Unit retraining - a little too good?

[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.

[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

[TheDuck]

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".



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

Attrition is a little more complicated that you are making it out to be.

Attrition is about resources, both human and otherwise...

A large country with a large economy can out-attrit a smaller country with a small economy. The idea is that you can provide greater numbers of people and material, and train more of them 'in parallel'. Both the larger pool of folks and the larger economy is what make attrition work against a smaller foe.

The retraining of troops in RTW requires money and available bodies. No money, no retraining. So its not like its 'free' or anything. And you do have to have the training facilities both handy, and at the correct level for the unit involved, so logistical issues are taken into account.

Given the fact that (in the real world) it is way easier to put replacements into existing units than bring a new unit completely 'up to snuff', I have no problem at all with the system in RTW. It works and meets with my expectations about logistics and the training of new soldiers.

Given that each turn is 6 months, it just makes sense. Now if each turn was two weeks, you might have a point!

[Red Harvest]

I still think it is overboard. With the current "retraining" it is possible to build several times as many total armies as one could otherwise. If you take the retraining argument to its logical conclusion, then why not allow you to build as many NEW units as your bank accounts would allow as well?

The idea of the training structures is that the new guys need instruction and equipping! This is not merely a draft. While retraining would require less of this than forming new units, I somehow doubt that it could be as much as 8 times less... So I see it as more of it just being an unusual rule, than it being a logical extension of existing rules.

I like the fact that retraining can happen at the same time as new unit builds. That makes sense to me, it is the quantity that bothers me.

[TheDuck]

I still think it is overboard. With the current "retraining" it is possible to build several times as many total armies as one could otherwise. If you take the retraining argument to its logical conclusion, then why not allow you to build as many NEW units as your bank accounts would allow as well?

The idea of the training structures is that the new guys need instruction and equipping! This is not merely a draft. While retraining would require less of this than forming new units, I somehow doubt that it could be as much as 8 times less... So I see it as more of it just being an unusual rule, than it being a logical extension of existing rules.

I like the fact that retraining can happen at the same time as new unit builds. That makes sense to me, it is the quantity that bothers me.

Under normal circumstances in the game you aren't replacing 90% of your troops in one turn. Its prob. more like 10% of your entire army (say 130 or so guys on normal settings). That doesn't sound like a lot to me. I agree that if all the units you are retraining in a city are down to like 10%, then it seems rather large..

But.. that said.. there is a lot of extra information imparted to completely new officer corps (for new units) that simply doesn't have to happen with replacements. In WW2 replacements were given to existing units just after completing boot. Realistically if your training requirements are high, you might keep the boots over for advanced boot or some supplementary training, but you can shove em at existing units quite quickly. In reali life replacements happen very quickly, and can be in fairly large numbers.

Creating totally new field units in real life is a much longer process than just boot and advanced boot camp. The unit spends a LOT of time together before ever being committed to combat. There is so much that the unit has to learn to do together.

I think the game models the difference between these two things really well. There might be a scale issue in exceptional circumstances, but given the results I'm seeing in my own games I'm just not seeing it.

And on further thing on the 'attrition point', if my logistical/economic support train is right behind me (the city I'm defending has production buildings in it), and the AI has them 200 miles away, I should have an advantage, which is precisely how retraining affects game mechanics.

I personally haven't played any other game that gets the whole economic warfare portion down so well and still does a good job of tactical mechanics. And note here I've played Shogun some and Medieval to death, and am also an RTS junkie (I bought Shogun on a bargain rack about 2 months before Medieval came out.. I keep meaning to go back to Shogun and really get into it.. but Medieval mesmorized me, and now RTW has me awestruck...

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.