Strategy for Unit Upgrades

[albiedamned]

Does anyone know whether the cost for unit upgrades in a particular unit line depends on whether you researched previous upgrades in that line or not? In other words, for example with heavy infantry, if you upgrade from hoplite to phalanx and then later from phalanx to pikeman, will you have spent more resources than if you skipped the phalanx upgrade and went straight to pikeman? I could have posted this in the Help forum, but I posted it here because there's definitely a strategic implication. If it costs less to do the upgrade all at once then to do each upgrade step separately, then it makes sense to avoid hitting the upgrade button until you know you are going to fight. If you can make it all the way to Gunpowder before you fight, then you can save a lot of resources by skipping all the upgrades along the way. Of course it's a somewhat risky strategy, but since you generally have a reasonable amount of time to react to an attack, it's not too risky.

[Rolfski]

I thought I've read somewhere that upgrading all at once is cheaper. I guess it's in the start-up tips.

Wait, now I remember. The ingame tips say that researching more Military than needed for a specific technology significantly reduces that technology cost.

So if your Military research is at level 5 (levee en masse, industrial age) and you upgrade archers to crossbowmen (level 2, mercenaries, medieval age) the cost of upgrading to crossbowmen is a lot cheaper than if you would that at Military research level 2.

So that kind of answers your question as the accumulated costs of upgrading archers all the way at once to level 5 are cheaper in total.

[albiedamned]

That partially answers the question. But let's take that out of the equation for a minute. Let's say you advance all the way to Gunpowder without researching Military at all (not necessaily wise, but theoretically possible I think). Would the cost to upgrade directly from hoplite to elite phalanx be more than the sum of the costs of upgrading at each age along the way (from hoplite to phalanx, phalanx to pikeman, and pikeman to elite pikean)?

[Rolfski]

In that case you can't probably upgrade at all. You need to have researched Military to the proper level to upgrade units.

[albiedamned]

Good point - you have to keep up with the military (except for Bantu I think). I'm going to do a test shortly where I upgrade each step of the way and then where I upgrade all at once. I'll do it with and without units in the field to see how that factors in also. And I'll also try it at several different levels of science research to see how that factors in. I'll post results here.

Edit - I was wrong here - see my next post. You don't need military research to enable the unit upgrades.

[albiedamned]

Edit - Sorry about the crazy blank space before the results at the bottom. If someone can tell me how to get rid of it, I will edit it out.

Ok, I did some tests and found some interesting results. I played a test game with zero opponents so I could test in peace. The details of my tests are below. Here is what I found overall:

- Unit upgrade cost does not change based on whether the upgrade is a 1 level upgrade or a 2 level upgrade. In my second test run below, I skipped the Javelineer upgrade. When I reached Medieval, the cost to upgrade directly to Elite Javelineer was the same as the earlier cost to upgrade to regular Javelineer. This was the original question I asked when I started this thread.

- Unit upgrade cost does not change based on number of units of that type in the field. This is somewhat surprising - I think a lot of people thought otherwise. I know I did. However there is an exception - when the upgrade is to a new unit line. See the next point for details.

- Unit upgrade cost does go up when the upgrade takes you into a new line. Specifically, upgrading the Light Infantry line to Arquebusier (Gunpowder Infantry) cost more than the upgrades within each step of the Light Infantry line. Also, in this case the upgrade cost is tied to number of units in the field.

- The next unit upgrade in the line becomes available with age advances, not military advances.

- If you advance your military research ahead of your unit upgrade level (get to Military level 2 without researching Javelineer, for example), there is a discount to the upgrade cost. However this discount goes away when you age advance, since age advancing causes the unit upgrade to be to the next unit in the line (see my previous point) and thus it is no longer ahead of the military research level.

- Building additional units does increase the build cost for each subsequent unit. Losing units causes the build cost to go back down. This is as expected. The increase rate seems to be just 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Note that I learned that to disband a Javelineer, you actually have to click Disband three times! Each click kills one of the 3 guys.

- I didn't show it in my results below, but I did a side test and learned that the increase in build cost appears to be shared by all units from the building type. In other words, building anything at the barracks increases the build cost for all barracks units but not stable units, and vice versa.

Here are my results. Everything I did was with the Light Infantry line (Slinger, Javelineer, Elite Javelineer), to keep it simple. The entries marked with * means the upgrade was not available yet, although you can still see the cost by mousing over the greyed out upgrade button. I deliberately did not do any Science research, since that is supposed to reduce all upgrade costs and I didn't want to factor that in.

Test run 1:

Step	# Units in Field	Build Cost	Upgrade Cost	Upgrade To
research Military 1	0	N/A	N/A	N/A
build barracks	0	40f, 40t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
research commerce 1	0	40f, 40t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
build slinger	1	41f, 41t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
build slinger	2	43f, 43t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
build slinger	3	46f, 46t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
build slinger	4	50f, 50t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
research classical age	4	50f, 50t	80f, 80t	Javelineer
research javelineer	4	50f, 50t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
disband 2 javelineers	2	43f, 43t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
research commerce 2	2	43f, 43t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
research civic 1	2	43f, 43t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
research civic 2	2	43f, 43t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
research military 2	2	40f, 40t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
disband javelineer	1	38f, 38t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
disband javelineer	0	38f, 38t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
build javelineer	1	38f, 38t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
build javelineer	2	40f, 40t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
build javelineer	3	43f, 43t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
build javelineer	4	47f, 47t	80f, 80t*	Elite Javelineer*
research medieval age	4	47f, 47t	80f, 80t	Elite Javelineer
disband javelineer	3	43f, 43t	80f, 80t	Elite Javelineer
research elite javelineer	3	46f, 46t	230f, 180t*	Arquebusier*
build elite javelineer	4	50f, 50t	260f, 200t*	Arquebusier*
disband elite javelineer	3	46f, 46t	230f, 180t*	Arquebusier*
disband elite javelineer	2	43f, 43t	200f, 160t*	Arquebusier*
disband elite javelineer	1	41f, 41t	170f, 140t*	Arquebusier*
disband elite javelineer	0	40f, 40t	140f, 120t*	Arquebusier*

