Historically accurate retrain

[Anakuj]

I am always in trouble about the retrain of my units. I would like to play as accurately as possible during my campaigns, but I don't know, to retrain for example a Pezhetairoi unit (trained in, say Antiochia) in the katoikias of Margiane, or Drangiane is accurate or not? All the same with the other, different cultures and factions. It would be incredible IMHO to have an accurate, little retrain guide or something like that.

[Swordmaster]

I am always in trouble about the retrain of my units. I would like to play as accurately as possible during my campaigns, but I don't know, to retrain for example a Pezhetairoi unit (trained in, say Antiochia) in the katoikias of Margiane, or Drangiane is accurate or not? All the same with the other, different cultures and factions. It would be incredible IMHO to have an accurate, little retrain guide or something like that.

Retraining is not accurate in any way whatsoever. You can't "refill" depleted units of combatants in zero time, nor can you magically give new recruits the same experience as the veterans of that unit. Instead you should train a new unit and transfer troops from the new unit to the veteran unit.

[QuintusSertorius]

Retraining is not accurate in any way whatsoever. You can't "refill" depleted units of combatants in zero time, nor can you magically give new recruits the same experience as the veterans of that unit. Instead you should train a new unit and transfer troops from the new unit to the veteran unit.

Bingo!

[Lysimachos]

A retrained unit doesn't retain the experience. Instead the experience reduces in the amount of new soldiers. I have seen units going down from golden chevrons to bronze ones by retraining.
I also don't think it is absolutely unhistorical for a unit beeing refilled with new soldiers (not in zero time, but in fact it takes one turn exactly as recruiting a new unit if you don't retrain many at once). It is one thing in an army like the early roman ones that is gathered, goes to war and is disbanded afterwards, but another in a professional army like the late republican and imperial roman army. The legions were not disbanded alltogether anymore, but were permanent units in which the soldiers came and went. These units were indeed filled with new recruits when the numbers have been reduced through casualties or retiring.

[QuintusSertorius]

Depends what level of experience the unit has as to whether it gets restored at the same or lower experience. I've been able to restore silver-chevron units to full with no loss of experience, no matter how many are left in places that can already create bronze-chevron ones.

[Gaius Septembris Minor]

I agree with Lysimachos, the only thing historically wrong is the short time to retrain. The retaining of experience is in my opinion correct, "esprite de corps" is the term i like to use. An elite unit will always get new recruits and the veterans in the unit teach the inexperienced. In an inexperienced unit you will find that the transfer of knowledge is of course lower. So the more new recruits the bigger the impact on the experience of the unit as a whole. That seems to be the case here too. and in the later years of the roman empire the legions were professional troops serving a minimum of 25 years in most of the time the same legion. so i dont think there is much wrong with retraining except for the short time it takes. But thats easy to overcome, just wait before you actually retrain the unit.

my two cents.......

[QuintusSertorius]

Not when there's barely 5% of the original number left, is it remotely accurate to add in a bunch of green troops and miraculously get veterans.

Merging is a lot more realistic. Indeed talking of late Republican armies, it was common to raise "drafts of replacements" to make up losses. That's what Marius' first "Mules" were for the Numidian campaign. Sounds like merging newly-recruited bodies into the old to me.

[Cybvep]

There is another argument that you should really take into account - AI doesn't use retraining. Therefore, it does make things easier for player and can be counted as a cheat.

AFAIK it's different in MTW2.

[||Lz3||]

sometimes merging is a pain in the...

so if I'm not in the mood I'll just retrain

[Jolt]

I am always in trouble about the retrain of my units. I would like to play as accurately as possible during my campaigns, but I don't know, to retrain for example a Pezhetairoi unit (trained in, say Antiochia) in the katoikias of Margiane, or Drangiane is accurate or not? All the same with the other, different cultures and factions. It would be incredible IMHO to have an accurate, little retrain guide or something like that.

Just RP that veteran Kleurochoi Phalangitai surrendered to you in exchange for keeping their kleurochies. In exchange, they serve for your army as Pezhetairoi.

[QuintusSertorius]

sometimes merging is a pain in the...

so if I'm not in the mood I'll just retrain

If your army is relatively uniform, or has lots of the same unit in it, you can always raise some, merge them in until you have just one understrength unit left "spare", then retrain that. Then it's ready for the next merging. Doesn't require your entire stack to be sat around inside a settlement, either.

