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.

[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

[Orvis Tertia]

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.

I disagree. From a gameplay standpoint, it creates an interesting strategic decision: Do I keep this enemy temple for the bonuses and take the culture penalty? Or do I raze it and build one of my temples?

From a roleplaying standpoint (for lack of a better word), it simulates that way that a native people who were skilled in, say, archery, could retain those traits that made them good archers under a different country's rule, provided their culture wasn't completely obliterated. By destroying a conquered enemy's temples and building your own, what you are really doing is suppressing their religion and culture and replacing it with your own.

[ToranagaSama]

I think the manner in which retraining works is just fine.

The problem may be, as its always been in all the *vanilla* TW series, TOO MUCH MONEY!

Re-training a 1 man unit cost virtually the same as training a new unit. So what's the problem?

TOO MUCH MONEY!

I wonder, how many follow an "Occupation" or "Enslavement" policy feel that re-training is too easy? Or, if the correlation is with an "Extermination" policy?

It just occurred to me that perhaps the game should required the Player to declare a policy of Occupation, Enslavement or Extermination at the Start of a Campaign; and, as a consequence, certain pre-determined *changes* become in effect corresponding to the Policy one chooses.

Choosing a Policy of Extermination migh then result in Re-Training to have a greater *penalty*, such an increased 'Turn' requirement, etc.

Just a thought....

[Hosakawa Tito]

I disagree. From a gameplay standpoint, it creates an interesting strategic decision: Do I keep this enemy temple for the bonuses and take the culture penalty? Or do I raze it and build one of my temples?

From a roleplaying standpoint (for lack of a better word), it simulates that way that a native people who were skilled in, say, archery, could retain those traits that made them good archers under a different country's rule, provided their culture wasn't completely obliterated. By destroying a conquered enemy's temples and building your own, what you are really doing is suppressing their religion and culture and replacing it with your own.

The problem is you can do both. Retrain immediately to gain the enemy temple bonus, then next turn demolish the enemy temple and build your own factions temple.

[Lonewarrior]

Is there a way to mod this so unit retraining takes a year per unit.