Unit retraining - a little too good?

[Bhruic]

After playing a few games through, I'm starting to think that the 0-turn unit retraining is a little too powerful. Especially since you can queue up as many as the queue will take.

Effectively, I can take as many casualties in combat as I want, knowing full well that I can "heal" them all for the next turn. Sure, I might lose a bit of experience, but since the experience system is individual, my veteran troops are likely to stick around.

From a realism point of view, it doesn't make much sense either. I can "retrain" 8 units with 1 man left up to full strength in a single turn, but I can only "train" one unit? Or even less, should that unit take longer?

My solution would probably be to implement a one per turn limit on retraining. So you can train one unit in a turn, and retrain one unit in a turn, but can't do multiples of either.

Bh

[ChaosLord]

Just have it go by number of men trained for the turns it takes. IE, playing on huge it'd be like this. Say you have 4 units of 120 men Hastati, so they each need 40 men to bring them back up to full strength, so 160 total. Since thats the same as normal unit, they get trained in one turn. But if you had 5 120 men Hastati units it'd take 2 turns and so on.

That might be too annoying to add in, so perhaps just a sit limit for each unit size level. 40-80-120-160(as maximum number of re-trained men per turn). Retraining shouldn't stop you from training a normal unit though as the two could go hand in hand and it might hurt the AI more then it helps to balance things.

[Shadow_Wolf33]

I like being able to retrain almost half a full stack at once...as someone who hates taking casualties, it makes painful battles a lot less...painful....if you don't like how the retraining is done, then just use restraint and re-train them once per turn

[Oaty]

I do'nt think its that powerful. especially when it comes to naval warfare. I'd never had sea dominance if it was'nt for the retraining option. The other thing is I'm with sun tsu here. Usually I never had more than 2 units at a time for retraining.

Where it can be real powerful is to throw all your depleted units in your capital of Arretium as Julii making it look poorly defended just waiting for the civil war.

Civil war breaks out ........ doh the Marian reforms have come at the same time. oh well so much for that tactic.

And as I ca'nt watch what the A.I. does it may hurt them more

[Hosakawa Tito]

The really screwy part about retraining is that you can get bonuses from enemy temples for your troops. You shouldn't be able to do that with a temple from a foreign culture.

[Blodrast]

hmm, if I think of a more realistic way of limiting the retraining of units, it would be the size of the population of the city (or, at least, the settlement's).
e.g. you can only train/retrain 1 man per 100 population in your city.
or you can only train x men for small town, 1.5x for large town, 2x for ... etc.
You get my point.

About the units gaining bonuses from foreign cultures' temples: well, it may seem a bit odd, I agree, but would you rather have them get no bonuses whatsoever until you build your own temples in that city ? I suppose one can think of them in a similar manner that one gets the upgrades - it's just another type of upgrade, and they stack.
(like in MTW, you could retrain a gold armor unit in a province with gold weapons only, and it would keep both bonuses).
I agree however that it would be definitely weird if they actually _kept_ that bonus, and stacked the bonus from Roman (or whatever your faction is) temples.
i.e., they get +2 to missile attacks from Abnoba, but they also get whatever other bonuses your own temples offer when you retrain those units in a city with that kind of temples.
This should be tested

[Ulstan]

I like the retraining and think it shouldn't be changed.

In MTW, it was a waste to retrain really. I never bothered.

Not so here. I find myself pulling units back from situations where they are getting slaughtered so that they don't die completely.

It just makes a lot more sense historically. You didn't constantly crank out new legions, you put men back into existing ones. Logistically and as far as organization and command are concerned, it's way easier to fill up the ranks of an existing legion with new recruits than to produce a full legion, complete with commanders, all equipment, complete logistical and organizational tail, etc, from scratch.

[Satyr]

I find that only being able to retrain 8 units a turn is rarely a concern. I merge my depleted units being careful to not completely use up the unit I am merging. If I do this wisely I often only have 1 or 2 of each type of unit to retrain. Add in the fact that my war dogs retrain themselves I am almost always ready to invade someone new two turns after my last battle.

