Upgrading Units in EBII

[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.