Retraining units!?!

[DrHaphazard]

Hey yall, i just discovered that you can retrain your hurt units. I always wondered how exactly you got high valour units that were actually still useful.

So am i right in assuming that you retain your valour rating? Oh and how much does it cost? It won't tell you in the game that I can see. Is there a price relative to how many people need to be added or is there a blanket price?

So is this retraining thing a new feature for VI or was it always there and i was too ignorant to capitalize on my high valour troops?

[DDogwood]

You have always been able to retrain troops - see p.30 in the MTW manual. I don't know exactly how much it costs (I assume it is less than training a new unit), but it CAN reduce the valour of a unit - the new troops are trained with the default valour for new troops of that type (so a Valour 10 unit of 20 Knights can become a Valour 5 unit of 40 Knights). They do, however, get new equipment, so retraining troops where there is a Master Armourer and a MEtalsmith can be quite rewarding.

[DrHaphazard]

Interesting, i didn't know that you can update your weapons and stuff by retraining.

So does anyone know how much money it costs, actually i guess i can find it out easily enough. But then for the valour...do you need to have 75% of your unit still alive to keep the valour? >50%?

[Portuguese Rebel]

The units lose valour in the whole because the number that is shown in the unti icon is an average of the units valour. Those experienced fighters will still be there, the thing is there will also be those really green ones..

[khurjan]

erm a stoopid question how do you retrain your units?? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[hrvojej]

Click the unit stack. Then click on the unit building menu of the province they are located in. Select the unit (in the bottom middle part of the screen) and drag it into the building queue.

[khurjan]

many thanx your majesty

[Daveybaby]

In my experience its only worth retraining when money is tight. Its often much better to just build a complete new unit, and merge that unit onto your depleted high valour unit. This way you are actually building a full unit every turn, and getting extra men.

i.e. if i have 3 experienced units of billmen, each depleted by one third, i can build one new unit of billmen in one turn, and reinforce all 3 experienced units with it, instead of retraining the 3 units over the course of 3 turns.

Although this advantage gets diminished if you use very large unit sizes, which take more than 1 turn to build. It also doesnt necessarily give your experienced units any new armour/weapons/morale bonuses you may now have available.

I still havent figured out what the rules are when merging units with different equipment/morale levels. Sometimes the better weapons get kept, sometimes not (and with morale i cant even tell). Its doesnt seem to have much relationship to numbers of troops. Anyone know what goes on here?

[Nelson]

Huge units take two turns to build but only one turn to retrain, regardless of their strength. Even full strength units can retrain for better equipment or morale.

Retraining with huge unit sizes makes a lot of sense.