[Shadow_Wolf33]

well think about it...if you've got gold level armor...are you going to give that up for worse gear? and maybe they have the concept of making gold armor, so they show the new guys how to do it....and how to do the +2 ranged attacks as well

[Bhruic]

I find that only being able to retrain 8 units a turn is rarely a concern. I merge my depleted units being careful to not completely use up the unit I am merging. If I do this wisely I often only have 1 or 2 of each type of unit to retrain. Add in the fact that my war dogs retrain themselves I am almost always ready to invade someone new two turns after my last battle.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Within a turn of having an army completely decimated, you can have it fully up to strength. So what's the incentive to take any care?

It's even worse when you are attacking/defending a city. You know that as long as you win, you've got a full strength army again. This completely destroys the concept of "attrition".

well think about it...if you've got gold level armor...are you going to give that up for worse gear? and maybe they have the concept of making gold armor, so they show the new guys how to do it....and how to do the +2 ranged attacks as well

Not sure what you are talking about. Armour, weapons and "veteran" status are all tracked individually in RTW. You don't lose anything by retraining, you just get some novice units as replacements. That's hardly a tragedy.

Bh

[Lord Ovaat]

Personally, I still like the "homeland" concept. I actually would like to see legion troops ONLY recruitable in Italy. BUT, the campaign movement speed would have to be adjusted to some degree of normalcy. 4 or 5 years to walk across North Africa? Don't think so. So as long as the speed is rediculously slow, I stick with retraining the way it is. The Senate ordered me to take Domus Dulcis domus last night. I laughed out loud. My closest troops were in Tylis. It wasn't even possible to get there in that length of time. It's not like the AI builds roads or anything. OK, yeah, I know, "But what has Rome done for us?".
But even the Roman AI usually don't build roads.

[GFX707]

You guys are forgetting that it costs money.

[LordKhaine]

Yeah it does cost a fair bit. It's easy to seem "too good", but you're forgetting how much it costs to rearm badly damaged units. On the other hand.... it is very quick. And time is money, as they say.

I think it's a good thing that people pull back an army to rearm it, instead of simply cranking out new units like someone said.

[HopAlongBunny]

hmm, if I think of a more realistic way of limiting the retraining of units, it would be the size of the population of the city (or, at least, the settlement's).
e.g. you can only train/retrain 1 man per 100 population in your city.
or you can only train x men for small town, 1.5x for large town, 2x for ... etc.
You get my point.

Actually it is. Present campaign, after burning Athens down...I can never train or re-train more than one unit; after placing one unit in the que, all selections grey-out. The part that is a little less than believable...with a pop of 400 it has the largest trade income

[Spino]

I like the unit retraining as it is. Sure, it's somewhat unrealistic but it's a much better alternative for the AI which now replenishes depleted units with alarming regularity. In Medieval the AI would rarely replenish its depleted units, especially the high value ones, and its campaign armies would wither away into nothing. The current system makes for a better AI opponent so I say leave it alone.

[Samurai Waki]

not to mention realistically it shouldn't take more than 6 months to train a legionnaire in the 1st place, and the population of town also suffers when a unit is re-queued there

[motorhead]

not to mention realistically it shouldn't take more than 6 months to train a legionnaire in the 1st place, and the population of town also suffers when a unit is re-queued there

but in reality, roman legions rarely brought in new recruits to fill out its ranks. A few times depleted legions were combined and formed Gemina (twins) units, but i recall reading about a Caesarian campaign in north africa, where soldiers were defecting to Caesar because Scipio was filling in their ranks with raw recruits.
Part of the adhesion of a roman legion was the fact they all came from the same region, roughly the same age group, spoke the same dialect and followed the same customs. Fellow legionaries were family, friends, neighbors or someone who lived in a nearby town. When a legion's recruitment retired, some re-signed and formed the 1st (and sometimes the 2nd) cohorts of a legion, as well as taking on all the NCO slots.


Aaaanyway, back on topic. I agree with Spino. Overall, the AI does benefit from this scheme and i like that. But it could use a slight tweaking perhaps. According to a dev post (posted in the Unit Experience thread ) retrained units are supposed to "replenish the unit with new soldiers *at the units average experience level*". That I don't agree with overall. My 3-chevron gold unit down to 1 man can retrain back up to a full unit of 3-gold???

