View Full Version : retraining troops....
We all know that retraining is way to fast and that is unrealistic. If I must train unit by unit it would be ok that retraining is also in that order.
It would be good thing to see mod which enables troops retraining one by one like in MTW and STW. Game is to easy this way.
I would like to see this change in totalrealism mod 6.0...
I don't see it as unrealistic. It's a six month period. I find it more unrealistic that a massive city is incapable of training more than a single tiny unit every six months.
The Stranger
02-26-2005, 20:40
i agree with khorak, a city with 90,000 inhabitants should be able to train more than 240 men max each 6 months
i agree with khorak
You'd best go get yourself checked out then. It can be contagious, you don't want to put loved ones at risk.
screwtype
02-26-2005, 21:46
I don't see it as unrealistic. It's a six month period. I find it more unrealistic that a massive city is incapable of training more than a single tiny unit every six months.
True but then in any six month period the game only allows you to move a unit maybe a hundred miles or so. Given that Roman armies could march 20 miles a day it's totally unrealistic.
So the point is not really whether or not it's realistic to be able to retrain nine or ten units at a time, it's how that easy retraining affects gameplay. And in gameplay terms it just makes the steamroll effect all the more apparent.
AntiochusIII
02-26-2005, 22:10
Instead I prefer your opposite. Say, make every unit takes 0 times to train. Now it's balanced, because you need to overhaul the cost and upkeep higher to keep the game reasonable and harder.
Harder work, but more fun and no more freakish slow training.
Of course, it's a matter of opinion, but I don't wanna see that in RTR, so...
The game is to easy this way, tooo easy, childplay.
Someone was writing about this in some other topic, maybe bugs, dunno but game would be harder because this way we are all jus pulling army back, retrain it in only one turn and thing asre like no loss never occured.
screwtype
02-26-2005, 22:44
Instead I prefer your opposite. Say, make every unit takes 0 times to train. Now it's balanced, because you need to overhaul the cost and upkeep higher to keep the game reasonable and harder.
I think that's a fair enough approach too, Antiochus, in fact I've considered it myself.
But the problem is that money is too freely available as well, especially once you grab a few provinces. So I'm not sure that just making units more expensive would work in the long run, although it would certainly make things more challenging at the start.
BTW I have proposed the idea of a cost for attacking (only for the human player) to make it hurt more when you lose. For example, if you had to pay double the unit upkeep cost for any unit which participates in an attack, that means you would need to keep a gold reserve in order to mount an offensive. And sometimes you would run out and only be able to defend against the enemy instead of continually expanding.
I also think the steamroll effect could be lessened if the cost of attacking got progressively greater the further away from your (original) capital the battle is fought - to represent overextended supply lines. For example, if you ended up paying three times or four times the normal unit upkeep cost to fight battles far away from your home province, that could do quite a bit to lessen the steamroll effect I think.
screwtype
02-26-2005, 22:48
The game is to easy this way, tooo easy, childplay.
Someone was writing about this in some other topic, maybe bugs, dunno but game would be harder because this way we are all jus pulling army back, retrain it in only one turn and thing asre like no loss never occured.
Yeah, totally agree, you hardly ever lose a battle but on the rare occasions you do suffer some losses, you can make them up so easily the loss is completely insignificant.
IMO this is just another part of the "dumbing down". The idea is to give twitch gamers more action, more battles and not to upset them too much with the need for strategic planning. But for those of us who *want* a decent challenge, it's all the more reason the game ends up a yawn.
I play strategy games for years, I started to play TW from beggining. I mastered Shogun and medieval so I "KNEW" that Rome is gonna be challenging, hard, interesting..but it isnt. I can try to change many things in game and wait for the others, good moders to do good job or I can quit this game.
screwtype
02-26-2005, 23:10
I play strategy games for years, I started to play TW from beggining. I mastered Shogun and medieval so I "KNEW" that Rome is gonna be challenging, hard, interesting..but it isnt. I can try to change many things in game and wait for the others, good moders to do good job or I can quit this game.
Personally I've quit playing it, but I might install one of the mods, like RTR 6 when it comes out to see how much difference that makes.
professorspatula
02-27-2005, 01:32
Regarding 0 training time, I think that would be acceptable for the mere levy units: peasants, militia etc who are relunctantly called upon in times of desparation. Perhaps if public order suffered a large blow if you repeatedly summoned up levy armies, it would offset some of the advantages of being able to produce so many units fast. Although in RTW public order goes up instead because you're reducing the population, thus reducing squalor and need for a large garrison.
Having fully trained and elite soldiers trainable in 0 turns I don't agree with, and you could just walk over the enemy depending on whether or not you have a) lots of money at the time and/or b) advanced troop buildings in that area. You could just churn out dozens of legionaries or cataphracts or whatever and blitz the AI without a second thought. The AI would also need to be able to handle mass producing units and I don't think it could ever be as sneaky or forward thinking as the player in that respect.
Spetulhu
02-27-2005, 02:35
So you think retraining makes the game too easy? Don't use it. Just combine all the leftover men into full-size units after a battle.
IMO, A player should be able to build more troops per turn.
