Veteran Units

[Strudo]

I was just playing a PBEM game turn and the tip came up about protecting veteran units as they can often defeat newer units because of their experience.

It occured to me that many of my older units arn't that well promoted. For example the units that sit in the capital as defence are rarely attacked and as such get no promotions. I find it's often a better idea to just delete those units and build new ones, since the new units will be stronger by default, plus get bonus experience from buildings and civics and such.

I had the thought that maybe when you advance to a new age, any currently existing units could be given enough experience points to get their next promotion. That way many units that I currently delete, I would consider upgrading rather than replacing, so as to not lose that experience.

Anyone have any thoughts on this as a viable system?

[rjmatsleepers]

Even granting the lack of experience, I would have thought it's more cost effective to upgrade the unit rather than delete it and build a new one.

RJM

[Strudo]

Possibly, I've not worked it out fully.

Upgrading takes gold, which is something that's easy to run out of. Building a new unit and deleting the old one just takes time. When you factor in that the new unit might be created at level 2 or 3 depending on buildings/civics and such, a new unit can be many times better than the old one for nothing but a number of turns. Probably more applicable to the first units you build to defend the initial cities though.

Of course this doesn't account for the fact that you could be building something else in that time either, but many times you don't have anything you need to build, so spending a dozen turns or so to build a replacement unit isn't really an issue.

Also, city defender units can often go for long periods, or the whole game, without being in a fight, and therefore have no way to gain promotions.

[ZEE]

tricky topic...

i always thought upgrading was better, but i love siege units and they are VERY expensive to upgrade. so i just build new ones and use the older as fodder. i usually ALWAYS upgrade units that are level 3 or above. the rest are for police duty or fodder.

[Ming]

Old units have their purposes... I like to gather them all up and use them as a SOD when I start a war with somebody. (Granted, I will upgrade any unit that has enough promotions to make it worth it) I let them take the lead in front of a SOD with more modern units. Usually, the AI will send all their seige units at the stack of older units, because it thinks it's more likely to be able to kill the stack. This leaves the real army untouched.

In the end, the old units usually die, thus ending support costs, but still providing more value than just destroying them.

[Tattila the Hun]

I've thought about a, mod I guess, that would enable me to attach an obsolete unit to a more modern one, for some benefit. Be it few exps or some apropriate promotion. (Attach archer to Maceman, get Cover.) One attachment per unit, naturally. Brigades, essentially, rather like in Hearts of Iron/other Paradox games.

[rah]

Yeah, it seems a shame that you get nothing out of disbanding except for maybe a lower maintenance.

At least in II you got half the shields towards something else.

[ZEE]

rah,

that is something that has botherered me greatly about this game. if you disband a unit in the field i understand, but in a city, that unit can go toward producing your next item in the production box. sort of a forced labor or whatever...

[Tattila the Hun]

I'd love to see, another thing from Paradox games, the concept of manpower. Simplified, somewhat, your total population capping the amount of units you could produce. Easy thing to implement, on basic level, 2.000.000 citizens, X number of units. Civic dependable, to be sure.

But one thing that might be more simpler for even the AI to understand, would ge to get small amount of money from disbanded units.

Originally posted by AAHZ
rah,

that is something that has botherered me greatly about this game. if you disband a unit in the field i understand, but in a city, that unit can go toward producing your next item in the production box. sort of a forced labor or whatever...

I'd see that more like the veteran soldiers acting as drill sergeants, administrators or whatever, to help with the training of said unit.

[eris]

When you reach Rocketry, your Stable becomes obsolete. Do you expect to get hammers back from that Stable? How about when an Monument goes obsolete with Calendar?

There is some sort of sense of entitlement going on here. "Well, it worked that way in CivX." Yeah, and I remember abusing the tactic to make units in one city and disband them for shields in another city, which was not what the designers really intended.

You build a unit. You get your use out of it as either guard or field military. Then you either sacrifice it in battle, upgrade and use it in battle, keep it as old fashioned MP at home, or get rid of it. I do not see where getting something back for disbanding a unit really makes sense in gameplay or reality/immersion factors. In fact, we're just lucky they let us do upgrades at all. I still have troubles figuring out how money turns a Warrior into a Mechanized Infantry, or better yet, turns a Cavalry into a Gunship. That's a pretty big suspension of disbelief in the first place.

[ZEE]

eris,

because that unit could be put into the work force. horses have PEOPLE riding them, that when disbanded, could be used to help BUILD something else...

[Strudo]

The problem with using them a fodder or decoys is thats just giving free upgrades to the enemy. They kill a bunch of your old units and get the xp for it, then they get promotions making them tougher to kill anyway.

I thought a bonus to all units at the changing of an era seemed reasonable. Just something to recognise there status. My archers I built as my first defence unit must have learned something in all that time.

While I'm not saying getting production for disbanding is a good thing, it could work if the production bonus only applied when your building another unit, maybe even restricted to another unit of the same class.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Strudo
The problem with using them a fodder or decoys is thats just giving free upgrades to the enemy. They kill a bunch of your old units and get the xp for it, then they get promotions making them tougher to kill anyway.

They are tougher to kill only if you wait until they heal.
You will get experience killing their wounded units, and your primary SOD's will reach their targets intact.
Well worth the experience points you are giving them...

[rah]

I guess the sense of entitlement is that the AI doesn't have to disband units due to inexpenseive upgrages and I do, and I get nothing for it.
And for the example of a building going obsolete, I think that's different because the building doesn't dissappear, you just stop getting specialized benefits rom it. It's still in your city list. So it's apples to oranges.

I feel like I'm just killing the people in the miliatry unit. *start the music and flag waving* people that have sacraficed to defend the homeland. And this is the final payback to your great nation. Nothing. This is like saying the troop loses in Iraq have been wasted.
*back to serious*

There should be some benefit.
Either increase in pop,
Used as trainers to improve experience in newly created troops.
Or a one time production increase (which would be hard to make sense of in a reality term) but beats a for every x number of units you've disbanded in a city, added hammers for x number of turns that reflect there added productivity to the city.

My favorite solution would be the original hammers needed to build the unit would be put towards the next military unit. (or a fraction of, if needed for game balance) It just makes more sense.

[padillah]

I agree with rah.

Besides a Museum can't teach a Library. An old soldier CAN teach a new soldier.

This ould be the equivelent of having a troop of guys with clubs in the Army because that's how it started.

Want to understand how money turns a Warrior into a Mech Inf.? It buys the gun and flack jacket. How does money turn a Cavelry into a Gunship? It buys the guy on the horse a gunship.

In real life do you know what the diference is between a foot soldier and a tank driver? One of them has a tank.

There's no suspension of disbelief. It's a pretty straight forward transaction - sell the horse, buy a helicopter.

Tom P.