Replenishing Royal Knights between Eras...

[Roark]

(MTW/VI 2.00)

I guess I'm a bit slack, but sometimes I take a few turns to retrain/replenish depleted units.

I've noticed that I can't retrain Early Era Royals to become High Era Royals, which is a bit annoying, because I've usually got quite a few good Jedis by the change of era.

Is this fixed in the 2.01 patch? (I don't have internet at the moment, which is why I haven't simply downloaded it yet...)

[edyzmedieval]

No....

But why do you want the Early Era RK?! They are less powerful than the High Era Knights.....

[Zarax]

You can retrain Early RKs in high, they will be upgraded to a full unit of High RKs.

[EatYerGreens]

No....

But why do you want the Early Era RK?! They are less powerful than the High Era Knights.....

Ohhh, edyz, you didn't read what he said properly. Tsk Tsk. ~;)



What Zarax said is possible is something that I know for certain fails to work in MTW v1.0, cos I tried it myself and was told, by the game, 'this unit type is no longer available', or words to that effect. In other words, having the right buildings was moot - the game wouldn't let you exchange one type for the other.

Glad to hear that it's fixed in MTW:VI, as I've recently installed this but have only just started a campaign and it will be a long while before I reach the transition point.


Incidentally, in my last pre-VI campaign, I found that I could retrain a prince's Ghulam bodyguards (Almos) to have armour upgrade but it wouldn't let me retrain the king/sultan (similar effect with the English) unit.

This might be down to the way that the game restores the man-numbers in the king's depleted unit by a few men per turn. Free of charge, I might add.

[Zarax]

Yes, I also noticed that the King's unit will also auto upgrade if it takes losses and replenishes after an era transition.

[BAD]

I noticed I couldnt retrain my King's unit at all. Even if it was full, to get weapon upgrades from the Spanish Provinces. xD That's just mean.

Weaponsmith: Yeah we have these bright, sharp, really pointy and strong lances oh exalted Almohad Caliphate.
Caliph: Great, gimme!
WeaponSmith: upgradeweapon+4.exe failed
Caliph: WTF!1!!ONE!1

xD

[Zarax]

I have the suspect that if you make the unit replenish there it will get the weapon upgrade too...
I never really checked though.

[EatYerGreens]

If you've left battle logging on, go and look at the unit stats after a battle is over. You may find some of the replacement individuals in the king's unit have upgrades but previous battle survivors have not. The unit icon will reflect the average for the unit and might give the impression the upgrade is absent. Similar with what happens with valour assessments.

These files go on for miles (luckily, the king's unit ends up at the top) because it gives an account of the performance and fate of every man on both sides - potentially thousands of lines. If you took a screenshot of the summary screen, or can remember at least one unit which gained a valour point, go and search for the unit in the logfile (identifiable by the captain's name). You'll sometimes notice that a handful of men in the unit's front rank scored kills, giving them an individual valour level of 1, 2 or 3 (4 kills = val3), whilst those in the rear ranks evidently killed none at all and maybe a few in flank positions got killed.

Edit: actually, that's not correct - see separate post below.

The unit valour is the average of all its men. Depletion of numbers, ironically, tends to up the average by removing most of the 0-valour members. When you have just 6 survivors from a unit, say, their valour is generally good but merge them with a depleted, mostly valour-0 unit and their bonus gets 'lost' due to the averageing.

Subsequent battle logs will show that those high-valour individuals are still present, embedded within that unit, but the units performance as a whole - fighting quality, tendency to rout etc - will be down to that average.

I have seen units (which have previously undergone merging like this) in Shogun gain a valour point in a battle even when I know for sure they didn't get to engage any enemy (eg river battle and they never even crossed the bridge). They did, however, absorb a spot of archer fire and luckily the high-valour individuals weren't the ones who got hit.

I spent ages (with STW) trying to work out what the hell valour was awarded for. I thought it was sheer number of kills but then I saw units killing hundreds, with no gain in valour. I thought it was for routing enemy units but I've seen mine rout multiple enemies and gain no valour. When I encountered this anomaly of a unit gaining valour after apparently doing nothing more than losing a few men and then delving into the logfiles, plus a tipoff from this forum about valour-averageing, I finally cottoned-on.

