retrain question and exe?

[AstroCat]

I've searched around I am seeing information both ways.

When I retrain a unit I understand that it keeps the veteran troops and adds new green troops and then averages out the overall unit experience. Individual soldiers within in the unit are modeled and keep their current expereince. The chevrons you see are the average of all the individual soldiers. Is this correct?

If this is correct what is the problem with retraining being unhistorical/realistic? This seems right to me no? New troops come in green and mix in with the experienced veterans.

Also, I understand that only Alex.exe retrains it's troops, correct? I am current using rtw.exe but trying to decided if I should be using bi.exe or alex.exe instead.

Thanks for the help.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

When you retrain a unit, the new recruits are magically granted all the experience and fighting skill of the veterans. So an 18 year old recruit instantly becomes the fighting equal of a soldier with experience gained from 20 battles.

This is a bug in the RTW engine that was never fixed. But it really helps the AI in the Alex engine which uses retraining a lot, soon the AI will have units with 3 gold chevrons. Celtic Levy Spearmen with those can wipe the floor with Roman Principes.

To avoid exploiting this bug and gaining an advantage over the AI in the RTW and BI engines, which don't retrain very often, the player should MERGE units rather than retrain. Take a depleted veteran unit out of your army stack, raise a new unit of the same type, then merge them. The remaining men of the newly-recruited unit are the next draft of reinforcements and remain in reserve, and the veteran unit, back up to full strength, goes back to rejoin the main army.

That way, the new recruits merging into the veteran unit don't magically gain experience, and the overall experience of the entire unit goes down - accurately reflecting the fact that a proportion of the men are now new recruits. But a full strength unit with new recruits is better than a depleted unit with all veteran soldiers.

You can of course maintain your units' experience levels by merging two depleted veteran units together to make one full strength veteran unit. That's OK too, because now your army has one fewer unit overall. And when you raise a new unit of rookies, they won't be merging with the vets, and thus won't have any experience - leaving you with a kick-ass unit of experienced veterans, and a bog-standard unit of rookies. In a battle, the rookie unit might get into trouble against a tough enemy, forcing the veterans to go and help them out.

Imagine it this way. You've got three units, and you've earned enough experience to gain 9 chevrons between them. You can either have i) one unit with 3 gold chevons and two units with no experience at all, or ii) 3 units with three bronze chevrons. Which would be better? If you have option i) then you have a kick-ass 'god' unit of 'Arnold Schwarzeneggers', but what happens if the two rookie units break and run? Will your single 'god' unit be able to win the battle on its own, outflanked and surrounded by the whole enemy army? Probably not - even 'Arnold Schwarzegger' will die if he's stabbed in the back. But if you choose option ii), then all three of your units might be able to stand their ground - meaning you win the battle! Plus you won't take losses from your rookies routing and getting cut down while fleeing.

Overall, I find merging veteran units with rookie replacements better. The army as a whole gains chevrons more slowly, but at least they all have some experience, instead of having several rookie units that can't always hack it supported with a small and ever-diminishing hard core of veterans.

[AstroCat]

See, that's what I thought but I also read that the new green units are mixed in with the veteran units and the experience chevron adjusted to the average. That is how it "should" work but your saying that the new green units get bumped up to whatever the level of the original unit is? Thus "cheating" to give you a full unit with no xp loss? Because the AI uses this, it seems like a reason not to play with alex.exe, but many people seem to recommend alex.exe as the best on to use, very confusing...

[QuintusSertorius]

See, that's what I thought but I also read that the new green units are mixed in with the veteran units and the experience chevron adjusted to the average.

No, this is what happens when you merge units. I'm fairly certain I've seen a unit depleted to under 10 men be restored to full, with no loss of experience, if you retrain.

With rtw.exe, the AI never retrains, so it's effectively an exploit in favour of the human player.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I'm fairly certain I've seen a unit depleted to under 10 men be restored to full, with no loss of experience, if you retrain.

Yes, me too.

[Paltmull]

I've read about this retraining bug several times, but I can't rember it ever happening to me. When i retrain a unit, it always loses chevrons.

[Rahl]

With rtw.exe, the AI never retrains, so it's effectively an exploit in favour of the human player.

I have often seen armies with several silver or gold chevron units with full manpower and no small units remaining from merging. Since the AI can't disband I'm sure they were retrained units, what else could they be?

@Vollorix
If you don't disband where do you get your veterans to fill up the ranks?

[Paltmull]

what else could they be?

Units that the AI faction got from a settlement that rebelled to it, perhaps? Such units often have messed up stats.

[Lysimachos]

When I retrain a unit I understand that it keeps the veteran troops and adds new green troops and then averages out the overall unit experience. Individual soldiers within in the unit are modeled and keep their current expereince. The chevrons you see are the average of all the individual soldiers.

When you retrain a unit, the new recruits are magically granted all the experience and fighting skill of the veterans. So an 18 year old recruit instantly becomes the fighting equal of a soldier with experience gained from 20 battles.

I think both happens. I've seen units' experience be reduced as it should be by the lower average, but I've also seen a handful of battle hardened warriors becoming a full formation of golden chevroned elite killers. I have no idea what conditions lead to which result, though.

Edit: Now that I thinkt about it, is it possible this is something that has been fixed in Alex or in M2TW? I'm not sure anymore if both experiences happened with RTW.

[AstroCat]

I think because it maintains them on a individual solider level and then averages the overall experience against the new 0 level recruits. So in this way retraing would be realistic, but I am not 100% sure this is happening.