Quote Originally Posted by Bhruic
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.



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).



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.



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.



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
Attrition is a grand strategic goal that is economically based. Your whole line of reasoning is flawed because attrition ain't about individual units, its about wearing down an army supported by an inferior economy by attriting their entire army which they can't afford to replace. In game, if you have 20 provinces and the AI opponent has 4, attrition will work given time. At 20 vs. 20, you must find alternate means.

Attrition does not apply to tactical actions, but to long term economic warfare.