[Bhruic]

I like the unit retraining as it is. Sure, it's somewhat unrealistic but it's a much better alternative for the AI which now replenishes depleted units with alarming regularity. In Medieval the AI would rarely replenish its depleted units, especially the high value ones, and its campaign armies would wither away into nothing. The current system makes for a better AI opponent so I say leave it alone.

Wait, you are trying to tell me that you think the AI gets more of an advantage from this than the player does? Are you serious?

The player can abuse the system to a much greater degree than the AI can. Imagine that you are attacking a city, and the enemy has a huge stack 3 spaces away. The city is somewhat well defended. You attack, and it takes everything you've got to take over the city. Now, in a realistic game (and by that I mean "realistically fun"), there'd be no way you'd be able to hold on to that city. The enemy stack would walk in and wipe out the few pitiful troops you've got remaining.

But in RTW, thanks to this bogus retraining system, the full stack walks up and, oh, look, you've got a completely retrained army.

The same is true while defending. Who cares how many casualties you take in fighting off an invader? As long as you beat them, your army will be back to 100% full strength next turn.

You guys are forgetting that it costs money.

If the amount of money it costs were relevant, than no, I wouldn't "forget" it. But, sadly, money is rarely a limiting factor when it comes to unit retraining. Neither is population growth, unless you play on huge unit sizes. Forgoing building a single 3000+ Denarii building is generally enough to pay for all of the retraining you need.

Bh

[GFX707]

The same is true while defending. Who cares how many casualties you take in fighting off an invader? As long as you beat them, your army will be back to 100% full strength next turn.

A turn is 6 months. In 6 months in real life you could recruit and train an entire army.

6 months to train one unit of 80 men is stupid in the first place. Why just one unit? Why can't you train more than one unit at a time in a city of 24,000? Of course because if you could the game would be too easy....but that would be realistic. You could easily raise an army of 5000 in 6 months in real life....

also think how far you could walk in 6 months....even with an army. I mean at 3mph which is a comfortable walk you could cover 5000 miles. Yet in the game you can barely cover a quarter of France.

[Blodrast]

Actually it is. Present campaign, after burning Athens down...I can never train or re-train more than one unit; after placing one unit in the que, all selections grey-out. The part that is a little less than believable...with a pop of 400 it has the largest trade income

If I understand what you're saying correctly, then I have to contradict you ;)
Right now it's not limited in the way I was suggesting in my post above; the _only_ limitation right now is what you're seeing, that you have to have over 400 (or some similar number) men in order to be able to train _at all_. But whether you have 800, 8000 or 32000 makes no difference whatsoever in the number of units you are allowed to train (as long as the population doesn't go below 400, of course, but it's practically impossible to do that in a city with a few thousand population). _That_ is what I was talking about.

I believe that gives you a bit of an advantage over the AI, since it will never be able to exploit this to the extent a human can - hell, it doesn't use full stacks as often as it should to begin with ! (remember all those 2-3- unit stacks that you meet all over the map, and the continuous trickle of crappy armies that come to attack your city every turn ?).

I also believe that because of the faulty way the AI is managing its armies, i.e. not merging them when it could easily do that, that the retraining of a unit and preserving entirely its experience gives you yet another extra edge against the poor AI.
Why ? Well, because it's trivial for you as a human to get very experienced units, very fast - precisely because the AI keeps offering you an infinite amount of 3-unit stacks for you to clobber at your convenience, gaining experience without any significant losses.
So in that light I believe this is slightly overpowered. It would be more balanced if the AI were able to use full stacks properly - in that case I reckon we could leave the retraining in 0 turns and the preservation of the unit's exp as they are...

[Lonewarrior]

You all make good points but this should be change.

[Bhruic]

A turn is 6 months. In 6 months in real life you could recruit and train an entire army.

