Investigation of unit retraining

[player1]

Feature or bug?

Units when retrained are fulled with recruits with exp level equal to average of the unit.
So if you have unit with just 6 soliders and 9exp, just retrating them you get full unit with 9exp.

Manual states otherwise that recruits are always of low exp, so can water down good exp unit.

[screwtype]

Feature or bug?

Units when retrained are fulled with recruits with exp level equal to average of the unit.
So if you have unit with just 6 soliders and 9exp, just retrating them you get full unit with 9exp.

Manual states otherwise that recruits are always of low exp, so can water down good exp unit.

I don't think that's a bug, I think it's a feature.

And the reason I say that is because you pay more to retrain units with experience - a LOT more. I've got some units of militia hoplites in my current game I won't retrain because the game wants me to pay several hundred denarii for 2 or 3 new soldiers.

In fact now I tend to just merge units with high experience so I'm not faced with the expensive business of retraining them.

[Kraxis]

I don't think that's a bug, I think it's a feature.

And the reason I say that is because you pay more to retrain units with experience - a LOT more. I've got some units of militia hoplites in my current game I won't retrain because the game wants me to pay several hundred denarii for 2 or 3 new soldiers.

In fact now I tend to just merge units with high experience so I'm not faced with the expensive business of retraining them.

Since it cost to upgrade the men with better armour and weapons you can actually get units that cost a lot to retrain a few men.
Now you might argue that the unit actually was upgraded. But if you had merged it with another unupgraded unit the same visual effect of MTW and STW would appear. The resulting unit would end up looking upgraded (in MTW and STW the unit would actually be upgraded) but at least some of them aren't. Thus it costs a lot to upgrade a seemingly inexpensive unit.

I have just tested this out, and I have concluded that experienced units cost no more to retrain than others.
I had a unit of Hastati beaten down to 14 (men out of 120) and they cost about 390 to retrain. Now that is significant, but I must point out that the unit had attained a silver chevron. So either this isn't very pronoyunced or it is simply not there.

[screwtype]

Since it cost to upgrade the men with better armour and weapons you can actually get units that cost a lot to retrain a few men.
Now you might argue that the unit actually was upgraded. But if you had merged it with another unupgraded unit the same visual effect of MTW and STW would appear. The resulting unit would end up looking upgraded (in MTW and STW the unit would actually be upgraded) but at least some of them aren't. Thus it costs a lot to upgrade a seemingly inexpensive unit.

Yes, but I'm sure this bug has been occurring with vanilla units (except for their increased experience) in cities with no available upgrades. I have hardly any upgrades available at all in my current game anyhow, so I don't believe this is the explanation.

I have just tested this out, and I have concluded that experienced units cost no more to retrain than others.
I had a unit of Hastati beaten down to 14 (men out of 120) and they cost about 390 to retrain. Now that is significant, but I must point out that the unit had attained a silver chevron. So either this isn't very pronoyunced or it is simply not there.

I had a unit of Greek levites (militia hoplites) with only two guys dead and the game was asking me to spend a three figure sum to retrain them - and the unit's base cost is only 230! And that was definitely in a city with no upgrades. The only difference I could see was that the unit had extra experience.

The game does make you pay a lot more for experience. For instance, if you hire a unit of merc bastamae, a vanilla unit will only cost 800, but a unit with just 1 extra experience point will go for 1700!

I must say though, the more I look at this the more the sums I'm asked to pay seem totally anomalous. They seem to change all the time. I should probably keep a record of the exact costs I'm asked to pay to try and work out what exactly is going on.

Mind you, I'm currently playing an RTR campaign, I suppose it's possible this is some sort of bug introduced by the mod, but I'm fairly sure it was occurring when I was playing the vanilla game as well. I might have to fire up one of my old vanilla campaigns to confirm it. BTW, I'm sure that all the other bugs I mentioned occur in the vanilla game as well as in the mod.

[Kraxis]

screwtype (talking about the cost of retraining here), you do know that the mercs are all set to have a specific cost at specific places. Merc hoplite in Sparta are more expensive than those in southern Italy, but not by much actually (950 compared to 850 I think) and they are quite superior in experience (3 to 0). Go change the costs if you want.

