Question- how do you retrain units, and what are the benefits?

I haven't ever been able to figure out how to retrain units in Medieval or Shogun. Also, it appears that retraining a unit costs more per man than just building a new one- what are the advantages of retraining over simply building a new unit? Do the new men in the unit benefit from the experience of the old?

Also, do individual men within a unit benefit from their high valour if they are higher than that of the rest of the unit, or do they just take the unit's valour rating?

Open the training queue and drag/drop the unit to be retrained in an open slot. The cost per man is equal with original costs. Retraining is a benefit for units that take more than 1 turn to produce, because retraining always takes one turn. The whole unit will gain armor/weapon/valor/morale upgrades, while the vetrans will keep their old valor (if it was higher than the region gives).

mfberg

Just so you know, even full strength units can be retrained to get better equipment.

The benefits of retraining are many.

A unit that is retrained ALWAYS takes only one year, even if it originally took several years to build.

A unit that is retrained keeps any weapon/armour/moral upgrades it already has, and gives them to every man in the unit, so if you retrain one man with an armour and wapon upgrade in a province that does not have those upgrades, the entire unit will have them when it is retrained.

Retraining allows you to upgrade your units at no cost. Take a full unit to a province with good weapons/armour/moral upgrades and retrain them there. It will not cost anything, and they gain the bonusses.

Retraining allows you to keep good generals when their units are wiped out.

Retraining allows you to keep your governers at full strength for the maximum benefit to loyalty.



And now about valour.

Valour is calculated individually for each and every single individual soldier in your empire. the number you see is the average for the unit, but more often than not the unit will have several very high valour men and several less or no valour men, so a unit showing valour 1 may actually have several valour 4 guys in it, and lots of valour 0.

The ONLY way to get a unit where every single man in it has at least valour 1 is through province bonuses or building bonuses. Normally when you retrain the new men put into the unit have 0 valour (that would be why it looks like your avaerage valour goes down, but you still have your original men with their original valour) but if you retrain a unit in a province where it would get a valour bonus (longbowmen in wales for example) then you get valour 1 men going into your unit. With master boyar you can even get valour 2 men going into your unit, and any men with less than 2 valour will get it there.

If you merge your units instead of retrainign you often lose men who would have made good governers, and are quite often left with one man units. these can be retained themselves to create a new unit for less cost, with the one man who was already there being the general of that unit, and keeping his stats and vices/virtues.