[||Lz3||]

I only have a max of 2 similar units , thats not an uniform army

2 hastati
2 brutian
2 hastati S.
2 principes
2 triari
1 akonkistai...


the list goes on ... until I have a full stack , so that's not easy to merge...

[QuintusSertorius]

It is if you've got some of those units as garrison troops. Besides when you've got so many Italian cities able to raise troops, it's not hard to send out the ones you need, then have the leftovers waiting for the next time you need them. I got through my entire last Roman game without ever retraining anyone, and you saw how mixed my forces were.

[||Lz3||]

that's what I do, but sometimes (1/10), when I'm not really on the mood and lazy I'll just retrain hehe

[Irishmafia2020]

I use retrain, and I wish that the a.i. did as well. A few veterans can have a profound influence on a military unit. Those surviving veterans would be promoted to NCO's and officers, and a unit composed of Green troops would respond to their advice, training and leadership. Anyone who has served in the military will attest to the value of veteran NCO's.

Having said that, I usually train at least two units of a particular type that will enter a campaign together. When these units are reduced, they are merged until the campaign is completed. Frankly I prefer three or more units of each type for a lengthy campaign. The result, if the campaign is quick, and the army returns to base with few casualties is that everyone gets retrained with a mild boost in experience. However after an extensive campaign in which the army has suffered 60% losses, the whole force has to be rebuilt with green troops and only a few units from the original force benefit from the "cheat" of retraining.

If you think about it, elite units remain fairly elite even if they must replace their soldiers. One reason for this is that most armies recruit soldiers from within based upon the recommendation of the officers. Promotion is also related to performance and experience. I doubt that it was completely different in ancient armies. I just role play that an experienced officer can recruit transferring veterans who are trained by his veteran NCO's to be a quality unit. I have seen individual commanders do this IRL, so why not in a game?

[QuintusSertorius]

Only problem with that theory is that when losses were bad, the centurions and other "leaders" in a Roman army suffered disproportionate losses, which would put paid to the idea that veteran units stay veteran.

[chenkai11]

For the short time retraining of units that seems to be historical inaccurate, especially you can retrain many units in one turn. Just retrain them one at a time, that way you can somehow simulate it as historically recruiting new units to the existing veterans.

Retraining always downgrade the experience of the unit, sometimes it didn't downgrade might be the case due to the settlement have buildings that can add experience to the new recruits.

[QuintusSertorius]

I've rarely, if ever seen retraining reduce the experience of a unit, although admittedly it's rare I've retrained. I had a unit of peltastai with 5 experience in a place that churns out 2-experience units that went from under half strength back to full. With no loss of experience.

[Irishmafia2020]

It is true... the retraining process generally does not reduce the experience of the units involved. I wish that it reduced by at least one chevron... I have retrained very elite troops and maintained their triple silver or gold chevron status from only five or ten soldiers...

[Cambyses]

Retraining may be ahistorical in some ways, but then so are many other aspects of the engine. To me it all fits together quite neatly in the bigger picture.

Leaving Rome aside, how many armies really had a fixed value for the number of troops in a unit for example. A German war band wouldnt have a limit of troops that it could start with, but would probably be very flexible, sometimes having far more or far less of a particlular type of warrior - depending on who was available. In EB you cant for example merge Germanic spearmen into a large body of 600 warriors to hold a deeper / more resilient line, or split it into multiple smaller units in order to create a more effective ambush. Instead you must have 2 or 3 units of 240 men standing next to each other.

Moreover in "real" warfare soldiers often moved from one category of troops to another during a campaign. look at the way Hannibal's troops rearmed during his Italian War for example.

I could also mention that aside from some rare examples it was unusual to have such crushing losses as are usually experience in EB.

All in all, personally, I see retraining as being part of the way different aspects of the engine relate to each other. A good commander would bring in reinforcements from all sort of different ways in order to keep an army at decent strength. Whether he did this by effectively promoting existing troops to better equipment, hiring large numbers of mercenaries, bribing other tribes to join him, pressganging locals into a militia - or by a combination of the abobe is all in the details. The way I represent this in EB is by retraining a unit when it becomes too weak to be effective on the battlefield any longer.

The argument re the AI is quite a convincing one. However without force diplomacy and on VH/H difficulty, things tend to balance out anyway, in my experience.