RTR might actually have changed to many things that the game now treats retraining a bit differently, go and check the unit file and see if upgrades are more expensive for isntance. But so far it sounds rather positive that you get expensive but experienced recruits, so the mod might actually have made a good feature by accident.

Anyway, I'm pretty certain I see no real costdifference in a less modded game. We need a tiebraker here (essentially I'm saying that the game gives experienced troops for free and screwtype says you pay a lot for them, right?). Who's up for it?

[screwtype]

screwtype (talking about the cost of retraining here), you do know that the mercs are all set to have a specific cost at specific places.

No, that's not what I was talking about. Several times I've gone to the merc screen and been offered two apparently identical bastarmae units in separate boxes side by side. They are exactly the same unit except that one has 1 point of experience and one doesn't. The one with 1 point of experience will always cost about 1700, the one with no experience, 800 or 850 or thereabouts.

Surely you've come across this phenomenon? I can't believe you wouldn't have.

Basically, you pay twice the normal amount for a mercenary unit with experience.

As to the wider issue of whether your own units with more experience cost more to retrain, I was unable to confirm that last night. I took careful note of a bunch of levite units I retrained and the costs varied from between 5.75 and 11.7 denarii per soldier retrained (in the same city), but unfortunately since these were units I had probably merged a number of times I have no way of knowing what their internal makeup was.

Still, the cost difference seems anomalous given that there were no upgrades available in that particular city. It's just that I couldn't see any pattern to indicate why one levite unit was costing twice as much to retrain per soldier as another.

[Magraev]

Umn Screwtype I have to make sure...

One of the bastarnae mercs you mentioned didn't happen to be Thracian mercs instead? They have identical images, and that price suits them better - I've never bought Bastarnae for less than 1700 iirc.

[screwtype]

I can now confirm that the units do indeed need odd retrainingcosts at times.

Yeah, it's definitely there, and it happens ALL the time. Most annoying, when it wants you to pay through the nose for 2 or 3 extra soldiers. You have to watch out for the cost of every unit.

I recently had a city with the plague, it contained 3 brand new mounted javelin units, all of which had been built in the city and which had not yet been moved or fought in a battle. I left them there for several turns while the plague raged, and when the plague finally ended they'd each been reduced from their full complement of 27 horsemen to 23.

So I decided to rebuild them, right there in the same city where they were first built. The rebuild costs for the three units were: 179, 155 and 101 denarii respectively.

It's got to be a bug.

[rcp]

I copied this from the frst post in the thread and I can assure you it is not a bug:

Retraining experience units keep their experience for no extra cost - Retraining units with high experience costs no more than retraining units with no experience, yet the experienced unit is filled with new recruits who have the same experience as the unit (there is no fall in experience)


Unit experience is based on the number of veteran soldiers in a unit and the ratio of those to soldiers to raw recruits. I do not know what the statistical difference is between veteran soldiers and recruits, but i suspect that veterans may have more hp etc. The veterans tend to survive longer in battle and those that are lost are often replaced by others who have been promoted. The number of chevrons a unit has is also based upon the ratio of veterans to raw recruits. When a unit is retrained the veterans remain and raw recruits are added to fill the empty slots, hence the lack of an increase in retraining cost.

In most cases you will not let your unit lose a very large percentage of its original size and as veterans are more likely to survive than recruits, the experience of the unit will most times remain the same after retraining. If on the other hand your unit takes heavier loses the number of chevrons a unit displays will indeed change. For example: A unit with three gold chevrons and 80 soldiers is reduced to around 15 soldiers during battle. Upon retraining you will find that said unit now displays fewer chevrons, most likely in the mid silver range, but i have seen them fall into the bronze catagory.

Edit: i read the post by Screwtype above, and the most likely reason you are seeing varying retraining costs in my opinion is due to weapon and armor upgrades being available in said cities, due to temples and smiths.

[screwtype]

Edit: i read the post by Screwtype above, and the most likely reason you are seeing varying retraining costs in my opinion is due to weapon and armor upgrades being available in said cities, due to temples and smiths.

Nope, if you read all my posts in this thread you would have seen that I checked to make sure there were no temple or smith upgrades available, or generals in the city who might have an effect.

The only explanation for the results I have got that makes sense to me is that the retraining procedure is bugged.

