I like this.

Continually redesigning units as new revisions of existing technologies come out is really tedious.  It happened in Master of Orion, Space Empires, and Gal Civ 2.  And I did not like it when more advanced versions of a specific item became more expensive, because that alone forced the design process to keep ancient versions of the technology available - in Space Empires IV, for example, the late game design process becomes horribly cluttered with obsolete technologies because the new revisions were often not strictly better than the old ones.  In GC2, much of the time a new technology came out, it was functionally identical to the old one except slightly more expensive, so that redesigning a ship to use (for example) fuel tanks v2 would give you absolutely no improvement (except for a tiny bit more unusable free space), and increase the cost.

Even World of Warcraft suffers this problem.  In the late game, due to +heal items, healers used to (and maybe still do) use obsolete healing spells instead of the latest stuff because it was more mana-efficient ("downranking").  That was really an artifact of bad game design...  and so was Blizzard's solution, to blanket-nerf the efficiency of older spells.  But regardless, when you put effort into some area and earn a new, "improved" revision of something you already had - whether in an RPG or strategy game - it doesn't feel pleasant for it to have major and fundamental drawbacks.

In another example, Nox, I quit ~60% of the way through.  My old equipment was no longer good enough to survive with, but the cool new gear I had found was simply too expensive to keep repaired; I felt cheated.  Upgrading stuff - at great effort - should not make you end up worse.

So going from Ion Engines to Antimatter Engines might have pluses and minuses, and going from Heal to Flash Heal might have pluses and minuses; that's fair enough.  But for the transition from Ion Engines v3 to Ion Engines v4, or from Heal III to Heal IV to have fundamental drawbacks?  Just seems annoying and overly-complicated, in my opinion, and takes some of the fun and excitement out of the achievement.  And the ability to specify a unit once, and not have to break your focus and plod through design UI with every single marginal advance, is priceless.

Removing the tedium of designing new units a la GalCiv 2 MUST be done!

It can also make non TBS people play Elemental just like non-adventure people gotted Resident Evil 4 & 5 and non-RPG people gotted Elder Scrolls 4 and Fallout 3.

Haha SaberCherry, I think the post being obsolete is the best of all outcomes. Can we get a Stardock dev to confirm this if time permits?

As of now, it is planned that the discovery of similar equipment types will yeild automatic upgrades for units using that item.  However, if you unlock a new Axe and all units are using spears, you'll need to manually upgrade that unit type (if desired).

Auto-upgrades would be from Bronze Sword I to Bronze Sword II.

I would be against any type of auto upgrade because it is unrealistic, if such an argument has any validity in a fantasy game.  If you make your bronze sword 'double folded' for your unit then later discover 'triple folded bronze swords' the old unit still has the old swords.  If you want the new ones you have to make the new ones, and that costs time and resources.  The better sword probably takes more time and resources than the old one, so an auto-upgrade of existing units is unrealiztic.  Players would be tempted to make cheap units while researching new weapon types to get the more expensive weapons free in an upgrade...if that was how it was implemented.

I would prefer that units have the weapons they were trined with.  If you want to upgrade them to a new type, or a better version of an old type, then you need to make the new weapons and give them to the unit.  The old weapons would then be in your warehouse to give to less important units, home guards perhaps.

or an automatic upgrade button that u click pick pay and get the new swords

Thanks for the response BoogieBac, that sounds exactly what I was hoping for. Elemental sounds better with every post I read! 

Agreed   

Thanks for the info  BoggieBac! 

This sounds good! How complex is the changing process I wonder? If I suddenly want my entire spear army to wield axes for whatever reason, do i have to take them to a well developed city and upgrade or just throw some gold at them and call it a day?

What sort of weapons do you have?

I have two thoughts.

1>  There should generally be a reason not to upgrade.  In other words, older techs should still have some advantage over newer techs - if nothing but cost.  Perhaps each technology continue to get an in-type upgrade that makes it continually get smaller/cheaper/more efficient to the point that it always remains usable.  That's the one thing I always hated about Gal Civ.  Once a new technology became available there was no reason to use the older technology.

2>  Upgrading existing units is important.  It should be easy and very cost effective.  Either that or you can't upgrade at all.  That way, every player has to find a use for older units.

What about making the resources for older weapons more common than the ones required for newer ones?  Frogboy said that having control of more than one of a resources makes things that use it build faster.  With resources more common for lower level weapons, units that use them would build faster as players would have more of them under their control.