6 months to train one unit of 80 men is stupid in the first place. Why just one unit? Why can't you train more than one unit at a time in a city of 24,000? Of course because if you could the game would be too easy....but that would be realistic. You could easily raise an army of 5000 in 6 months in real life....

also think how far you could walk in 6 months....even with an army. I mean at 3mph which is a comfortable walk you could cover 5000 miles. Yet in the game you can barely cover a quarter of France.

While what you say may be true, I don't see how it has any impact on the point at hand. I mean, if you are advocating being able to train/retrain as many units as the queue will hold in general, ok, that's a position. I don't think it would be something that would improve things, but you're right, it would probably be a little more realistic. But barring training as many units as you want per turn, I think having the ability to retrain as many units as you want per turn is unbalanced.

As for the movement issue, suffice it to say that the TW games have never focused on realistic movement rates.

Bh

[motorhead]

The player can abuse the system to a much greater degree than the AI can. Imagine that you are attacking a city, and the enemy has a huge stack 3 spaces away. The city is somewhat well defended. You attack, and it takes everything you've got to take over the city. Now, in a realistic game (and by that I mean "realistically fun"), there'd be no way you'd be able to hold on to that city. The enemy stack would walk in and wipe out the few pitiful troops you've got remaining.

But in RTW, thanks to this bogus retraining system, the full stack walks up and, oh, look, you've got a completely retrained army.

- agreed. this can be easily abused by the player, giving the poor AI even less chance. I'd call it the "sea monkey" effect. Player carefully preserves small, good valor units and moves them into a city that is either near the front lines or facing some possible, future threat. Pump city garrison up with some cheapo peasants to improve happiness. When danger appears imminent, add water to your "sea monkey" units (retrain) and suddenly you've got 9 fully equipped, +valor units to fight with. Why pay those legionary cohorts 210/turn, just preserve a few depleted seed units and retrain only when needed.

edit: just thought of another abusable feature of sea monkeys. use those units to pump up valor of damaged units, since merging units does take into account the xp level of the troops being added. ex: keep a depleted unit of gold chevron legionaries in a city, bring in other damaged legionary units to said city. retrain the gold chevron unit, then dump their 8xp men into damaged unit to pump up their valor. rinse, wash, repeat, abuse.

[Red Harvest]

I agree that retraining is a bit too good. The problem is on the "replacement recruiting" side of the equation. It encourages retraining of many small scrap units in a single turn. I always retrain the most depleted units first. Seems a bit unrealistic to train so many green troops in a single province in a turn.

I believe retraining/training should be capped at some much smaller maximum (for the recruits, not the retrained vet survivors.) It should probably vary with population. At present this is not an issue unless population would fall to 400 or below.

[Ulstan]

"This completely destroys the concept of "attrition"."

That's not true. First of all, if the town is a low level frontier town, you can't replace all your losses because you can't retrain your good units.

So, suppose it is a major city with all the highest level buildings. In that case, as long as you have the money to buy weapons for the men, and the men in the city to form units, you *could* keep cranking out your troops. It's silly to think that a vast city like rome would only manage to produce one century of legionares every sixth months.

The current system does a good job of relatively good job of limiting production of new units to a rather slow trickle, but allowing you to recruit a flood of new men to bolster the ranks in an emergency (if you are defending your city with an army).

Moreover, it makes the AI armies tougher, because you actually see full strength units with many chevrons, instead of how it was in MTW.

"but in reality, roman legions rarely brought in new recruits to fill out its ranks."

Whaaat? Of course they did. The alternative was to merge existing legions (which was very very rare) or scrap existing legions every time their strength got low from losses. The romans didn't do this much because the men were very proud of their legions. They'd keep specific legions around for many years.

It just feels more accurate the way it is now: I'll fight several battles, maybe take a barbarian town, then fall back to a town I've had long enough to build it up so that I can retrain my men, rest etc.

I think this better mirrors the way campaigns were actually carried out, rather than the uber army marching across the land and then a steady stream of brand spankin' new legions hurrying to catch up.

If you think being able to retrain right after you capture an enemy city is a problem, only allow you to recruit soldiers from a town where the culture penalty is

[Bhruic]

"This completely destroys the concept of "attrition"."

That's not true. First of all, if the town is a low level frontier town, you can't replace all your losses because you can't retrain your good units.

