (12*((140-110)*3)+30)) = 3840 + 3780 + 1440 = 9060

I don't know how much they would have actually paid. A paltry few hundred, is my guess. I've never seen them have more than a few hundred on hand, and they'd have to switch research off for a long time to save up the amount a human would have to pay.

[Quillan]

Isn't your formula assuming normal game speed? I know that I have had late date games where I got Robotics, and it listed a cost of 31000 gold to upgrade all my infantry into mechanized infantry. I don't recall the exact number now, but I'm thinking it normally costs me something like 350-375 gold to upgrade 1 knight into a cavalry on marathon.

[Cort Haus]

Yes, sorry, I should have specified Normal Speed.