Upgrades?

[logicman49]

Just curious on your strategy. Do you attempt to upgrade all your units or do you leave them and use them as fodder? So if you have muskets in a city defense will you upgrade to rifle or build a rifle and send the musket out? Are there advantages or disadvantages either way?

Steve

[Game-God]

I only upgrade if the unit has several promotions added to it. The rest get used to bribe or if too old for that, just to get an angry civ to come out of a city or something so I can smash his attacker with other units.

[wodan11]

It also depends on UUs. Some UUs simply beg to be upgraded and kept the whole game. e.g., Berserks.

Wodan

[Saygame]

One of the more debateable issues. First upgrading a unit all at once (ie, from archer to infantry) is somewhat cheaper than upgrading as you go through (ie from archer to Longbowman, etc and then Infantry).

Sometimes your choice to upgrade is driven by your needs rather than effeciency. During that "window of vulnerability phase" when Assembly Line bring you the Factory AND the ability to upgrade to Infantry, if you are behind militarily it is important to not continue to be a weak power for very long. I like to turn off research almost entirely at that point and do a complete upgrade of my army with the gold I save. Makes banks, markets and grocers build come in handy. Amazing how the encroaching AI will start to back off from my borders when I do that sometimes. And I sigh a deep breathe of relief.

Yet still I mostly ignore or kill Axs and Warriors. Again, as mentioned earlier, promotions on a given unit can be an important factor in your choice. Remember that Generaled units get free upgrades too!

[Lord Avalon]

Also once you reach 10 XP (or is it level 4? I don't know what happens with Charismatic), you lose any extra XP above the last promotion level. So if you're close to that next promo, you might want to wait before upgrading.

[couerdelion]

Well the Medic or Sentry Chariot is probably every bit as useful as the medic/sentry cavalry so they can probably stay as they are. Other upgrades are rarer and tend to be more by necessity that anything else. Generally, I find upgrading to be too expensive and prefer to build new units and kill old ones.

Occasionally, the weaker semi-useful units like medics can still play a part for a little while. They can still finish off stronger defensive units after the big units have done their job, they get more XP and you don't really mind if they die. I've recently used a horse archer and a axeman to finish off the last rifleman defender in two big cities.

But completely useless units tend to get ditched rather than upgraded

[Blake]

It's not really worth upgrading units below lvl3 (5 exp), I suggest just deleting them when they no longer serve a purpose. Whacking units which have obsolete promotions is also a decent idea (ie a Shock Maceman in the gunpowder era is basically a lvl2 unit, because only the combat1 helps).

Otherwise upgrading is pretty useful, it's always nice to open a war with a core of upgraded troops.

If you invest in a lot of gold multipliers, it becomes mainly a question of whether you can retrain the troops with higher exp - if replacement gives you higher exp troops, then replace, otherwise, upgrade. Without a lot of gold multipliers upgrading becomes significantly more expensive (and this is also true for the earlier game before high gold multipliers).

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Blake
Whacking units which have obsolete promotions is also a decent idea (ie a Shock Maceman in the gunpowder era is basically a lvl2 unit, because only the combat1 helps).

Actually, it's worse than a lvl2 unit, in the sense that it is further up the promotion curve, and further promotions will cost more in terms of used XP.

Wodan

[Proteus_MST]

I would rarely upgrade units with more than 10 XP (unless they´re connected to a Warlord of course).

As for other units it dependson how much action they´ll see.
Experienced Units that are likely to see much action are often upgraded, whereas untis in 3rd line cities that are in no danger of being attacked keep their old versons (and still can be upgraded if the situation changes ) or are replaced

[tsubame]

Of course, the AI due to cheating gets to upgrade everything.

Think upgrade costs should be lowered for the player as well.

[joncnunn]

Unit upgrades are very low priority to me due to it's very high cost. I've also been known to avoid building units that are quickly going to be obsolete for the same reason. (This is the exact opposite of my typical strategy in Civ III where upgrade costs were much more reasonable; which BTW seems to be what the AI upgrade cost on an unmodified handicap.xml.)

[Blaupanzer]

I almost always upgrade all units in the modern era, ie, post factories. At that time money is more available, and the hammers are building new units to take out cultural and technological threats. I also upgrade warriors and archers as soon as an alternative unit is available, since each become pretty useless otherwise.

[SpencerH]

It depends on the situation. If I can build decently upgraded units then I dont upgrade (except for few high level units). If I cant build upgraded units and have the money then I tend to upgrade (except for the medic units - usually spearmen).

[wodan11]

Obsolete units are far from useless. You need 1 garrison unit in the cities in the interior of your empire, far from any risk of invasion. Why needlessly spend money to upgrade that unit?

Wodan

[The Priest]

Wodan is right. For many cities all you need is 'a garrison' of some sort so they don't worry that they are defenseless (and hence get unhappy). So if the city is inland and not at a border, an archer is still a great option in the world of mech inf.