re training units

Hi all,

i have not posted on this site since i first started playing MTW VI a couple of weeks ago, i stated that i was a new gamer and bought it on a whim, and loved it .

i have found this site invalable, the guides and the comments, i'm now starting to get a lot better at all aspects of the game. now playing on the hard setting and getting good results in long term campaigns understanding the politics side of the game, and getting a lot better in the battles. all thanks to the guides and reading the threads on different topics.

i have been re training a lot more troops and getting the weapon and armour upgrades as well as re fitting the unit with more troops so as to maintain the valour and morale!

so my question !! if i take a 100% unit of say UM and refit with armour or weapons or both does that cost me and what sort of costs are they

and if i take a 50% full unit and re train either to just 100% full or with weapons ect too does that cost me.

and if the unit is say only supporting one man and i re train it back 100% is that more expensive than re training the unit if it is 99% full.

i hope you get the gist of my questions. and thanks for all the help in these pages, i'll try to post more often now i am getting somewhere in my conquests .

ta

millomant

My understanding is that you only pay for the new men during retraining, not the equipment. So a full unit being retrained for armor/weapons would cost nothing, while a 50% unit being both upgraded and replenished would cost 50% of the unit cost.

I've found retraining very handy on units that take more than 1 turn to build, like artillery or Berserkers. A 2 man Demi Culverin crew is useless as it can't operate the catault, but you can retrain it in a single turn up to it's full complement of crew. Building a new one would take 3 turns.

I also take it that if you re train a unit in a province with a Master building in it, the retrained unit doesn't get the valour upgrade? Likewise morale upgrades from religious structures dont get added either do they?

I dont really know about the Morale or valour upgrades, the valour is won in battle and i think this does not disapear or dilute if you retrain the unit - i think the unit always keep's what ever valour it has earned. But the morale is gained by morale boosting building's and i thought that they worked like the armour buildings and could also be trained. Hmmm dont really know . Is this right or have i got this wrong .

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Originally Posted by Millomant

I dont really know about the Morale or valour upgrades, the valour is won in battle and i think this does not disapear or dilute if you retrain the unit - i think the unit always keep's what ever valour it has earned. But the morale is gained by morale boosting building's and i thought that they worked like the armour buildings and could also be trained. Hmmm dont really know . Is this right or have i got this wrong .

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I might have it wrong, but I was pretty sure that valor was tracked by man rather than by unit. In other words, if you had 70 high valor spearmen and retrained the unit, you wind up with a unit that consists of 70 high valor spearmen, and 30 green recruits.

Perhaps one of our more learned colleagues could offer some further guidance here?

I'm pretty sure that is correct. Valour is tracked per man, the number seen on the unit cards is the average value of all the men in the unit. Armour, weapons, and possible morale bonuses count for the whole unit.

I do not know what happens with morale or valour upgrades during retraining. Using vikings as an example, say a unit of vikings is retrained in Norway. Norway gives a +1 valour bonus. I would assume that the new recruits get the +1 valour, the existing men get nothing extra, but this is a guess. For morale, I believe this is done at unit conception, so retraining a unit in a province with a higher level morale structure (church, etc.) would have no effect.

Not 100% on any of these though...

All upgrades will add to a retrained unit so long as they don't already have them - so let's take the Vikings as an example, you could train them in Denmark with no upgrades, shift them to Sweden to retrain and add a weapon bonus (assuming you have the buildings, of course ~D) and then send them to Norway where they will also pick up a valour bonus. And you don't lose weapon/armour upgrades when you retrain in a "lesser" facility. So if one of your units of teched up Vikings goes back to Denmark for a "refill" they will still keep the weapons they picked up in Sweden, but the valour from Norway would only remain on those individual men that had been retrained in Norway - any new men added in Denmark will be at zero valour.

The way I rationalise this is that the unit leader (in true feudal style) provides the weapons and armour, but each man brings his own fighting skill.

AFAIK you can also gain morale upgrades on retraining too, so I tend to max out morale buildings in provinces where I'm likely to be retraining for weapons upgrades or similar. :bow:

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Originally Posted by drone

Using vikings as an example, say a unit of vikings is retrained in Norway. Norway gives a +1 valour bonus. I would assume that the new recruits get the +1 valour, the existing men get nothing extra, but this is a guess.

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I think that's pretty much it except every men who has 0 valour get +1 if the unit is re-trained in Norway. On the other hand, those who already have valour 1 as a result of prior battles do not get valour 2.

Thus it's pretty much useless to retrain a valour 1 unit in Norway except that all men will get valour 1 if the units is retrained in Norway while the unit could have valour 1 as an average despite that it contaiend some 0 valour men... Not sure I am 100% clear but that's the end of the week for me as well...

Valour is tracked individually. It's all shown in the battle logs as well.