[Kraxis]

rcp, you most certainly don't lose overall experience at all. I have seen units of 10 men get retrained up to 120 with the same 3XP all the time. You can't tell me that the veteran 10 men has managed to becomer better through retraining.
Personally I would prefer the veteran units to get diluged by green replacements, and not have any costincrease as we all know that in mid-game we start getting a lot of money and can thus easily pay the inflated prices.

oaty, the strange sieges with no besieger is not a case of the player not seeing the besieger due to the FOW. In both cases I have seen, the city was fully visible with no FOW around it. In fact both cases looked like it was the player's cities. Except from a bug the only reasonable case would be an enemy in ambushmode, but that is a little farfetched.

And in the second case it can't have been because the Dacian army retreated from an attacked made on it by the garrison and another army, if you notice the Dacians are still laying siege to the city (if you withdraw the siege is broken). Anyway I actually left the game right after shot and when I reloaded the commander of the garrison had sat down again. So it was obviously some graphical error.

And the leadership pantheon, since all the other pantheons actually do get their bonusses increased I see no point in why the leadership version shouldn't...

[rcp]

Kraxis I would suggest using a 9xp unit to test unit experience. In almost all cases a unit with 3xp would have to take so many losses that the unit would cease to exist before you would see a change in experience for that unit.

Also it may or may not be the case that units which have an experience bonus due to temples keep that bonus at all times under all circumstances, this is an issue I have not looked into myself, but I can tell you that experience does indeed drop after taking heavy losses when testing using high experience units.

Please note I am not saying whether or not the ratios needed to get experienced units are realistic or balanced or anything else. Whether or not you agree with or like how this is calculated is a matter of opinion. Unit experience does work as designed.

[Magraev]

About retraining.

Last night I retrained a bireme with 3 gold chevrons and 18 out of 40 men remaing. After retraining I had a 3 gold chevron bireme with 40 men.

That should put all confusion to rest.

[Kraxis]

rcp, I'm experienced in testing and trust me, units do not drop their experience as due to retraining. Suffering losses can certainly drop the XP as the best men might get killed leaving the less experienced troops alive.

But if you care to mod the game so that you have a highly experienced unit from the get go (in such a unit every soldier is at that same XP level) and let it suffer heavy losses in a battle, and then retrain it you will notice it has kept the same experience as it had after the battle.
But in any case you can always see what the average of the unit is prior to retraining, and that average is always kept.

[rcp]

About retraining.

Last night I retrained a bireme with 3 gold chevrons and 18 out of 40 men remaing. After retraining I had a 3 gold chevron bireme with 40 men.

That should put all confusion to rest.

What you describe here is a loss off 55% of your unit's soldiers. If you were to lose over 75% of you troops, then you should see a difference in your unit's experience after retraining.

Some may not like that you need such a high rate of troop of troop loss to see a difference. Given how difficult it is to gain experience, when battles are fought on the battlemap, it would be nearly impossible to gain or retain experienced units if a 50% loss resulted in an experience drop. If one aspect of the system is tweaked, the entire system will also need to be tweaked to compensate.

[Bhruic]

What you describe here is a loss off 55% of your unit's soldiers. If you were to lose over 75% of you troops, then you should see a difference in your unit's experience after retraining.

Sorry, that's not true either. I've gone from 40 to 8 (on a bireme) that was triple gold. That's an 80% loss. Still triple gold after retraining.

Bh

[Kraxis]

Some may not like that you need such a high rate of troop of troop loss to see a difference. Given how difficult it is to gain experience, when battles are fought on the battlemap, it would be nearly impossible to gain or retain experienced units if a 50% loss resulted in an experience drop. If one aspect of the system is tweaked, the entire system will also need to be tweaked to compensate.

Maybe, but it is equally silly that in time you have 3 gold chevrons. 9 XP! Even Peasants with this kind of experience can deal insane damage, even defeat most normal infantry. And yes this happens (perhaps not so much with Peasants).
Experience should be something you took very good care of, like in the previous games. Whenever you got a new level of experience you combined that unit with another of equal level. That way you could keep the experience up in a few units that would be your elite core, unlike now when every man and his neigbours dog get high levels of experience.

[A.Saturnus]

There are some questions concerning the retraining of units. The main issues are the lack of drop in experience - since this contradicts the manual, it is likely a bug - and the strange retraining costs.

The posts here have been taken from the Bug list thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=46366