A Question About Upgrading/Training Troops

[Sensei Warrior]

You won't get the morale bonus IIRC. A man is trained with the morale and valour that the province gives him. Retraining makes no difference to this.

... but don't forget you can also (re)train for morale/valor bonuses too, which are often even more valuable than armor/weapon upgrades.

Ok, I just noticed this. It's a small technicality I know, but who is right in regards to retraining a full unit. The unit of Billmen I just created I sent to the Provence with a Cathedral. Will retraining him there give a morale bonus?

[caravel]

For the valour simple: Start an Early campaign as the Italians, retrain the 60 man UM units in Genoa and Tuscany to full units (100 or 120 men depending on which unit size you use), or the test won't work, and end the turn. Swap the UM units from Genoa and Tuscany, end turn again, retrain the Genoa UM in Tuscany, end turn. What happened to their valour?

Also try starting an Early campaign as the Turks, build a Horse Breeder in Armenia, train 1 unit of AHC, should be valour 1. Upgrade the Horse Breeder to the maximum, a Master Horse Breeder. Retrain the AHC unit there. What happened to their valour?

For the morale you can use similar methods but you'll have to go into battle to test it, as it's not visible on the campaign map. You will almost certainly find that it won't be upgraded. I could be wrong though of course.

If the unit was a depleted one, those new men trained would have gained the valour and morale bonuses from the province, though their fellows would have only gained any armour or weapon upgrades.

[Geezer57]

"If the unit was a depleted one, those new men trained would have gained the valour and morale bonuses from the province, though their fellows would have only gained any armour or weapon upgrades."

That's not my experience, at least not for valor - in my current BKB Nicaean campaign, I originally train Uzbek Heavy Cav in Armenia (which has +4 armor and Master Horse Breeder). They come out at +1 valor for the Master building. Then I move them north to a province (can't remember the name right now) with a valor bonus for UHC (but no armor), where the full units come out of training with +2 valor.

You may be correct for morale - it's much harder to test. But I've always assumed (ass+you+me) a unit's morale was set by the highest morale province in which it trained. That may be a wrong assumption, but I've yet to see any strong evidence in my campaigns of units originally trained in weak morale provinces (then retrained in high-morale ones) being prone to wavering.

[caravel]

I'm still 100% sure that valour doesn't get upgraded when retraining, and I'm about 60% sure that Morale doesn't get upgraded by retraining either. I'll test it later when I get home.

[Geezer57]

Not trying to challenge your observations, just noting that I see something different in my games. But MTW is so deep, with so much variability, that there's room for plenty of odd things to happen.

If someone's game seems to follow more closely to mine, then fine - you got the valor/morale boost. If not, then that's fine too - work with it.

[macsen rufus]

I definitely see valour upgrades working for retrained/re-equipped troops, with a +2 valour boost when province bonus + master facility bonuses are added together. The only time it doesn't work is the first year the master facility comes on line (ie when you start training a unit the year before the facility is completed), which is odd, as armour or weapon upgrades at that time DO work. The one thing I'm not sure on is when a unit with earned combat valour is retrained, whether the bonus is added to that or not.

Morale bonuses I have no idea about, as by the time I get to look at the battle F1 display I can never remember which unit has come from where, I just see that some units have better morale than others I just assumed it works like the other upgrades.

As to what units I tech up, well right now I'm still on the Vulgar Bolgas in XL, and my buffing is concentrated on the bashkorts - master spearmaker for valour, mosque and ribat for morale, armour and weapons in selected provinces. Including a couple of provinces which have weapon upgrades but no armour, for my desert army.

In other campaigns, I like to use swiss halberdiers, so Switzerland usually gets max armour and up to Cathedral for morale (then even standard halbs will stay and fight ) I also often have a buffing province for bodyguard units (though I never train them, but I do like to get my Princes the best kit available). Otherwise it depends on the faction. For Italian factions I like to buff my Italian infantry, for Turks it's saracens and Ottoman infantry, plus Turc horse archers. With the Germans I like to buff up my mounted X-bows (in one campaign I had a unit of these with good weapon and armour upgrades, worked up to valour 8 over many years, and they could thrash Katanks in melee!)