So, if I take a full 60 man unit of val. 0 unteched Gallowglasses and retrain them in Ireland, with a Cathedral, Master Armourers Guild and Master Swordsmith, they would become +2 Valour, +3 Morale, +4 Armour monsters? for 0 extra Florins?

If so, that's it - I'm doing it. I'll flood the fields with those Irish slayers. I'm drooling just thinking about training up my bersekers like this as well.

i Agree Heidrek, it sounds great, obviously taking a bit of time and management But exellent when producing a conquesting army to go off and cause havoc !!! cheers for the help guys !!

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Originally Posted by Heidrek

So, if I take a full 60 man unit of val. 0 unteched Gallowglasses and retrain them in Ireland, with a Cathedral, Master Armourers Guild and Master Swordsmith, they would become +2 Valour, +3 Morale, +4 Armour monsters? for 0 extra Florins?

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Correct. So go nuts. ~;)

I hate to spoil the party, but since nobody else mentions it, I will...

Retraining isn't worth it.

The way I see it, if you already have the capabilities and buildings to make über units, you're more than likely swimming in florins. The only other factor keeping down the size of your army is training time. If you can train über units everywhere, well then you don't need to retrain, you can just roll out fresh ones. If you have all the facilities in one spot, you can retrain one unit at the time or you can build one unit at the time. Both will give you the same result.

Now, the major argument for retraining would be to give units both a local bonus (this region is famous for...) and all the upgrades which will be in your 'capital' province. There could also be times when units can't be trained in your most developed province, due to regional constraints.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Taken to the extreme, you could have four provinces: one with armor-buildings, one with morale buildings and one with weapon-buildings and the bonus granting province. This would save som construction-time, though you'd have to have more castles and citadels.

In my experience, these units can be valuable, and doubtlessly upgrades can improve their performance. You can argue whether the armor-opgrade is always a boon, but that is not my point.

My point is: If I should choose between an upgraded über-unit or a 'vanilla' über-unit and an "upgraded" fresh unit from my capital, I'd always take the latter, even assuming I'd want do the chores of actually moving the units back and forth.

If you want units that go through the enemy like a knife through hot butter, by all means go ahead. They can be really fun. But if you want to win the game, I believe that you need more units, not better units.

/KotR

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Retraining isn't worth it.

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Okay, I'll take the bait :clown:

Certain situations make it worth it:

1) You are short of money, and can't keep training fresh troops, but your current army is a bit :daisy: eg stacks of raw UMs, run them through a province with morale and armour upgrades (pretty easy to achieve, financially), they become a LOT better, and cost nothing extra. Remember you have no money (or rather too little), so the facilities are wasting your investment if you DON'T re-equip existing troops. This is an essential phase in any turtling strategy, IMHO, when you can't afford a bigger army, but you can achieve a better one.

2) Long training time for elite units - some units take two or three years to train, but you have one province that has upgrades, possibly a valour bonus, and a couple of provinces that can train them "vanilla style". What you do is NOT train the new units in your upgrade province, but train them in vanilla provinces, then RETRAIN them for upgrades. Get the timing right you can churn out one upgraded unit each year, whereas if you train initially in the upgrade province, you get one every two years (or three in extreme cases).

3) Early issue units have been out in the field earning valour, maybe a few units consolidated to maximise the valour - but they still have rubbish kit.... send them home for an upgrade in the facilities that have been improved since they first went out. Alternate method is find a broken unit of upgraded, later-edition troops, make sure there is no "character" in charge (ie no titles, stars or VnVs) and drop your high valour unit into the teched-up depleted one (must be no more than one unit's worth of men). Insta-upgrade in the field.

:bow:

In addition to this, retraining is completely reevaluated once you play on huge unit size settings, where all units take at least 2 turns to build. Retraining still takes only 1 turn. Plus, due to the huge size, the cost for training a unit are comparatively high, so retraining suddenly is an extremely useful feature.

Retraining the General's unit can of course a pretty good idea as well... Unless you want to have a unit with small staff, so that you won't be tempted to throw them into the melée along with the rest of the forces.

Retraining is useful when you want to keep your armies neat and tidy, a force of extremely organized warfare. Merging new units with partially defeated but experienced forces already boosts the newcomers' morale. If you have 20 experienced men left in your unit, once retrained, the unit will still have a slight morale bonus. It's a bit fiddly, but not too fiddly if you keep the number of your troops manageable. Of course the usefulness is questionable if you have Monster Academies (a.k.a. church-type buildings).

Upping units to monsters is, well, not necessary. Usually you can win with good quality troops, but there's another consideration: fun. Many MTW players I know are "collectors", they try to get unique units or those units that are available only in single provinces. Not because they need them, but because they're fun.

