Re-Training?

Hmmm. Newbie question here.

Joe Turk, leader of a small valourous band of Turcoman Horse, wants to go home to pick up more men, that new shiny silver armour and such.

I sent him home, right clicked on him, left clicked, clicked on the armourer building, clicked the map, the camel nearby, the mercenary screen, the recruitment screen and a melon. No joy.

I've heard often how its better to re-train units to replenish their numbers and upgrade them rather than build new ones. I've even searched the manual, but the relevant section seems to be eluding me.

Please help. Joe Turk Needs You! How do you re-train?

open the recruitement screen, then click on the unit in that province, which you want to retrain .
Now drag him into the production - in this case retrainig- cue.
That's it.

:balloon2:

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Originally Posted by GhavGrim

Hmmm. Newbie question here.

Joe Turk, leader of a small valourous band of Turcoman Horse, wants to go home to pick up more men, that new shiny silver armour and such.

I sent him home, right clicked on him, left clicked, clicked on the armourer building, clicked the map, the camel nearby, the mercenary screen, the recruitment screen and a melon. No joy.

I've heard often how its better to re-train units to replenish their numbers and upgrade them rather than build new ones. I've even searched the manual, but the relevant section seems to be eluding me.

Please help. Joe Turk Needs You! How do you re-train?

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Nope, can't help you, I'm afraid. The melon should have worked... ;)

From memory (it's something I rarely do), I think you have to open the training screen (where you buy new units), then click on the army containing the unit you want retrained. Then drag the single unit from the army into the box on the training screen where the next unit for production usually appears. Of course, the unit must have started the turn in the province you are retraining it in.

I think that's it - I'll check it later and let you know for sure.

I never retrain units unless its to get armor,weapon upgrades. This is because if you train more units then let them be depleted then you can merge them with other depleted units to end up with high valour full strength units. Maybe in certain situations its ok but if you have enough armies to rotate then whats the problem.

Thanks Zild & Dutch_guy, I hadn't thought to try that.

Also, when masquerading as the rebels, I noticed that the Sahara appears as a territory. ID_Africa seems to be both Cyrenacia and Sahara, but in the regular game, Sahara is not playable. Por Quoi?

Is this to ensure the 'Rebel' faction never gets wiped out? Or did the game designers decide that the Sahara bordered too many other territories? How would I go about unlocking the Sahara for a standard game?

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Originally Posted by GhavGrim

Thanks Zild & Dutch_guy, I hadn't thought to try that.

Also, when masquerading as the rebels, I noticed that the Sahara appears as a territory. ID_Africa seems to be both Cyrenacia and Sahara, but in the regular game, Sahara is not playable. Por Quoi?

Is this to ensure the 'Rebel' faction never gets wiped out? Or did the game designers decide that the Sahara bordered too many other territories? How would I go about unlocking the Sahara for a standard game?

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Very good question! I want to fight in the Sahara, too. :wink:

@bretwalda and GhavGrim: I found this in MTW modification, hope it will help

unlocking Sahara for VI

I guess you cant use the Sahara as a province because there is sod all there apart from sand! it'd probably have an income of 2 florins or something

Retraining sometimes it's useful.

Sometimes it's worthless.

Retrain your units only when you have an improved armourer, blacksmith......

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

Retraining sometimes it's useful.

Sometimes it's worthless.

Retrain your units only when you have an improved armourer, blacksmith......

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Or when you want to replenish a good general's unit.

never knew that was possible Graphic ( I played RTW before MTW , in RTW that was not possible ~:) )... thanks for the tip though.

:balloon2:

If you have a good general whose unit is depleted but you cannot afford to take him off defence of a frontline province, perhaps because all your other next-best generals are similarly tied down, then the best method is to train a whole fresh unit, move it to his province by the shortest route possible then do the unit-merge trick to transfer troops to make his unit full and the new one depleted.

After that, you can use any leftovers to similarly 'top-up' other nearby units of that type.

Alternatively, units of less than 10 horsemen can make handy scouting units and can even entice the AI to waste some missile ammo trying to get them. Being such a small target and set to a single rank deep, they can actually be quite hard to 'find the range' on.

Unit merge trick:-

Drop the low-tech one (most likely the veteran general) onto the higher tech one so that the whole resultant unit will carry the weapon/armour upgrade.

If you see two units in the menu bar, like they haven't merged properly, don't be alarmed. Where both unit leaders have either a star rating or V&V's (or both), then it will always preserve at least one man from both source units, as he has a 'personality' which needs to be preserved. THis blocks auto-merging and you will have to perform the merge manually.

Left-click on the low-tech one, in the menu bar, drag and drop it on the other. You can repeat this back and forth until the desired result is achieved. (In case I've misremembered this, practice transfers between reduced armoured/unarmoured spears units, for example, to get the drag-drop sequence in the right order).

Incidentally, two units which are both greater than half their normal size won't auto-merge, even without stars or V&V's but you can still transfer troops in this drag-drop way, to get one of full size and one small enough to maybe merge with a third unit that has only light casualties. For instance, you can turn 4 units of spears with 70-odd men each into three full-size units and thus free up a slot in the stack for a full-size unit of some other type, rather than have to wait for it to come on as reinforcements.

Expect to see the valour rating of your veteran unit drop as the 'green' troops lower the unit's average but rest assured that the individual members' previous valour scores are retained, as can be seen in the logfiles for any subsequent battle they fight in.

HTH

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Originally Posted by manbaps

I never retrain units unless its to get armor,weapon upgrades. This is because if you train more units then let them be depleted then you can merge them with other depleted units to end up with high valour full strength units. Maybe in certain situations its ok but if you have enough armies to rotate then whats the problem.

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Maybe I'm just lazy but I tend to just merge too. I just don't feel like hauling a unit halfway across the map from Palestine to retrain them in Wales for a turn - Halting production there doing it - and spend another turn hauling it back to the frontline.

The only times I've really seen it much use (and I've still never really done it then!) was when you have a high-command general with most of his unit destroyed, but can't merge it with another unit for some reason (typically because all the other units with that troop type are full, or have a leader with V&V or command, or all of the above!)

But EYG's advice may be a way around that :)