Why are freed slaves so elite and fully upgraded ? Can I change that ?

[Leon the Batavian]

I don't know if this topic was mentioned before. But the situations is as follows:

I am playing the Romans. Playing at VH / VH.

I captured a city (Gergovia) from my enemies and developed it up to a large city and so on. But the city was somewhat out of reach and I felt overstretched maintaining it. I wanted to build up my homeland first (the whole boot of Italy) and keep only the borders fully defended and replenished. Then I gave the City to my allies but later on it was recaptured by my enemies (Carthage). Now after some time the City revolted and choose my side. It became a Roman city again.

I checked out the defending army and I saw allot of freed slaves and some other gaulish , celtic units fully upgraded and everything gold etc..

Some of these units are currently far better then my own troops I carefully trained and upgraded with 1, 2 or 3 bronze chevrons in experience. I want to do that myself fighting battles, retraining and upgrading them.

Why are the freed slaves and some troops so fully upgraded ? Even a freed slave group can hold the line long enough to do an hammer and anvil on their attackers. I don't really like that. I know I can disband them but to disband a fully upgraded good unit is abit silly. But how can I prevent this from happening. I don't mind a revolt but not the strong units.

Any Ideas ?

[Ca Putt]

revolting units are spawned with a random amount of upgrades and experience afaik it's hardcoded.

A true nuisance.

As to countering them: the best thing against them are Lancers(all) and archers(all), slingers and "barbarian" swordsmen are great aswell.

[Ludens]

I don't think it's random. I think every revolting town gets a budget to spend on units and upgrades. Upgrades are bought as on the custom-battle screen, so they can be far beyond what normally recruited get. The units themselves are usually the types that are available from the existing infrastructure (which means that a town revolting to the KH cannot get units from existing Macedonian factional barracks, but they can from the regional ones, as these are shared).

There seem to be several unusual conditions where weird units are recruited, however. One of them is when the revolting town is designated the faction's capital city while revolting. The other is, I guess, when the "revolution budget" is so big that even with absurd upgrades the algorithm cannot spend it all on the available unit types. There definitely is a limitation on unit types in place, though: the whole reason to add the apeleutheroi unit is to prevent revolting towns that have no recruitment options from causing a crash. (Short explanation: apeleutheroi are available from every level of the "governor's residence" building-line, but a trick is used to make them recruitable during revolts and not under other conditions).

Anyway, that's not much help in your situation. On the other hand, if you're playing VH battle difficulty, the game is not balanced anyway. VH gives ludicrous bonuses to enemy units. However, should you ever face fully-upgraded apeleutheroi, use archers! Upgraded or no, their armour is poor, and neither experience nor the VH bonuses count against projectiles. Don't use armoured units: apeleutheroi have a low base-attack value, but IIRC their clubs are AP so they can cause more damage than you expect. Still not enough to justify their (purposefully) high upkeep, though.

[Leon the Batavian]

In this case the units are on my side, I disbanded the freed slaves and kept the celtic regional units. I kept the city as well. But if I come across some of those against me I will use the archers as you told. Thank you for your help and information.

[Saldunz]

The gold-chevroned freed slaves are not terribly useful and its in your best interest to disband them. They are pretty easily routes, have more expensive upkeep costs than your more reliable levies and even if you decide to hold on to them and use them on campaign, they'll have depleted numbers after a couple of battles.

[Ca Putt]

more expensive upkeep costs than your more reliable levies they even cost more most ordinary line troops(hoplitai, Dugunthiz, Princeps...)