Veteran Units

[wodan11]

Frankly I think the trim to the absolute 10 is a negative. It is a great equalizer. But, it makes more sense for units to keep some benefit of their experience.

Realism-wise, you would expect for a more experienced unit to be more able to adapt to the upgrade and more able to learn new skills. Instead, it's much more difficult.

Gameplay-wise, it's probably way too strong.

A compromise might have been the best solution. Give units half their XP. If they were at 60, knock them down to 30 (not 10).

Wodan

[ZEE]

honestly i didnt even notice this. as i throw my units at the enemy like a swarm of fire-ants, i didnt pay much attention to a units xp. i upgrade simply to keep my army strong, and keep my POWER standing in the world high...

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun


You mean xp, or exp, right?

Yeah, thanks.

Too many acronyms in this game!

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by 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

I suppose it depends on the financial situation, but if these cities really aren't under attack, I wouldn't worry too much about them being fully up to date. I don't like wasting city productivity on something like that when it can be much better used elsewhere for a little cash investment in an upgrade.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I'm not sure from a gameplay standpoint that anything I have seen in this thread makes sense.

Why, from a gameplay standpoint, would allowing disbanding units for hammers be beneficial?

Benefits:
* You get some hammers back from old units

Harms:
* Hard to balance # of hammers received
* Allows cheap rush building in small cities, unless the # of hammers received is trivial, in which case it's irrelevant
* Increases imbalances [strong get stronger]
* Discourages using one's units properly. IE, making units obsolete into nothingness (rather than giving hammers back) essentially forces a player to use his units or lose them, which encourages more action, which is generally a good thing.

Disbanding units for shields was one of the worst abuses available in the old versions of Civ, and the fact that you can't anymore is a very good thing.

A big for thinking through the practical gameplay implications rather than falling for the 'wouldn't it be nice (i.e make it easier) if' game.

I'd probably go further though (no surprise there ). If you got all of the shields back when disbanding that would mean you were effectively putting shields towards rifleman or whatever when building your first warrior! Even previous games had a fraction. A small fraction would be acceptable I think, but nothing above 25%.

Ultimately it's about making the player face difficult strategic choices - build now to defend, or to go on the offensive now, or speed up advancement and do the same later. Upgrading is the flip side of the same coin. In Civ3 for instance there was no strategic choice at all - 40g for a sword? Yes please sir, I'll take another, and another.........make sure you save some for next game though.

It is subtle balancing touches like how the Civ4 model treats these topics that make the game great, because they contribute to strategic depth without resorting to doing this through micro. I gues what I am saying is think before you play the wouldn't it be nice game.