A Question About Upgrading/Training Troops

[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.

[Geezer57]

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.

I don't use Huge unit size often, but I definitely like merging veterans in preference to retraining. Once they're merged, however, I'll often send them home to be retrained if they missed the building/province valor bonuses the first time around. I have a Skutatos (nice Nicaean spear unit in BKB) in my current campaign that started without armor, but since he had the Pride virtue (?) and there weren't any building upgrades then available, I put him to use right away. His base valor was 3, after combat/merging with another prideful unit remanants it rose to 5. When I'd conquered all desert provinces and my battle focus switched to the Balkans and Europe, I ran him thru retraining with Master level buildings. Base valor now 6, with +4 armor/weapons. Add him to an army led by an 8/9 star General, his stats become quite impressive. It's hard to lose with several similar units in your roster.