SP Campaign feature: recruits tend to outshine "veterans"

[Rothe]

I have noticed something that I don't really like in my 3 campaigns.
Recruited units frequently have better stats than units I produced many years ago that have been fighting and surviving.

I think it is because of the following:
- Casualties get replaced by lower XP replacements. For instance my naginata was recruited at 4 chevrons, but after losing half the men and then getting them to full again, they had 3 chevrons.
- Any advances in warfare you get will not be applied to your fielded units, only to new recruits. .For instance accuracy from Archery mastery tech is not applied to your fielded units.
- Tech gives XP to recruits, but not to your field units that might end up having lower XP than your newly recruited units.

This basically means that any early game units will be obsoleted.

I would prefer to have it work like this:
- Unit cannot go below its starting XP - e.g. you'd retain any XP you trained the unit with. If you recruit a unit at 4 chevrons, and then half of them die, the replacements are also at 4 chevrons. If you got to 5 chevrons, then some dying off and recruits coming in might reduce you to 4, but no lower.
OR
- Techs would not give XP, instead they'd give attack, defense, accuracy, reload and morale etc. This could be added to
your units in the field retroactively. Thus, even fielded units would get benefits from your bushido advances. They should, because they are the ones developing the warfare by testing things out at the field. Alternatively, you could have a system to retrain your units to gain your tech bonuses while still retaining battlefield experience.

I really hate having to scrap my good archers because they only managed to get 3 chevrons from the point when I recruited them to the point where I am able to produce archers with 4 chevrons and +10 to accuracy from my tech advances.

[Dead Guy]

I agree, these mechanics are pretty silly. When I get a pirate fortress for example, I can just scrap my entire navy and rebuild it.

I don't think a single one of my units has reached the levels raw recruits can get to due to tech and improved training facilities, which feels so incredibly wrong. Extensive battle experience should trump any training.

In my most recent campaign, I waited with recruiting the majority of my forces until I had an armourer and expert weapon smith in satsuma, and master bowmaker + hunters lodge in that north-eastern Kyushu province with artisans :D

[Daveybaby]

Prior to M2TW (i think it was) retraining gave you n00bs as replacements, requiring you to merge two depleted units to get an experienced full unit. M2 and ETW replaced units at the same experience level as the rest of the unit, saving all of that hassle. Maybe with S2 we need to rediscover that lost art all over again.

[Dead Guy]

Might be a good thing since it forces you to choose between slow replenishment and more experienced troops (i.e. just one or two regiments are replenished as opposed to all of them at once, giving you less men per turn in total) or fast replenishment and less experienced troops.

It's still pretty silly that veterans of several campaigns are worse than fresh recruits from a better Dojo.

[Monk]

Might be a good thing since it forces you to choose between slow replenishment and more experienced troops (i.e. just one or two regiments are replenished as opposed to all of them at once, giving you less men per turn in total) or fast replenishment and less experienced troops.

It's still pretty silly that veterans of several campaigns are worse than fresh recruits from a better Dojo.

I like to think of it as knowledge being passed down through the clan. As the campaign goes on, veterans return home and open better dojos, teaching new recruits the lessons they learned through your many battles.

[al Roumi]

Bar new abilities, tech has never been applied to extant units in TW games -to my knowledge. I guess the intended game mechanic is that your oldest units, by gaining experience, should be more or less equivalent to newly recruited units - but this has always been hard to achieve (for me anyway).

Also, in all previous TW games you could, through the retraining mechanism, upgrade your units with the boni available in a certain province -i.e. you could recruit a unit of armoured swordsmen in Nottingham then retrain the unit (despite it being at full numbers) in London to give it the benefits of your armoury/weaponsmith in London.

I'm happy to have done away with the micro management required to manage troop replenishments, but I do feel we've lost a bit of the baby with the bath water.

[Rothe]

Bar new abilities, tech has never been applied to extant units in TW games -to my knowledge. I guess the intended game mechanic is that your oldest units, by gaining experience, should be more or less equivalent to newly recruited units - but this has always been hard to achieve (for me anyway).

Also, in all previous TW games you could, through the retraining mechanism, upgrade your units with the boni available in a certain province -i.e. you could recruit a unit of armoured swordsmen in Nottingham then retrain the unit (despite it being at full numbers) in London to give it the benefits of your armoury/weaponsmith in London.

I'm happy to have done away with the micro management required to manage troop replenishments, but I do feel we've lost a bit of the baby with the bath water.

I would not even mind a tech would apply to all without a specific retrain. Lets say I research a new spear tech that gives me 1 XP (currently). That could be instead +1 attack, +1 defense and that would apply to all units already out and all future production.
Much better than 1 chevron for new units only as that would also remove the oddity of your tech getting worse when you lose men and have to replenish (now you lose some starting XP if you take losses).