I forget if it was forum advice or by trial and error but I've found that the way to merge a depleted upgraded unit with a depleted plain one is to pick up the plain one and drop it on the upgraded one. The resulting unit counts as all upgraded. But check later battle logs to see if they're really half-and-half, when you look at the weapon/armour stats of the individual men.

There are times when I want to preserve the unit leader with the best acumen of the two and, typically, he's the un-upgraded one. Applying the above guideline sometimes means I lose the leader I wanted to keep.

He can be saved if the two cadres add up to more than default unit size. Eg if I have a 27 and a 37 and default is 60, I'll have 4 men left over, one of which is the one I wanted to keep. When you see both next to each other on the menu bar, you can merge back and forth, at will, until you get the desired results but two cadres adding to less than default and you'll lose one of the two leaders and/or the upgrade if you get it the wrong way around.

[crpcarrot]

I have the suspect that if you make the unit replenish there it will get the weapon upgrade too...
I never really checked though.

IIRC the kings replacement guards will get any bonus's present at the provice he is in. so always leave him in a provice with armour and weapons upgrades available.

[Roark]

I have tested this again, and now I'm positive:

I cannot retrain a unit of Early Royals during the High period. It tells me that I don't have the buildings required to train the unit, despite there being a Royal Court there.

Must be a v2.00 bug, as I'm guessing I'm the only guy here without the patch.

[Eternal Champion]

I had somthing similar and I needed the next upgrade. You also need to have at least a horse farmer I think.

[EatYerGreens]

With regard to my earlier comments about valour levels for individuals within units and a logarithmic relationship between kills and valour (1,2,4,8,16 etc) - it's not that simple.

In the battle logfile there is a column for pre-battle valour and post-battle valour for each individual. Comparing the valour gains with the number of kills shows remarkably little correlation and one entry in particular revealed that I'd forgotten a small but important fact - 'valour transferance', for want of a better term.

Examples:

Soldier A kills 15 but valour started at 1 and only shifted to 2
Soldier B kills just 1 but valour started at 0 and jumped to 2.

So it's not simply about how many, it's really about who they've killed. The valour 0 guy must have got lucky and bumped off a valour 1 or 2 enemy, who might have been exhausted or just busy engaging a third person at the time and got taken from the side...

So your faction leader could be slugging it out with an enemy general (king even) but it's your humble spear unit charging into him from behind who actually scored the kill and one of their number gets a significant valour boost.

However, if this boost isn't credited to the individual until the battle is all over, they won't suddenly acquire jedi-like fighting quality and could just as easily get killed by a unit they engage later on, or be unfortunate enough to collect an arrow.

There is a way to tell whether valour credit is applied in mid-battle but you'd need a terrain-neutral battle map and two identical units hitting head-on at the same walk/run/charge speed to prove it. I could explain what I'm hinting at in another post if anyone's interested.

Another example:-
Faction leader kills 147 but valour started at 7 and stays at 7

...but, if the bulk of that 147 was valour-0 peasants and he's a Byz Kat'oi, then there's little credit in that 'achievement', so rightly no valour is gained.

The logfile doesn't record fractional valour for individuals so, unless such an item goes into the gamesave file structure, it would take some choice victims to get this v7 leader's valour level to increase at all and it would all have to take place in the one battle, rather than cumulative over many of them.


Apologies for wandering off topic but this is a correction and needs to be in the same thread.


By way of addressing your RK problem. I can only suggest from previous experience that you wait until your king dies off. I think the heir gets a fresh, full-strength RK unit of the correct type and tech level whilst the king's old unit either disappears off the map, or else you're left with a legacy RK cadre, led by a plain general. You could then make another attempt to retrain them but I can't guarantee this will not still fail due to the unit type/era mismatch.

I gather the 2.01 patch was to fix a specific, unrelated, problem with the early release of VI, so your problem will probably persist, un fortunately. See my recent thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=50741) asking about it.

[Roark]

Thanks EYG.

[Martok]

VikingHorde's XL mod allows you to retrain Early RK's to High-era RKs, and High-era RK's to Late RK's. I recommend downloading XL in any case; it's an excellent mod. ~:)