re-training = pain in the butt

i find it very annoying that in Total War you usually can not merge armies with each other simply because you have a bunch of very small-numbered units wasting all your stack space.

i know you can manually change this - but it's a MAJOR PAIN IN THE BUTT to have to manually re-arrange your stacks constantly because of this issue.

re-training is a HUGE problem since sending individual unit-types back to the province they came from TAKES FOREVER and REQUIRES OBSCENE AMOUNTS OF MACRO-MANAGEMENT; hence is simply not a viable thing to do during gameplay. it's actualy better to just let your lowly-populated units die in a suicide mission so they stop wasting your stack space. i know some exceptions apply to this, but not many.

i would be VERY NICE if you could have units AUTOMATICALLY RE-TRAIN - which means your units attempt to go back to the nearest province possible that can re-train them, and jump into the re-training queue ahead of everything else by default (this would all be accomplished by the player only having to issue ONE order to the low stack), and those units would do nothing else until that goal is accomplished

Total War would be 100 million times less annoying if this one simple feature was included http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

You can fix this by merging two or more depleted units of the same type. You can do this manually or you can turn on the auto merge feature and let the AI do it for you. It depends which you value more - time or doing it right.

Having said that, I really, really like your idea about auto training. The only other decision to include is the priority of retraining vs new units when the depleted unit gets to its destination. Perhaps a popup training window in which you can select where to put the unit in the training queue.

Here I go again.

This is another reason I play huge unit size. You have fewer units for the same number of troops, hence fewer fragments and the fragments are often bigger.

Also, fragments are a gold mine. They can be re-trained in one turn, rather than having two turns of building a new unit at huge unit size.

Wait a sec... back to the province they came from?

You don't hafta do that. I simply designate one province a military-retraining province. First... send all your partial units to the same area and combine them. Then send those troops back to your retraining province to be retrained. They don't have to retrain where they were produced, just a province that has all the buildings necessary for building a unit of that type in the first place.

Then again, maybe it's not that big of a convenience for me cuz I tend to concentrate on coastal provinces. I rarely have a majority of land-locked territories.

If shufling units is such a drag then simply build 1 or 2 unit type armies. that way after battle you only press 'm' and all you'll have to do is retrain 1 or 2 units per stack. And if you leave the tidy up command on you wont even have to press the darn key. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...icons/idea.gif

only thing is random V&Vs or command stars messing things up.

however, I find combining veteran units and retraining them with best armor and weapons to be quite good.

I like having my elite legions wrecking havoc upon enemy troops.

stirring up rebellions and facing the horde allows for many many elite troops. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ns/biggrin.gif

if you have a dominant navy. retraining is little hassle and much gain.

Can you not retrain the units that you start off with? Also, ummm...how does one go about retraining? and was it available in STW or was my crying for good reason? hehe

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Navaros @ April 11 2004,21:14)]OBSCENE AMOUNTS OF MACRO-MANAGEMENT

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Yeah, it's micromanagement, but if you want to get high valour troops you have to do it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg.../gc-juggle.gif I spend a lot of time just moving bits of units back to the provinces where they get valour bonuses to top them off there. Sometimes I leave little chunks of high valour units there, too, to combine with others (if you want to get high valour gallowglasses or highlanders, it's the only way, since they get so chewed up in battle that usually you only have 10 of them in a unit at the end of combat). If you retrain a unit of 30 v1 hobilars anywhere but Brittany (in Medmod, you get a valour bonus) they will go back down to 0 valour. If you collect all your v2 and v3 survivors in Brittany and then top the merged unit off by retraining you get a crack unit. It's a lot of work but you see the benefits on the field of battle.
I share your frustration but I love to see those killer units at work.

As GREGOSHI has said, you can select auto merge from the top pop-out menu. You can also select a stack and hit m, or ctl + m (can't remember which, it's in manual) to merge that stack, or select the PROVINCE and hit the keys to merge all troops in that province. You can retrain in any province you control as long as you have the facilities for that unit. In Med Mod, however, you must go back to a homeland province that has those requirements. I get FAR better results doing it the hard way. Better troops, higher valor, better upgrades, etc. You can drop a full unit of vanilla FMA's onto a fully upgraded unit of FMA's that might only have one individual troop. The new unit will have a full complement of UPGRADED troops. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ns/biggrin.gif I often then just disband the few weenies left in the small stack--unless they have high valor, good atributes, or whatever. I'll save a single troop if the unit commander has three dread and five accumen AAAhhh, do I smell a governor? But then, I am obsessive/compulsive. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...embarassed.gif

saving and retraining the scraps is very valuable.

gold gold V9 anything will kick ass. even peasants

I love a stack of elite troops who all have V5-6 without general and then I put a 9* natural leader or something to lead them.

ahhh the joys of invincibility. However, this often leads to excomm as no way a fricking crusade is gonna suck up such nice troops of mine. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/angry.gif

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Lord Ovaat @ April 13 2004,10:11)]....... You can drop a full unit of vanilla FMA's onto a fully upgraded unit of FMA's that might only have one individual troop. The new unit will have a full complement of UPGRADED troops......

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i am not 100% sure, but i think this is incorrect. as you may know, MTW tracks each individual soldier in a unit - the valour of a unit is actually an average of the entire unit. a v3 unit can contain men at v0 and so on.

in the case of the armour & weapon upgrades shown in the unit icon, i think these show up if even one individual has these upgrades - but this doesn't mean they are passed on to the other vanilla troops.

all these things are visible in the logfiles, i am quite conscientious about upgrading units so i couldn't find one with different armour/weapon states.

Don Coyote

that's very true.

valor is most important as retraining would grant upgrades.

however, valor is tracked individually so it doesn't matter much.

just combine all your veterans and send them back to retrain for uber 1337 h4x0r troopz that owns all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (yonderboy @ April 12 2004,11:00)]Wait a sec... back to the province they came from?

You don't hafta do that. I simply designate one province a military-retraining province. First... send all your partial units to the same area and combine them. Then send those troops back to your retraining province to be retrained. They don't have to retrain where they were produced, just a province that has all the buildings necessary for building a unit of that type in the first place.

Then again, maybe it's not that big of a convenience for me cuz I tend to concentrate on coastal provinces. I rarely have a majority of land-locked territories.

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Yeah but loads of unit's can only be trained in certain provinces so a retraining province only works for generic units. Beside's to build that many building upgrades is likely to cost an obscene amount and when you have to squeeze florins it doesnt seem a good idea to have a mad high tech province.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]gold gold V9 anything will kick ass. even peasants

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*sets out to create invincible super-peasant army* http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ons/cheers.gif

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (DonCoyote @ April 13 2004,12:34)]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Lord Ovaat @ April 13 2004,10:11)]....... You can drop a full unit of vanilla FMA's onto a fully upgraded unit of FMA's that might only have one individual troop. The new unit will have a full complement of UPGRADED troops......

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i am not 100% sure, but i think this is incorrect. as you may know, MTW tracks each individual soldier in a unit - the valour of a unit is actually an average of the entire unit. a v3 unit can contain men at v0 and so on.

in the case of the armour & weapon upgrades shown in the unit icon, i think these show up if even one individual has these upgrades - but this doesn't mean they are passed on to the other vanilla troops.

all these things are visible in the logfiles, i am quite conscientious about upgrading units so i couldn't find one with different armour/weapon states.

Don Coyote

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check out this thread

Combining Units

The way I understand it, MTW tracks valor individually, but weapons and armor upgrades by unit, so I think Ovaat is right.

IMO the best way to deal with depleted units is to properly combine them, and to use the provinces to produce new troops, retraining units only occasionally.

ichi