I once made monstrous Swedish Handgunners with maxed statistics. Because I needed them? Hardly. Because they were fun? Definitely. Attack 5, Defence 7, Morale 8 or so, plus their handy hand artillery. Couple with a few Peasants of Dread (attack 2, defence 0, morale 2) that you can use to tie enemy infantry and not care about casualties... Super effective? Maybe not. But fun. And they get the job done.

Of course there are some bad ideas, like trying to make Cataphract Camels... Or is it?

Hmmm, I seem to be clearly outnumbered in this debate... Thanks for taking the bait, I'll play the devils advokate just a little more. :clown:

Three substantial arguments have been brought forward:

1) You need it when training takes more than 1 turn
2) You need it when turtling
3) You need it for fun

1) The effect of resupplying units increases as unit size decreases - 120 men in two turns for a vanilla unit (training) is much slower than say 100 men in one turn with 20 veterans.(retraining). But the main effect of retraining is giving your veterans upgrades. This effect is decreased as unit size decreases. The two effects hardly cancel out eachother, and it can be a good road to fast increases in numbers. But new men cost florins, so not only do you need improved facilities during the wars your men becomes veterans, you also need a good cashflow to pull this "trick" off. Both these preconditions being present will count as a won game in my book anyways, and you don't *need* it.
2) Turtling can be fun, very fun indeed. Is retraining suitable for turtling? I don't think so, because retraining is more effective on full units, as argued above. Valor through battle is usually slow, and come at a price. Grouping together experienced units to form "elite" units can be a little difficult to pull off (or maybe I just can't do it right) but not impossible. At the most, in any "standard" game, I'd say such a unit could gain 2-3 valor before you have the next level of upgrade buildings ready. And then, the effect of increased armor morale and in some cases weapons is not gamebreaking, in my experience perhaps what would equal a single additional point of valor. This would make the unit tough, but not more valuable than a additional unit of fresh men from the reserves you can use to flank or bring into the center to hold the line while your übers run amok on the flanks. In fact I'd say that would be more valuable.
3) You can't argue with fun. Fun is what it is all about, and I don't post because I want to ruin peoples enjoyment of the game. Don't do as you think you should do to win, do what you want to do and have fun!

/KotR


Edited: General's unit: Good point! Retraining is *very* valuable in that case

When it comes to retraining units (especially in order to give them any kind of upgrades), I personally use the following criteria:


1.) Convenience & practicality: Can I spare the unit from front-line duty? Is there a province nearby that can (re)train said unit? (And will it grant upgraded weapons/morale/etc. to the unit if it's retrained there?)

2.) Whether it's worth retraining: If I have a 4-valour company of 78 Feudal Sergeants, then yes I'll probably retrain them back to full strength. On the other hand, if I have a 1-valour company of only 16 Feudal Sergeants, I'm probably going to just merge it with another FS unit (as soon as I have the opportunity to do so).

3.) Sentimentality: I confess I sometimes become very fond of certain units, and will retrain them no matter how depleted they become (or how far away they are from their nearest training facility).

In one of my more recent Fatamid campaigns, I had a regiment of Ghazi Infantry that just killed *everything* they came across. Despite them losing nearly 90% of their numbers during a particularly brutal battle against the Castille-Leonese (in fact, they pretty much saved the battle for me), I still brought them all the way back to Egypt for retraining -- I felt I owed them at least that much. ~;)

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Originally Posted by Martok

In one of my more recent Fatamid campaigns, I had a regiment of Ghazi Infantry that just killed *everything* they came across. Despite them losing nearly 90% of their numbers during a particularly brutal battle against the Castille-Leonese (in fact, they pretty much saved the battle for me), I still brought them all the way back to Egypt for retraining -- I felt I owed them at least that much. ~;)

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Even though that 10% of veterans will probably die in the next battle... leaving only those raw recruits remaining... ~:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Raz

Even though that 10% of veterans will probably die in the next battle... leaving only those raw recruits remaining... ~:rolleyes:

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Ah, but the regiment lives on!

I suppose that I have to confess that I do the same thing - part of the "role playing" thing perhaps for the grateful king to confer patronage on a unit that has gone above and beyond....

Am I the only one that let's those veterans... err, retire... on the battlefield?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hehe, "retire" :wink2:

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Originally Posted by bamff

Ah, but the regiment lives on!

I suppose that I have to confess that I do the same thing - part of the "role playing" thing perhaps for the grateful king to confer patronage on a unit that has gone above and beyond....

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Exactly. I like to reward units that have performed faithful and exemplary service. :yes:

Reading KotR's last post brought to attention I'd been a bit sloppy with terminology. I usually make a distinction between retraining and re-equipping - retraining in the strict sense is bringing a broken unit back up to full strength (this may or may not entail upgrades), whereas re-equipping is running a full unit through higher-level facilities for the upgrades. In most cases I raised above, I was really considering the case of re-equipping.