It is the building construction that is really faulty. Some should at least cost 10x what they are now. And at least 3x longer to build. With that kind of limit, the player won't be able to "churn" out troops at a high rate. If a player skirts the constructions, then the player will be only able to train low level troops.
Players will be faced with a dillema: economics (constructing buildings) or military invasion (troop training ), but not both.
Regarding the zero training time issue: my solution was to make a mod where you can choose to train one unit at a time at the usual cost, or pay 4 times more per unit and train several together.
I think the game is just right in the early phase. Several factions present a (reasonable) challenge in the first 10 turns or so. But once your immediate neighbor is beaten, it becomes repetitious and tedious.
My solution would be to implement a zone of recruitment like in RTR to slow the human blitzer (the AI factions would be exempt) and to beef up one of the AI factions to make it a decent opponent (e.g if you're playing gauls, beef up the Seleucids and Carthaginians, and weaken Egypt).
It's the game's main problem rearing its ugly head in yet another form... the retraining wouldn't be so much of a problem if the AI did the same as the player. In my current campaign I keep coming up against armies, checking them out and shitting myself cos the computer has a load of very dangerous units - cataphracts and the like, with loads of gold chevrons. Then you realise there are only about 6 men left in the unit. If the AI would take those units back to a city and retrain them, you'd end up facing 108 triple-gold cataphracts - a bit of a challenge. As it is...
screwtype
02-27-2005, 19:17
If the AI would take those units back to a city and retrain them, you'd end up facing 108 triple-gold cataphracts - a bit of a challenge. As it is...
No you wouldn't, because the newly trained cataphracts wouldn't have that level of experience.
I'm afraid they would Screwtype, perhaps in your haste to quit playing the game, you failed to notice that retrained units retain their experience.
As for the question at hand... The one turn, multi-unit retraining is MUCH superior to MTW in my opinion. I am still annoyed at the fact that one can only build one unit per turn per province. The way I would have designed the game would have been to implement a limit to the number of men able to be taken from a province for military service per turn, and b) increase the manpower costs for the units themselves. But hey, they didn't ask me...
I'm afraid they would Screwtype, perhaps in your haste to quit playing the game, you failed to notice that retrained units retain their experience.
As for the question at hand... The one turn, multi-unit retraining is MUCH superior to MTW in my opinion. I am still annoyed at the fact that one can only build one unit per turn per province. The way I would have designed the game would have been to implement a limit to the number of men able to be taken from a province for military service per turn, and b) increase the manpower costs for the units themselves. But hey, they didn't ask me...
Not 100%, try to retrain 5 +3 expirience soldiers....
When you retrain a unit, the new men added have the same experience as the average experience of the unit. So if you have 5 men left with an average experience of 3, the retrained unit will have experience of 3. The cost to retrain is linked to the experience, so retraining more experienced units costs more than retraining less experienced.
Bh
The Stranger
02-28-2005, 13:45
IMO, A player should be able to build more troops per turn.
It is the building construction that is really faulty. Some should at least cost 10x what they are now. And at least 3x longer to build. With that kind of limit, the player won't be able to "churn" out troops at a high rate. If a player skirts the constructions, then the player will be only able to train low level troops.
Players will be faced with a dillema: economics (constructing buildings) or military invasion (troop training ), but not both.
this way the game would get even more boring.
The AI does retrain occasionally, but not consistently, it would seem. In my last campaign, some of the hardest fighting I had as the Julii was when I got around to going after the Britons. They had 4 armies of 16-20 units, each full strength with 3 silver chevrons. I don't know what the trigger is for AI retraining, but they had done it at some point.
what probably happened was that multiple units kept getting reduced below the minimum size for the toop (size setting appears to matter) and got auto-combined with another unit. I have seen this happen to me and I would assume that it happens to the AI as well.
I would have thought the same, but they were all full strength. I cannot believe they would have gone through enough troops to have 40+ units of warband with 3 silver chevrons, all at full strenght, simply through combining survivors. A few, yes. Not that many.
When you retrain a unit, the new men added have the same experience as the average experience of the unit. So if you have 5 men left with an average experience of 3, the retrained unit will have experience of 3. The cost to retrain is linked to the experience, so retraining more experienced units costs more than retraining less experienced.
Bh
I saw with my eyes that retraining of some +3 units created +2 units in more than one retrainings!!!!
The Storyteller
03-04-2005, 07:04
In the game I'm playing as the Julii, one solution, strange as it may sound, is to bring top of the line troops on campaigns. Onagers, legionary cavalry etc.
These have been churned out from my starting provinces, because they've grown faster than other places.
I've found that even if I want to retrain, I can't, because the enemy cities don't have the infrastructure. In fact, most of MY cities don't. Only my starting provinces. And those are miles from the front line.
But if I bring my units back there to train, I leave my borders open. The maintainence cost for these troops is very high, so I can't have too many armies running around. So I need to get map information or send spies looking arond for a well developed enemy city to head to to retrain. Of course, on the way I need to conserve manpower even as I battle against enemy armies.
Sometimes, I get to the city and find myself with too few men to take it. That means another trek through hostile territory all the way back...
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