Upgrading Units in EBII

[Spazticated]

What about the armour upgrading feature in M2TW? You build the requisite building to upgrade the units defence stat, but it also changed their equipment. For example, a unit of levy spearmen started off with no armour, but if you built a tanner you could retrain or recruit new levy spearmen with leather armour and with a blacksmith you could give them chainmail, as apposed to RTW where it only upgrades their defense stats.

A unit of levy hoplites for example could start off with no armour, but with a bronze shield could be upgraded with leather or a linthorax or something similiar, where as a unit of proper hoplites would start with a linthorax and get something slightly heavier.

[fomalhaut]

I really really really hope that is already being implemented in EBII. It was so awesome in MTWII and isn't any more gamey than defense upgrades found in blacksmiths in EBI, just now there is a visual representation of those upgrades.

It gives a sense of improvement of your empires infrastructure as well as your own units fighting ability or individual wealth.

[Horatius Flaccus]

If you look at some previews (I believe the Boii preview was the first to show it), you can already see that they will use it to represent different era's of the units.

[Blxz]

If you look at some previews (I believe the Boii preview was the first to show it), you can already see that they will use it to represent different era's of the units.

Yeah, Horatio flacid is correct. The team plans to use the skin changes (which is all they really are) to show the gradual development of troop equipment over time. This does not represent a new troop. For example it won't change your levy spearmen into classical hoplites or whatever.

Firstly, doing so would prevent you from recruiting the lesser units when in truth levies were almost always used. On top of that the inability to change upkeep costs and recruitment costs. Finally the fact that the upgrades are very basic, an extra point of defense does not make a hoplite elite, neither can it be used to upgrade attack to any meaningful amount. Truthfully its really only useful to show graphical changes, exactly what the EB team is using it for.

EDIT: I also want to throw in that it won't allow you to change the unit skeleton/fighting style. This is most obvious in the Hastati, Principe, Triarii 'upgrade path'. (and I use that term loosely).

These troops are loose upgrades on each other but, especially in the Camillian era, the fighting styles are not identical. The 're-skin' method of unit upgrading is really not feasible at all, nor historical, nor particularly interesting from a game perspective.

[bobbin]

The upgrade feature changes the model a unit uses as well as provding a hardcoded stat increase to attack (+7 i think) or armour (+2.5).
Because the model is changed so is the skin used, the skeleton and the animations.

Apart from the already mentioned attack and armour vaules, the blacksmith upgrade doesn't change anything else in the EDU. So morale, upkeep, unit attributes etc are kept the same, this is why the from of unit upgrading mentioned earlier wouldn't work, aside from the historical and realism problems.