Gah VIKINGS!

[Deus ret.]

Make sure the auto-cleanup function is off. After a battle, select a stack with a mix of high and low tech units. If you drag a low tech unit and drop it on a high tech unit of the same type, men will be taken out of the low tech unit to bring the high tech unit up to it's max. The men moved should retain their personal valor, but will receive the armor and weapons (and morale???) of their new unit. Depending on the numbers in each unit, you may end up merging them completely, or be left with a smaller unit of the low tech troops. Milk the low tech units of men, then ship them off to a teched up province for retraining.

Are you sure? As far as I know each and every single man in a MTW units has his own stats concerning valor, upgrades etc. The army display only shows the average value for the respective unit. If you merge a unit with gold armor upgrade with one without upgrades, the displayed armor upgrade will be red or whatever (depending on the relation of numbers) - although that does not mean that the whole unit now has red armor upgrade, it's rather a mix between some golden armored guys and those which are not armoered at all.

At least I'm pretty sure about this....

[drone]

Are you sure? As far as I know each and every single man in a MTW units has his own stats concerning valor, upgrades etc. The army display only shows the average value for the respective unit. If you merge a unit with gold armor upgrade with one without upgrades, the displayed armor upgrade will be red or whatever (depending on the relation of numbers) - although that does not mean that the whole unit now has red armor upgrade, it's rather a mix between some golden armored guys and those which are not armoered at all.

At least I'm pretty sure about this....

I have dropped a full 60-man un-teched unit of guys onto a depleted 5 man stack with gold sword/shield, and never seen the armor/weapon level "average" or drop. I don't know about morale upgrades, I would assume that is unit based since the whole unit decides as one to rout or hold, and I'm fairly certain valor is stored individually. But as far as I can tell, weapon and armor upgrades are on a per unit basis.

The merging for weapon/armor upgrades was posted before, can't find it with search, but I'm sure one of the more senior players could verify with the details (and hopefully clarify morale merges). You can always experiment to see for yourself as well. The fact that the auto-merge does it the "wrong" way is sneaky though.

From frogbeastegg's guide on valor:

This next point is important: A UNIT NEVER LOOSES VALOUR When you merge or retrain a unit the valour rating may appear to go down. This is because the valour of a unit is an average of all the men in the unit. Thus green troops can lower the overall, however as valour is tracked on an individual basis nothing is actually lost it only looks like it. If you have one particularly high valour individual in a unit and he dies the overall valour of the unit may seem to go down. This is because the man gave a large boost to the average. Again nothing is lost (apart from the dead man) it only looks like it. Check the battle log files (MTW directory, then log file folder. Only recorded if you set log files to 'on' in the options menu) if you don't believe me - valour is tracked on a per man basis and is visible in the log files.

Also, how do I get that auto-stack option up?

Attached to the right side of the campaign's mini-map is an arrow. Click that, and it will show a whole list of campaign options.

[Derfasciti]

Ok thanks.


W00T! Just got a total victory as Ireland on Normal!

That was really fun. It didn't take so long because after about half the conquest, I just massed mercs and just auto-battled.

However, it could have potentially gotten nasty when the Picts re-emerged. With thousands of troops, they started to beat me, but in one really decisive auto battle, I was able to push them all the way back and defeat them totally.

[Deus ret.]

I have dropped a full 60-man un-teched unit of guys onto a depleted 5 man stack with gold sword/shield, and never seen the armor/weapon level "average" or drop. I don't know about morale upgrades, I would assume that is unit based since the whole unit decides as one to rout or hold, and I'm fairly certain valor is stored individually. But as far as I can tell, weapon and armor upgrades are on a per unit basis.

The merging for weapon/armor upgrades was posted before, can't find it with search, but I'm sure one of the more senior players could verify with the details (and hopefully clarify morale merges). You can always experiment to see for yourself as well. The fact that the auto-merge does it the "wrong" way is sneaky though.

oh, seems like I confused the valor calculation with the upgrade stuff. thanks for clarifying! To me it looks a little like cheating so I won't do it too often but it's good to know anyway

[macsen rufus]

To me it looks a little like cheating so I won't do it too often but it's good to know anyway

The way I like to look at it, is this: each man brings his own valour to a unit, but the "captain" of the unit provides the armour and weapons, in good old fashioned feudal style. So I don't really see it as cheating to top-up a teched unit from an unteched one, it's just a case of transferring troops to a captain with more resources for his men (and you've paid for the kit, even if the men got killed )

Although I know valour is a man-by-man value, I really have no idea about the morale, though, but my gut feeling says that it goes with the "tech" side of the equation, ie depends on where the "captain" was trained.

One other thing to watch for when merging units, is whether either or both of the captains are "characters" - in my reckoning, a unit leader becomes a "character" once he acquires vices or virtues. You cannot merge two characters into one unit. If you have two understrength units both led by characters and try to merge them, the unit you take men out of will not entirely disappear - the "character" will remain as a one-man unit, even if the other unit is not full. If the unit you are topping up is NOT led by a character, then the character from the other unit will become the captain of the merged unit.

NOW FOR THE TRICKY BIT: I'll use an example: you have 15 royal knights teched up with weapons etc, but no VnVs for their captain and a "skilled attacker" unit with say three men but no upgrades. If these two units are in the same stack and you merge them them the combined unit will end up with 18 unteched knights like the character. Better to pull the 15 teched up guys out to make a new stack, then drop the character's 3-man unit into that stack. Why? Because then the character with his VnVs gets absorbed into the teched up unit, so you get the best of both - a teched up 18 man unit with your good captain in charge. Sheesh, that was longwinded, but hope it helps!

One final bit: when you empty out a character's unit into another character's unit, and leave him on his own, this can be very useful. If he's a useless, spineless, strange, good-running sybarite you can disband him as a single man and not waste a whole unit -- if he's a 9-feather mathematical genius you can keep him as a governor safe from combat without having to pay upkeep for a full unit