retraining?

[yjna4006]

So I'm playing the Romani campaign right now and I've gotten some of my troops into the high silver/gold chevron range in experience. But now they're down to 40 or so men and I was wondering how I can refill that quota without losing the stat bonuses. I understand training a brand new unit and filling them in is an option, but is there an alternate way to retrain troops back to their capacity? Thanks guys.

[A Very Super Market]

You could use the script and create a new unit with that amount of chevrons.

Personally, I would just retrain them. At worst, you go down to 3 bronze chevrons, which is three chevrons above where you started before. Doesn't it feel like cheating to you?

[Africanvs]

Training a new unit and using them to replenish your men will cause them to lose a great deal of experience. Just retrain the experienced unit in a city, and it should maintain all of it's experience, and on occasion they gain another chevron somehow.

[yjna4006]

for some reason, retraining them in a city only improves the troop's armor and attack and doesn' replenish the men. Super Market I'll try that for one of my units and see how it goes. Thanks to both

[A Very Super Market]

If your city cannot train the unit (Too low MIC) you cannot retrain it. It was the same in stock. If it has a blacksmith, and the unit is not upgraded, it will upgrade them but not train any men.

[yjna4006]

Hm.. but I sent my troops to Rome to retrain, and I believe my Rome has a really high MIC level

[Africanvs]

You have to make sure that the unit you are retraining can be recruited where you are retraining them. If it can, then it's numbers will be replenished.

[A Very Super Market]

It doesn't matter what level (Well, it sorta does, but whatever) the MIC is. If it can't train the unit in the first place, it won't retrain it.

[Nachtmeister]

erm - make sure that the unit you want to "replenish" is listed on the "enables recruitment of:" list, accessible by r-clicking on your MIC building. If you are for instance talking about Brihentin or Bataroas here, it is no surprise that retraining them in rome is not possible.

[ezekiel2517]

Training a new unit and using them to replenish your men will cause them to lose a great deal of experience. Just retrain the experienced unit in a city, and it should maintain all of it's experience, and on occasion they gain another chevron somehow.

to make things swifter, I always send a unit to replace the numbers of another more battle hardened... I was completely unaware retraining them in a city kept the chevron's intact (or raised them).

[Zett]

If you retrain troops in cities, you can lose chevrons too. If they took many loses (anout 30% and more) I usually lose 1-2 or more chevrons by retraining them in a city.

Ceterum censeo Romam esse delendam

[AntonineWall]

I must be doing something wrong here, my troops never get anywhere near that experience before being slaughtered to the last man.

Perhaps my guide to tactics "How to Win Battles and Influence People" by Field Marshall Douglas Haig should be put aside;)

[Cambyses]

On hard or very hard no units survive for long (except in horse archer armies, but that's a different topic).

[zooeyglass]

Perhaps my guide to tactics "How to Win Battles and Influence People" by Field Marshall Douglas Haig should be put aside;)

hahahaha....yeah, one of the books i don't endorse in my tactics 101 seminars. along with "Great Battlefield Communication" (co-authored by Brutus and Cassius), "Tips for Fighting in The East" (Crassus' magnus opus) and "Don't Worry, The Romans Aren't Quick: Gallic Stategy for Stopping a Roman Invasion - Vol. I, II & III" (Various authors, ed. Vercingetorix).

Seriously though, on retraining, I only ever merge two unit cards when they have the same experience chevrons, otherwise I retrain. I've not noticed a significant dip in chevrons from retraining...can someone clarify what determines if chevrons are removed in retraining? number of men replenished? level of experience of the unit?

[Darth Stalin]

On hard or very hard no units survive for long

H or VH - but WHAT? Game difficulty level or battles difficulty level?

I usually play EB on VH (campaign) / H (battles) and my Romani are not so bad... yet I always remember to send them back to Italy to replenish their losses.
What is very interesting, sometimes when you merge units with low experience (like two zero-chevrons units) one of them can get an exp chevron. So if it happens with 2 low xp units that one of them gets higher xp, let it go and send back only the weaky "loser"...

[satalexton]

now now, at least Gen. Haig managed to move his drinking cabinets 15 yards closer to Berlin, you gotta give him credit for that (blatant Blackadder pun)

I never bother retraining my troops, i just send a stack of replacement troops which i use to merge with my armies, which I RP as the baggage train.

[miotas]

now now, at least Gen. Haig managed to move his drinking cabinets 15 yards closer to Berlin, you gotta give him credit for that (blatant Blackadder pun)

i believe it 15 inches, gotta love that show.

I usually bring reinforcements to merge with my veterans as it isn't very practical shuttling units back and forth from rome to the front lines, plus it seems unrealistic to me to retrain and have a bunch of fresh recruits join your veterans and have almost no experience drop for the unit. Then again i kind of role play a bit to make things more intersting, i know others get more of a kick out of using very effecient armies so retraining would make more sense in that case. All depends on you playing style really.

[Cute Wolf]

Well, actually you can RP retraining as healing some of the veterans and buy some new horse too... if you are a cavalry soldiers, if your horse fall dead, you will be useless (except when you can still fight dismounted, but this was not available in this engine). And you will be counted as "casualities" and when your boss retraining your unit, he will simply let you buy a new horse.

