Upgrading Units in EBII

[Vermin]

will it/could it be possible to have the facility to upgrade units in EBII?. for instance after many years of hard campaigning might I be able to upgrade/convert my Levy Hoplites into classical Hoplites without disbanding and re-raising a new unit - and hence losing ALL their experience. It would be nice if I could reward my loyal troops in this manner - even if a loss of some of their experience (to account for increases in their base stats) was necessary. Or is this beyond the engine of MTW2?

Regards

Vermin

[moonburn]

i once presented such a proposal and odysseus almost cut my head off

but it makes sence that those who distinguish themselfs in the batlefield would be rewarded with better equipment even some plot of land and a couple (wife and husband) of slaves to tend to the plot as to allow the levy superunit to remain in the batlefield and be able to both repair and buy new equipment (and when i say plot of land i can also imagine the spartans creating a kind of guild merchants and giving ownership of that guild to a certain family wich as distinguished itself for provinding many good soldiers or athens giving a merchant boat and enough slaves to handle the bussiness to a good officer)

i´ve read somewhere that a few lords and aristocrats allowed their slaves to tend to their bussiness and the slaves where both loyal and sucefull

[Arjos]

I think it will be an impossible social class "upgrade"...

[Blxz]

The thing with modding is that they can't change the base game itself. Sure they can do some wonderful things with scripting and they can rework the way we look at standard game mechanics such as buildings to give an entirely different feel to the game (ie. province management as opposed to purely city management) but the problem remains that the base game cannot be changed.

So if you cannot upgrade units 'Mount & Blade' style in Medieval2 Total War then there is no way for them to mod that in. Even so, I'm not sure how realistic it would be in any case.

[Ca Putt]

the only thing i could think of would be scripting a reaccuring event that when you move a unit of ... hoplitai haploi with 9 Xp into a predefined city or city with a specific building, it gets replaced by a unit of Hoplitai with 3 XP. dunno if this works but I'm quite sure that it would have to be done for every unit seperately and thus beeing a HUGE pile of scripting that'd slow down the game drastically.

plus in EBII only every 3rd XP gives a bonus on stats ;).

[Foot]

will it/could it be possible to have the facility to upgrade units in EBII?. for instance after many years of hard campaigning might I be able to upgrade/convert my Levy Hoplites into classical Hoplites without disbanding and re-raising a new unit - and hence losing ALL their experience. It would be nice if I could reward my loyal troops in this manner - even if a loss of some of their experience (to account for increases in their base stats) was necessary. Or is this beyond the engine of MTW2?

Regards

Vermin

How would that even make any sense anyway (it is not technically feasible). Individual soldiers may have earned their commission to advance up the social rank, but entire units wouldn't. You would never find a general saying to a full formation of poor men that because they had done well in that last battle they could all enjoy more land to provide themselves with better armour. Its very gamey and not historical by any means or understanding. A unit is not the same people appearing in each battle each time, but an abstraction of your faction employing that number of soldiers equipped in that particular way.

Foot

[B-Wing]

I think that is as definitive an answer to the question as there can be. Case closed.

[Paltmull]

Plus, you could always roleplay this by using the create_unit cheat.

[fomalhaut]

Plus, you could always roleplay this by using the create_unit cheat.

this is what i do! or when i capture syrakuse, my classical hoplites get re-equipped in the syracusan fashion

[Vermin]

Ah, I see the class issues would be a problem for large scale use for many potential upgrades. For those occasions when it could be warranted... for example for roleplaying, or to represent re-equipment with better, possibly captured armour/weaponry or to reflect the more formal integration of irregular or mercenary formations into an army the work arounds described above will be handy. I had not really given consideration to the "gameyness" aspect since I saw it as of more limited application. However, as Foot has noted, given the high level of abstraction represented by the units "A unit is not the same people appearing in each battle each time, but an abstraction of your faction employing that number of soldiers equipped in that particular way." (and even the number of soldiers is of course highly abstracted), no-upgrade makes sense. I take it that the raising of the better equipped or more experienced troops within the faction's OB is the way EB has chosen to generally represent such (limited) upgrade potential as did historically exist.

Regards

Vermin

[Spazticated]

What about the armour upgrading feature in M2TW? You build the requisite building to upgrade the units defence stat, but it also changed their equipment. For example, a unit of levy spearmen started off with no armour, but if you built a tanner you could retrain or recruit new levy spearmen with leather armour and with a blacksmith you could give them chainmail, as apposed to RTW where it only upgrades their defense stats.

A unit of levy hoplites for example could start off with no armour, but with a bronze shield could be upgraded with leather or a linthorax or something similiar, where as a unit of proper hoplites would start with a linthorax and get something slightly heavier.

[fomalhaut]

I really really really hope that is already being implemented in EBII. It was so awesome in MTWII and isn't any more gamey than defense upgrades found in blacksmiths in EBI, just now there is a visual representation of those upgrades.

It gives a sense of improvement of your empires infrastructure as well as your own units fighting ability or individual wealth.

[Horatius Flaccus]

If you look at some previews (I believe the Boii preview was the first to show it), you can already see that they will use it to represent different era's of the units.

[Blxz]

If you look at some previews (I believe the Boii preview was the first to show it), you can already see that they will use it to represent different era's of the units.

Yeah, Horatio flacid is correct. The team plans to use the skin changes (which is all they really are) to show the gradual development of troop equipment over time. This does not represent a new troop. For example it won't change your levy spearmen into classical hoplites or whatever.

Firstly, doing so would prevent you from recruiting the lesser units when in truth levies were almost always used. On top of that the inability to change upkeep costs and recruitment costs. Finally the fact that the upgrades are very basic, an extra point of defense does not make a hoplite elite, neither can it be used to upgrade attack to any meaningful amount. Truthfully its really only useful to show graphical changes, exactly what the EB team is using it for.

EDIT: I also want to throw in that it won't allow you to change the unit skeleton/fighting style. This is most obvious in the Hastati, Principe, Triarii 'upgrade path'. (and I use that term loosely).

These troops are loose upgrades on each other but, especially in the Camillian era, the fighting styles are not identical. The 're-skin' method of unit upgrading is really not feasible at all, nor historical, nor particularly interesting from a game perspective.

[bobbin]

The upgrade feature changes the model a unit uses as well as provding a hardcoded stat increase to attack (+7 i think) or armour (+2.5).
Because the model is changed so is the skin used, the skeleton and the animations.

Apart from the already mentioned attack and armour vaules, the blacksmith upgrade doesn't change anything else in the EDU. So morale, upkeep, unit attributes etc are kept the same, this is why the from of unit upgrading mentioned earlier wouldn't work, aside from the historical and realism problems.