Retraining Units

[Naagi]

Ok maybe im not reading right, but I keep seeing people say get your unit in this province for the valour bonus. Ok this I understand, but then they say retrain them in this province for the armor upgrade. This is where Im missing something, how do you retrain? Ive captured a weaponsmith in my Byz campaign and it would greatly help out.

Naagi http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Devastatin Dave]

You open up the train units icon on the bottom left corner next to the building que box. When it opens up, you drag the unit in omne of the 5 empty boxes and they'll be retrained. I hope that made sense. They'll also get their numbers back up. It works great, if you have time. I'm usually too busy steamrolling the enemy for that micro-managing. But it will save you alot of florins...

[wtom]

Open Train Units panel and your units stack also. Just drag your unit and drop it into the first free training cell.

I noticed following thing: if
1)you have silver armour
2)current province can't product silver armour
3)you don't have upgraded weapon
4)current province has blacksmith

you will have retraned here unit with silver armour and upgraded weapon + 1 valour;

But I don't know exactly, if you can retrain particular unit in place were such type can't be produced.

[Naagi]

I must have totally overlooked that button. So if you have weapon upgrades in one province and armor upgrades in another, you should retrain in both provinces. Man thats nice, may take me some time but it'll be worth it. Thanks guys.

Naagi http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[gabrielvilleda]

Thanks wtom and daveinkorea I was wondering about that. O just got two more questions for you guys. Does it cost money to retrain and refill the ranks? I imagine it does or else it would be a blatant exploit, but how much could I save doing this? Also, does it take the same amount of time to retrain the unit that it takes if you were going to build another unit of the same type? Thanks.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Be sure that the province you want to retrain in can also train that unit also. In other words you can't retrain say Fuedal Knights in a province that can't train them to begin with.

Also to retrain you must click and drag the unit icon, on the bottom of the screen, into the training queue box, not the actual gamepiece on the strategy map.

[Musashi]

It only takes one turn to retrain a unit, no matter how long it takes to build a new one. This makes it far more efficient to retrain units on huge unit size games where a unit takes at least two turns to build.

-Musashi

[Wolf]

Also, consider these cases:

(1) You train troops, when they are low on men, you disband them, and build new units... Eventually you may get armor or arms boni, if you build the appropriate buildings, and you get fresh troops all the time, and can easily pick out good leaders, and use them somewhere else (leader cash-flow).

(2) You keep retraining the unit if it gets low on soldiers, and considering you fight a lot with them, their valor goes up, and their leader may even develop a couple of stars. You also get armor & arms boni if you have the buildings, and the leader will get better (if you win most of your battles).


Due to the necessities of war i once had a unit of peasants that had to repeatedly defend poland. Since there was no better alternative nearby, i gave the peasant leader the title; and silently ground my teeth (0 command, 1 acumen, no piety or dread worth speaking of).

Over the years this ended up being a 7 star (peasant) general, and the V&V he accumuilated made him one of my best leaders. An veteran peasant unit isn't all that bad... not good either, but they defended that place for half a century (and then led the counterattacking army & took them to the frontiers of turkey).