Test run 2:

Step	# Units in Field	Build Cost	Upgrade Cost	Upgrade To
research Military 1	0	N/A	N/A	N/A
build barracks	0	40f, 40t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
research commerce 1	0	40f, 40t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
build slinger	1	41f, 41t	80f, 80t*	Javelineer*
research classical age	1	41f, 41t	80f, 80t	Javelineer
research commerce 2	1	41f, 41t	80f, 80t	Javelineer
research civic 1	1	41f, 41t	80f, 80t	Javelineer
research civic 2	1	41f, 41t	80f, 80t	Javelineer
research military 2	1	38f, 38t	72f, 72t	Javelineer
research medieval age	1	38f, 38t	80f, 80t	Elite Javelineer

[Rolfski]

Very interesting info albiedamned!

You should definitely post this also at
Mr Fixit online and
Rise of Nations Heaven
There are a lot of serious veteran players out there who would die for this info.

So upgrading your units a few steps at once doesn't reduce the upgrading cost. And searching ahead in Military has only a time limited reduction effect on those costs.

On the other hand not researching Military at all doesn't limit you upgrade possibilities. I guess this is probably only partially true because I know that you need to research Military to get your barracks.

This leaves me to the next question: Do you need Military research in order to get access to the stable, siege factory, ford, airfield, AA gun or missile silo? Or do these buildings just come with age avancement?

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Rolfski
This leaves me to the next question: Do you need Military research in order to get access to the stable, siege factory, ford, airfield, AA gun or missile silo? Or do these buildings just come with age avancement?

I know you need military level 1 to build barracks, stable, and tower, and level 2 to build seige factory and fort. I'm not sure if later military advances are needed for airfields or missle silos. So there is an indirect requirement to research military to be able to build certain types of units.

The main strategic implications I can see from all this are that it pays to hold off on unit upgrade research as long as possible, and it pays to build a combination of barracks and stable units rather than all of one or the other since the unit build cost increases are within each building type not overall.

Regarding posting this on other sites, I'm not registered on those (although I do occassionally read their forums). But feel free to copy this info and post it there.

[Rolfski]

It's indeed very interesting to see that having units from various building types reduces your unit cost. And recording to this post one can even wonder if its that important at all to upgrade your units.

Btw a posted link to this tread at the MFO forum

[Bridger]

It costs exactly the same to produce 4 hoplies and then upgrade them to phalanx, as it does to upgrade and then build 4 hoplites. Some of what you wrote seemed to contradict this, but this is what i had observed in the demo. For every unit you have in the field, the upgrade cost increases by exactly the difference between the new unit cost and old unit cost.

So if phalanx costs say 50 food, and hoplite (earlier unit) only costs 40 food, for every hoplite you have in the field, your upgrade will cost an extra 10 food.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Bridger
It costs exactly the same to produce 4 hoplies and then upgrade them to phalanx, as it does to upgrade and then build 4 hoplites. Some of what you wrote seemed to contradict this, but this is what i had observed in the demo.

I agree with this part. The upgrade will cost the same regardless of whether you do it first or build the units first. And building 4 phalanxes will cost the same as building 4 hoplites - the cost doesn't go up when you upgrade.

[SIZE=1] For every unit you have in the field, the upgrade cost increases by exactly the difference between the new unit cost and old unit cost.

The test I ran contradicted this. At the most basic level, I built several slingers in a row without having the upgrade cost for Javelineer change. I am playing on the trial version - if you have the full version can you test it there?

[SIZE=1]
So if phalanx costs say 50 food, and hoplite (earlier unit) only costs 40 food, for every hoplite you have in the field, your upgrade will cost an extra 10 food.

As I wrote above, the unit cost does not change from hoplite to phalanx. Again, this is in the trial version, but the tech tree at RoN Oracle confirms this.

[One_Dead_Villy]

interesting

[Bridger]

OH! i remember now. It's not the difference between one unit of one age and one of the next, it's the difference in RAMPING.

So if you build 1 hoplite, the next one is maybe 2 food more expensive, and so on and so forth. The upgrade cost DOES increase the difference of the ramping cost.

However, the ramping cost has a CAP. It never gets higher than twice the original unit cost. So if you had a bunch of barracks units on the feild, you might have been at the ramping limit, thus the upgrade cost didn't change.

Try it out with just 1 barracks unit on the frield, then build a second. The upgrade cost *should* change based on the new unit cost that was ramped up.

[albiedamned]

The unit cost does ramp up as you build more and more units, but not the upgrade cost. Read through the test results in my earlier post - you can see exactly what I did. My stest scenarios were very simple. Feel free to try it yourself of course too. I was also surprised by the results.

[Snotty]

I was just having a quick play today, and thought I would keep an eye on the upgrade costs. I had just got to the industrial age, and to my shock I found my oil resources somewhat lacking. I decided I would try and cheat the system by building lots of the heavy cavalry branch so I would have a nice big tank army for myself. However every extra knight I bought pushed the oil price for the upgrade up (I think it also might have pushed the metal cost up as well). At this stage in the game I only had about 5 knights as I was running an infantry army, so maybe there is a cap people normally reach. But the upgrade cost definatly increased. Try it yourself, and if you get different results I will try to recreate the situation.
The only differences I can think is that the resources necessary changed with the inclusion of oil.