retraining Highland Clansmen? What is the point?

[Stazi]

AFAIK soldiers never loose their experience. If they are retrained the inexperienced recruits are added to the unit lowering average unit's valour. I don't know how morale works because it's hard to track. I always thought that when a unit is retrained, new soldiers are added and all veterans' statistics are upped to the level of the new ones (if necessary). If veterans have higher statistics, they stay unchanged. I don't have any proof of it but if you try to retrain full unit (recruited before province being upgraded with e.g. master level building), the unit's parameters are visibly upped to match the new, higher standard.

Attack and armor bonuses work differently. You can check it by trying to combine two units, one "naked" and other with some bonuses. If you add "naked" soldiers to the better equipped unit, all soldiers become better equipped. The bonuses in the better equipped unit are not lowered/averaged but visibly stay the same as before. You can use this little trick to upgrade some old but decimated veteran unit for free. Soldiers carry over their valour (and probably morale) and get new swords and armors for free :).

btw The cost of retraining equals the cost of a new unit, no matter how many soldiers are added. You can even retrain full unit (for armor, valour, etc. bonuses) and you still pay full cost.

[drone]

It's been said that the armor/weapon bonuses are attached to the unit commander, he controls the kit so adding new men from other units get the unit's current equipment. I don't think you can actually tell if this happens or if the unit card is just displaying what the original unit/commander was equipped with, but this has always been how I treat it in game.

Combined with the aforementioned retraining costs, I generally merge lesser equipped units into better ones to reinforce, then send the leftovers to get retrained with better kit. I tend to overlook morale though, since it's not readily visible.

[bunt0025]

You can take that unit of militia sgts and retain (whole) in another province. Then, check their stats, then frame/kill the general and recheck their stats.

I run into the issue with woodsmen, a lot. It is tempting to produce them in Lithuania but then retrain for iron weapon bonuses in Sweden due to their dirt cheap cost.

[Togakure]

Something I just did in a Danish campaign: I devoted Norway to producing the cheap +1 valor vikings and developed its infrastructure to include a Cathedral and Master Armorer. After producing each gold-shield viking, I sent them next door to Sweden, where I had developed the infrastructure to include a Master Weaponsmith. Retraining the gold-shield, +1 valor viking in Sweden resulted in a Gold-shield, Gold-sword +1 valor viking with the Cathedral morale bonus. Ridiculously effective unit. Dirt cheap and makes Huscarles look like peasants. Plus you can produce them throughout all eras.

Until I tried this I didn't do much retraining. Since, I've been taking a closer look at retraining possibilities. This technique works great for important, high-ranking heirs & generals too if you build a Royal Court in the provinces with the high-level armorer/weaponsmiths.

Bit of a necro but I figure any posting nowadays is a good thing, heh. Happy gaming.

[edyzmedieval]

This is actually brilliant, Togakure. Something to try in a new campaign and to be fair - I never played the Danes.

[drone]

Something I just did in a Danish campaign: I devoted Norway to producing the cheap +1 valor vikings and developed its infrastructure to include a Cathedral and Master Armorer. After producing each gold-shield viking, I sent them next door to Sweden, where I had developed the infrastructure to include a Master Weaponsmith. Retraining the gold-shield, +1 valor viking in Sweden resulted in a Gold-shield, Gold-sword +1 valor viking with the Cathedral morale bonus. Ridiculously effective unit. Dirt cheap and makes Huscarles look like peasants. Plus you can produce them throughout all eras.

I used to do this all the time as the Danes, except I would usually build both the Master Armourer and Master Weaponsmith in Sweden. Also, if I had the trade routes really cranking I could spam fully upgraded Huscarles from Sweden before High arrived. Expensive, but quite entertaining!

[Togakure]

Oh I like Huscarles--just the idea of them makes me think of Frazetta's cover art for Karl Edward Wagner's "Dark Crusade." But yeah, expensive, and I tend to expand only to Sweden and Norway early on (unless an opportunity I can't pass up occurs in the UK), so I have to make the most out of what I spend until the big Trade bucks start kicking in. +1 Valor vikings for 131 florins and 37 florins upkeep is a great value, particularly once you get some armor and morale improvements going in Norway. I usually get my Trade going really strong well before High hits, and do build some Huscarles once I can easily afford them. They're great for intimidating rivals into not attacking Norway and Flanders in the Early era.

Since the OP is about retraining, one thing I do with the Danes is retrain all Valor 0 vikings I trained at the beginning before taking Norway so all of them eventually get the +1 valor bonus from Norway after I take it. I usually can't afford to build a lot of new units early on anyway, so I figure why not use that production queue to retrain what I've got in the mean time. I usually start doing this after my first level of Armorer is built for a +1 attack, +2 defense, +1 armor, +2 morale improvement overall. Well worth the micromanagement if you ask me. I queue up one at a time so my parity level remains effective.

For a while now, I've been forgoing the 3D battlefield and focusing on the board game, auto-resolving battles. This shifts the focus to grand strategy and speeds up campaigns. Occasionally I'll fight a battle that looks particularly fun, but nowadays I usually just auto-resolve. Got plenty of battlefield joy back in the day against human stalwarts in MP.

The reason I split the armorer and weaponsmith structures between two provinces is cost in time to build. I end up with both much faster than if I built both in a single province, and this also allows Sweden to focus on its primary function--trade and agri cash cow--early. I find this important for a Danish campaign because it's so slow going financially for quite a while.

Recently I hit a milestone in a campaign that I'd never hit before: over a million florins in my treasury by 1260 in an Early campaign without having to skimp on anything. I was able to bribe like crazy, weathered several lengthy trade route interruptions, eventually dominate the seas, and build like a madman. Bribing can enable province take-overs without any damage to existing infrastructure, which can save huge amounts of costly development time, significantly speeding up expansion once you get the war machine rolling. At the moment I'm trying to figure out why sometimes I can bribe a besieged army, and sometimes I can't. When I succeed there's no damage to the province, but when I don't, stuff gets damaged or destroyed. Maybe the bride has to be initiated before my attack on the province? Still not sure about this.

So yeah, learning about economic power on the board game and it's been an awesome compliment to military strategy.