Generally speaking, when the issue is keeping full units in the field, I'm a fan of merging high-valour fragments to concentrate the valour, then retraining (strict sense) the dregs from this process just to get numbers back up. I'd generally rather have a v2 and a v0 unit than two v1 units.

On the fun side, I do like to gather those odd regional troops that only come in one province. Would you believe I've been playing the game over 4 years now, and my current campaign is the FIRST time I've ever managed to get any Avar nobles :dizzy2: It's a Kievan (XL) early campaign, and I've just neutralised the Horde with an army composed mostly of the standard Pav Arbs + Halbs + Boyars, but spiced up with a few of the Avar nobles, Wallachian mercenary cav, Chernyi Klobuki and Bulgarian brigands. And one mercenary unit of Mamluk handgunners who have earned my respect and appreciation as first-grade horse-scarers :laugh4: I always look for gunpowder units emerging in the mercenary pool before the Horde arrives, their morale hits are invaluable, alas my handgunners are now down to a third of their starting numbers and I can't retrain them...

Biggest use is with multiple turn build time units. The irish berserker units are a good example of this. At the end of each battle my berserkers have generally ktaken losses. so I merge a few units and end up with a "left overs" unit. If I have plenty of bereserkers, I sometimes end up witha 1 man berserker unit and another units of 5 or 6. I then send them off as individual units to retrain. This way I get two units back up to full strength, netting me say 34 new berserkers produced in two turns at full tech, instead of the normal 20 I'd get from training.

Meanwhile my standing army has full strength units of vets to field. I do love those berserkers though, good fun to watch them carve through a spear wall in record time.

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Originally Posted by Jxrc

I think that's pretty much it except every men who has 0 valour get +1 if the unit is re-trained in Norway. On the other hand, those who already have valour 1 as a result of prior battles do not get valour 2.

Thus it's pretty much useless to retrain a valour 1 unit in Norway except that all men will get valour 1 if the units is retrained in Norway while the unit could have valour 1 as an average despite that it contaiend some 0 valour men... Not sure I am 100% clear but that's the end of the week for me as well...

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Valor upgrades from buildings applies to retraining... provincial upgrades to valor do NOT work when retraining. At least this is what I've seen with Woodsmen and Lithuania as the English with full units. One has to initially train the woodsmen in lithuania before adding other attributes... such as weapon +1 in sweden. If one does it backwards then the lithuanian bonus does not show up on the unit OR on the battlefield. Maybe the fact that it is a whole unit makes a difference, but idk.
Another situation, that I have yet to solve, is if it is possible to turn out +2 valor longbows in whales with the master boyer... or if the master upgrade must be applied via another province through retraining?

Since this was bumped, good place to ask this: Does armor upgrades do anything to armorless units like archers?

Also, the manual says one can upgrade units for armor (etc) but it will cost. Some of these old posts said they were free. Don't know which way it really is, though.

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Originally Posted by LordK9

Since this was bumped, good place to ask this: Does armor upgrades do anything to armorless units like archers?.

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Armor is armor. A bonus works with any unit in ranged fire resistance and defence. Archers benefit from it for sure, unless jogging around in the desert.

As for the cost, I'm not sure. If I can upgrade a unit, I usually do it. Initial cost is usually a drop in the bucket compared with support costs over the many years that one usually keeps a unit. Especially, with anything that can increase the unit's potential to gain valor... be it increased survivability from armor or increased combat time from increased morale.

The thing is, I don't believe archers have any armor to begin with so upgrading it would be upgrading nothing. Probably just makes (for instance) a zero armor to a one armor or something similar. Its really hard to monitor changes in the game so I've never noticed if indeed they are better protected against arrows and less protected (I assume) from bolts (due to the armor piercing bonus).

There is no unit with 0 armor. Even peasants have 1. And armor bonuses are flat numbers, 1 + 4 gives 5, so peasants become equipped with high quality chain armor or maybe lesser plate armor.
btw Armor protects in melee, against ranged units and adds defence bonus too.

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Originally Posted by LordK9

Its really hard to monitor changes in the game so I've never noticed if indeed they are better protected against arrows and less protected (I assume) from bolts (due to the armor piercing bonus).

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It would protect against bolts at a reduced rate determined by the armor piercing multiplier of the crossbow unit that fired them. Run a custom game with archers of various armor. Watch the vanilla ones drop.

I see; the nuts and bolts of the game are often not as I assumed they'd be. I did notice last evening that my copper colored shields archers did get tired quicker in the desert heat then did those with iron colored shields. Never really paid that close of attention to it before. Fascinating. Well, this does explain a few things like why my archers often seem to do better vs AI archers of the same size and type - I tend to build armorers fairly quickly so my troops are likely just benefiting from better armor.

I have yet to tear down an armorer building but I've certainly had my desert ambitions curtailed by my them.