Actually, it is true. If an army is in a city that can make the units it has, you can never defeat that army through attrition unless you can cause the enemy to run out of funds.

So, suppose it is a major city with all the highest level buildings. In that case, as long as you have the money to buy weapons for the men, and the men in the city to form units, you *could* keep cranking out your troops. It's silly to think that a vast city like rome would only manage to produce one century of legionares every sixth months.

Which is part of my point. Why can you fill up 9 units that have 1 man left in 6 months, but only recruit one? Or, none, if you've got a unit that takes 2 turns to train (but still 0 to retrain from 1 unit).

Moreover, it makes the AI armies tougher, because you actually see full strength units with many chevrons, instead of how it was in MTW.

Granted, it makes the AI tougher. But what you seem to forget is that it makes the player proportionally tougher. That is, the player is able to exploit the retraining system much better than the AI can. That means that instead of giving the AI a benefit, like you imply, it actually penalizes them.

It just feels more accurate the way it is now: I'll fight several battles, maybe take a barbarian town, then fall back to a town I've had long enough to build it up so that I can retrain my men, rest etc.

I think this better mirrors the way campaigns were actually carried out, rather than the uber army marching across the land and then a steady stream of brand spankin' new legions hurrying to catch up.

Enemy cities are almost always better built up for military than my own. I can count on one hand the number of times I've taken a city and not been able to retrain most (if not all) of my units. Frankly, I'd be happy with the system you're talking about. If, for example, I could only retrain Roman units in Roman cities (ie, the cities the Roman factions start with), that'd be fine. But being able to take over a British city and immediately retrain all of my Roman legions just doesn't seem "more accurate" to me.

If you think being able to retrain right after you capture an enemy city is a problem, only allow you to recruit soldiers from a town where the culture penalty is (less than) 25%. Or maybe reduce all the level of all troop training facilities by one.

Something like that could work. I've never really been sure why you can recruit/retrain units from a city you just took over in any case - wouldn't they sort of not like you? I guess you could conscript soldiers, but they wouldn't be terribly effective in battle.

Bh

[Oaty]

It's the only way to play with huge units. My war with egypt has had made me build forts with my long war with Egypt. I lost Cyrene(cyrencia) but it did'nt have the potential for training troops with 1600 population. When I took back Cyrencia the population was nearly unchanged and that long battle for Siwa had me sending back troops to Carthage and Sicily for retraining. So right there was 10 turns/5 game years. And if I had used Cyrene just once for this long battle it would have ensured Cyrene would be unusable. For the first 100 years of the game there really is'nt too many cities that you can use for mass retraining

Also the Marin reforms hurts the Romans more than it helps at first. There are very few cities that you can train the cohorts in. What is the closest city above Patavium that can train early cohorts, none in any of my campaigns. At least until you run into the Parthians all the way in the east and if your lucky London.

[GFX707]

I think Bhruic should go back to playing MTW. He wants stupid diplomacy and one unit per turn retraining. Perfect solution.

[motorhead]

I think Bhruic should go back to playing MTW. He wants stupid diplomacy and one unit per turn retraining. Perfect solution.

a very convincing and constructive post...(that's sarcasm )

[Bob the Insane]

Also the Marin reforms hurts the Romans more than it helps at first. There are very few cities that you can train the cohorts in. What is the closest city above Patavium that can train early cohorts, none in any of my campaigns. At least until you run into the Parthians all the way in the east and if your lucky London.

Personally I have found playing the campaign game at either Hard or Very Hard and against the Greeks and Carthage that their cities are often a advanced as my very best city so no problems rebuilding the legions...

Additionally I think people are forgetting that a turn is 6 months... And recruitment is not always on a strictly voluntary basis!! I have no problem with the mass rebuilding of units even using the regious structure of other cultures. Firstly you have to pay for the troops, secondly the troops come out the the existing population, thirdly 6 months is a sufficiently long training period, fourth you can only rebuild a unit if the facilities exist to do so, fifth if the culture/region produces experienced warriors they will be just as experienced in a Roman uniform....

All IMHO of course....