[delablake]

off topic, I know, but I couldn't resist:
[QUOTE=satalexton;2188242]now now, at least Gen. Haig managed to move his drinking cabinets 15 yards closer to Berlin, you gotta give him credit for that (blatant Blackadder pun)
Baldrick!
Don't forget his tortoise Allan!

[polehammer]

I think the question of unit experience was discussed many times. In fact the game keeps the stats of each soldier individually. The chevrons shown on unit card are just an average experience of all soldiers in a particular unit. The individual soldiers never lose experience.

For instance after several battles in a 100-men infantry unit you can have 50 soldiers with experience 8 and 50 soldiers with experience 4 - then the average unit experience will be 6 and the unit card will show "3 silver chevrons".

If in the next battle unit loses 40 soldiers with exp. 4, not gaining any experience, then there will be 50 soldiers with exp. 8 and 10 soldiers with exp. 4. The average unit experience should go up to 7. The unit card then shows "1 gold chevron" - it is more than previously despite the unit only suffered losses! It looks strange that the experience of a unit "goes up" when the unit suffers heavy losses but this is logical and you can see it quite frequently during battles.

If then the unit is replenished with 100 fresh recruits (up to its full strength 160), the average experience should be (50*8 + 10*4 + 100*0) / 160 = 2,75 - three bronze chevrons. The unit "loses chevrons" due to significant proportion of fresh unexperienced recruits. However, individual soldiers do not lose their experience. And each experienced soldier is more effective in combat.

It should not be possible then to retrain without losing "unit stat bonuses". Please correct me if I am wrong.
BTW, in my campaigns I only merge units, as I think retraining is not cost-effective.

[Marcus Gallicus]

I think the question of unit experience was discussed many times. In fact the game keeps the stats of each soldier individually. The chevrons shown on unit card are just an average experience of all soldiers in a particular unit. The individual soldiers never lose experience.

For instance after several battles in a 100-men infantry unit you can have 50 soldiers with experience 8 and 50 soldiers with experience 4 - then the average unit experience will be 6 and the unit card will show "3 silver chevrons".

If in the next battle unit loses 40 soldiers with exp. 4, not gaining any experience, then there will be 50 soldiers with exp. 8 and 10 soldiers with exp. 4. The average unit experience should go up to 7. The unit card then shows "1 gold chevron" - it is more than previously despite the unit only suffered losses! It looks strange that the experience of a unit "goes up" when the unit suffers heavy losses but this is logical and you can see it quite frequently during battles.

If then the unit is replenished with 100 fresh recruits (up to its full strength 160), the average experience should be (50*8 + 10*4 + 100*0) / 160 = 2,75 - three bronze chevrons. The unit "loses chevrons" due to significant proportion of fresh unexperienced recruits. However, individual soldiers do not lose their experience. And each experienced soldier is more effective in combat.

It should not be possible then to retrain without losing "unit stat bonuses". Please correct me if I am wrong.
BTW, in my campaigns I only merge units, as I think retraining is not cost-effective.

So that means that within one unit some soldiers will fight better on the battle map than the others?

[Zett]

I think the question of unit experience was discussed many times. In fact the game keeps the stats of each soldier individually. The chevrons shown on unit card are just an average experience of all soldiers in a particular unit. The individual soldiers never lose experience.

For instance after several battles in a 100-men infantry unit you can have 50 soldiers with experience 8 and 50 soldiers with experience 4 - then the average unit experience will be 6 and the unit card will show "3 silver chevrons".

If in the next battle unit loses 40 soldiers with exp. 4, not gaining any experience, then there will be 50 soldiers with exp. 8 and 10 soldiers with exp. 4. The average unit experience should go up to 7. The unit card then shows "1 gold chevron" - it is more than previously despite the unit only suffered losses! It looks strange that the experience of a unit "goes up" when the unit suffers heavy losses but this is logical and you can see it quite frequently during battles.

If then the unit is replenished with 100 fresh recruits (up to its full strength 160), the average experience should be (50*8 + 10*4 + 100*0) / 160 = 2,75 - three bronze chevrons. The unit "loses chevrons" due to significant proportion of fresh unexperienced recruits. However, individual soldiers do not lose their experience. And each experienced soldier is more effective in combat.

It should not be possible then to retrain without losing "unit stat bonuses". Please correct me if I am wrong.
BTW, in my campaigns I only merge units, as I think retraining is not cost-effective.

I think thats correct. Sometimes you see a unit lose chevrons in battle (no merging or retraining). This happens for example if a gold or silver chevron unit lose some soldiers. And that every soldier has his own stats would be a explanation for this phenomena.

Ceterum censeo Romam esse delendam

[miotas]

Not exactly on topic but in my game, very rarely, after a battle a unit with zero kills will gain a chevron. Anyone else had this? Anyone know why?

[satalexton]

surviving a battle is a skill in it's own right, i'm sure that'll give one exp...

[O'ETAIPOS]

Have you experienced the situation that those last few soldiers of enemy unit take forever to kill? Those are probably highest exp ones.
I also seen situation when unit looses exp by relatively low losses but inflicted by attack from the back (esp cav charge) I believe this means that soldiers with max exp are locatad by engine in the back of the unit.