[Kavhan Isbul]

I usually do not go out of my way to retrain units, because I find it easier to replace older types with newer ones - for example Chivalric Knights instead of Feudal, halberdiers instead of militia, etc. Also in some cases more armor is actually a negative thing, such as in the case of horse archers - they tire quicker and become slower, I believe, although I might be wrong.
Once however, I was playing with the Cumans in XL, and since they have access to only vanilla spearmen and bashkorts (those are unavailable in late), I found myself upgrading their armor heavily and also givong them a weapon upgrade in Carpathia and Hungary, in order to make them last a little longer than 5 seconds against the Mongol Heavies and the Byzantine katanks. I can see the need to upgrade and retrain units of a certain type when nothing better is available.

[caravel]

Geezer57 is quite right, and I was wrong. The retrained unit gets the maximum valour the province can give him. I was confusing this with morale. As far as I can tell morale doesn't get upgraded, though who knows? I'm off to do a few tests.

Retraining can be important for me, as I use the huge unit size. I only retrain fairly green units though. I prefer to merge veterans with other veterans.

[Sensei Warrior]

does morale get recorded in the battle logs? If it does then that would be the way to tell. Next time I'm in front of my comp I'll see if I can run a few tests.

[Geezer57]

does morale get recorded in the battle logs? If it does then that would be the way to tell. Next time I'm in front of my comp I'll see if I can run a few tests.

No, the logfiles track "Honor", which appears to be the same as Valor. Morale seems to be too volatile (dynamic?) for the system to record in the logfiles.

[Sensei Warrior]

Holy Smoking Thread Batman!

No, the logfiles track "Honor", which appears to be the same as Valor. Morale seems to be too volatile (dynamic?) for the system to record in the logfiles.

That's too bad that it doesn't even record the units base morale. Oh well, we'll leave that for the mystics with the crystal balls.

I usually do not go out of my way to retrain units, because I find it easier to replace older types with newer ones

I used to do the same thing. I'm playing a campaign right know where I have been combining vetran units together. I've got a couple of Scottish Clansmen units with a valour of 4. They start with a valour of 1. These guys are pretty tough hombres. Seeing that, now I am kinda hooked. I still train newer units, but I'll pit my vet clannies against green CMAAs any day. To each their own.

As to what units I tech up, well right now I'm still on the Vulgar Bolgas in XL, and my buffing is concentrated on the bashkorts - master spearmaker for valour, mosque and ribat for morale, armour and weapons in selected provinces. Including a couple of provinces which have weapon upgrades but no armour, for my desert army.

I have 2 weapon producing facilities. One gives weapons and armor for my Northern Empire, and the other gives just weapons for my desert empire

In other campaigns, I like to use swiss halberdiers, so Switzerland usually gets max armour and up to Cathedral for morale (then even standard halbs will stay and fight ) I also often have a buffing province for bodyguard units (though I never train them, but I do like to get my Princes the best kit available). Otherwise it depends on the faction. For Italian factions I like to buff my Italian infantry, for Turks it's saracens and Ottoman infantry, plus Turc horse archers. With the Germans I like to buff up my mounted X-bows (in one campaign I had a unit of these with good weapon and armour upgrades, worked up to valour 8 over many years, and they could thrash Katanks in melee!)

The mounted x-bows is a new one, they sound sweet.

[caravel]

No, the logfiles track "Honor", which appears to be the same as Valor. Morale seems to be too volatile (dynamic?) for the system to record in the logfiles.

Honour is to STW what Valour is to MTW. Alot of the MTW files still contain the old STW terminology such as "daimyo" (faction leader) and "samurai" (elite).

[Jxrc]

I'm still 100% sure that valour doesn't get upgraded when retraining, and I'm about 60% sure that Morale doesn't get upgraded by retraining either. I'll test it later when I get home.

Donno about morale but I am positive it works with respect to valour. Do it all the time with vikings in Norway when playing as the Danes. It works to if you retrain urban militia in Tuscany.

On the other hand it is not one hundred cumulative if I am no wrong. For isnstance if you build billmen with a master spearmaker in Wessex and retrain the unit in Mercia (without the master spearmaker, just the requisite one) then you stick to valour "1" cause the game does not make the difference between the "regional" bonus and the technological one (not 100% percent sure on this lats one).

[drone]

Slightly off-topic, but I know that valour is kept per man in a unit. Does anyone know if the men in the units are arraigned in any kind of order based on their valour rank, or is it random? In battle, are they lined up highest valour front/left-most, descending left to right?

Which brings me to an on-topic question: When merging units together, do the higher (or lower) valour men get moved first, or is it all pretty much random?

[marcusbrutus]

I'm not 100% sure but when merging units the lowest valour in the unit seem to move first. This makes it harder to create uber units by merging (unless you can merge two whole units together) although I always merge 2nd highest valour unit into highest valour unit and never the other way around.