[Gameplay] Simple unit combining / upgrading and the effects on new unit training (training cadre) and city militia

from Elemental Forums

The "idea" to be able to upgrade existing units isn't new. 

[Suggestion] Upgrade existing troops with new equipment available  By AndBett
Unit Upgrading, Weapons and Number  By VerdantMage
Upgrading units  By SquidDNA

The problems with combining several few-figure units into one many-figure unit (as in the late game) are in the details, typically related to equipment.

What if one out of 8 guys has an item with a clicky buff or a horse?  Do you get 1/8th of the effect or does it only work 1 out of 8 times? Do you get only half a horse's leg?
What if one has a bow and 7 have swords?
What weapons/armor do you display for the unit?  A squad is multiple identical units and with all the fractions there probably won't be a combination of equipment items that can result in the exact average stats.

 So I say:  to hell with that.

What could work, is if you send unit's "back into the barracks" in a city, effectively disbanding the unit.
The barracks would only save the combined XP value of the so disbanded troops.

Disbanding an 8 figure unit with 20 XP puts 160 XP into the barrack's XP pool.   (or maybe 2/3 of it... whatever)
Then, when you train a new 12 figure unit in that town,  it gets 13 XP to begin with.  (160 / 12)

That is easy enough to manage.  Store exactly one integer per city.

You wouldn't completely lose the old and experienced units - only their gear which really is too much of a headache to deal with.
The old gear is worn and used.  Use it or lose it.

Different / improved military buildings would give new units a larger withdrawal amount.
A Barracks with 2320 XP stored might have a withdrawal amount of 10.  That means no unit trained there would ever leave training with more than 10 XP, regardless of how many points are stored.
You should not be able to combine 20 regulars into one super-elite unit. There has to be a limit.
 
The next better Barracks (Fighter's guild?) could then train fresh troops up to a max of 20 XP.


This can be fleshed out.
Say, the highest XP unit to ever "disband" to this town (provided it has any barracks) becomes the new drill sergeant.
This increases the barrack's withdrawal amount by  Sergeant.XP / 10 and adds Sergeant.XP / 10  bonus XP to every unit trained from these barracks afterwards.

Again, that's only one number to store per city...

 

It's an abstract system to simulate how experienced units are retired from field service to form the training cadre of your future army.
Their "experience" should not simply get lost...

This completely avoids any messy system about upgrading weapons of possibly multiple unit types to other equipment configurations.

And again - it creates a choice. Use your experienced units in the field or use them to create the cadre of your future army.
Now we're talking strategy.

 

Of course, now you will say that the old units were useless anyway and getting "something" from them is simply a free goodie.
Valid point but a completely different subject.   Small or outdated units would not need to be completely useless if there were a tactical combat system.
[Gameplay] Attack / Defense scaling with unit size
[Gameplay] Tactical movement restrictions, unit zone of control, flanking and position

Any "decision" to get something for free or just not getting it is no decision. It adds no depth, no choice, no gameplay.

12,250 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Spinning that thread a little further:  If such a city is attacked, a militia would be formed depending on how many figures from disbanding military units went to the barracks.
A second integer to save per city. We're getting excessive now!

It won't be some crack elite force but enough to drive off the odd wolf or bear.
This reduces the micromanagement of garrisoning but by itself won't stop or even delay an attackig army.
And you'd need barracks for that to work so it doesn't give you auto-defense when spamming lvl 1 cities all over the place.
And to get any such militia, you must have trained troops before and disbanded them, losing their utility as fighting troops.
If someone were to get flashy with such a system, the equipment quality of disbanded troops would somewhat reflect on the militia units.

I'm not entirely happy with this idea, yet.  Something isn't right but I can't put a finger on it.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

* reserved *

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Here's how I see it:

There needs to be a unit manager UI (remember the fleet manager?) to manage existing troops.  In this UI, there would be formation, and individual units.  If you want to combine units, you have to re-train/equip them with all the same stuff, then you combine them into a unit (1 turn or something to train as a unit).

 

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Some good ideas here.

 

The key thing will be to balance upgrading against making a new unit. Right now, vanilla unit training times are fairly long, in my opinion.If you look at Civ, it is very abstract...you pay gold and the next turn you have the upgraded unit.

 

I feel like upgrading should be a faster than training fresh troops and should also save experience. So, the trade-off should be cost. Green troops are cheap but the veterans cost more to reequip / maintain.

 

Maybe make upgrading dependent on an early technology to make it more of an investment to be earned.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

The way I see it, the XP of the troops is the thing that needs to be preserved the most.

It's perfectly believeable that the troops need to re-train with the new weapons and equipment so the time to train the new unit in the city could just be left as is.  The benefit would be not having to go through  the many many fights that you fought to get the unit to a high level.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

To be honest the fact that you can't upgrade units sticks out like a sore thumb to me, it's in practically every other 4x in existence.

Your sovereign and heroes can equip new weapons/armor, but when your maceman with leather armor gets outdated you have to fire him and build a new one? Why not just swap out equipment, or 'upgrade all' of a certain type?

It's something we should see, it'd be easier for players, and makes sense.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, this retraining makes sense. But the XP reallocation doesn't. If we're representing that the same dudes go back into the force, each individual person's XP should be stored, and people with the most should be recruited first. Then the XP for large groups should be averaged, with no unit having less XP than the level you selected before training. This has the flaws that it's a very fiddly system on the users end, and that it would probably be a hassle on the programming end as well.

However, we could also do it somewhat like Lords of Magic. In that game, you could position experienced champions in any unit-training facility, and they would increase the experience with which a new unit would be made. In Elemental, we could represent that by having each unit decommissioned at a given city be used for training, either giving all new units an exp bonus equal to maybe 10% that of the most experienced decommissioned unit, or boosting the trainable XP (unlocking higher levels of training if necessary) by perhaps 50% of the experience earned by the most experienced unit. Additional units beyond the most experienced could further increase that by 10% of their own experience, or could decrease the straining time added by heightened level. Of note, this would encourage city specialization, since very skilled units are of course at a premium, and would be required to maximize the skill of new recruits from a given city. This may not be perfect, though I've not noticed any inherent flaws, and isn't totally in keeping with Brad's philosophy of all the resources being global. Nonetheless, it seems to me that it's the optimal solution here.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Cruxador, reply 7
Yeah, this retraining makes sense. But the XP reallocation doesn't. If we're representing that the same dudes go back into the force, each individual person's XP should be stored, and people with the most should be recruited first. Then the XP for large groups should be averaged, with no unit having less XP than the level you selected before training. This has the flaws that it's a very fiddly system on the users end, and that it would probably be a hassle on the programming end as well.
End of Cruxador's quote

When it gets averaged - after going though all the fiddly micromanagement of single figure XP - you get the exact same end result as if you hadn't done all the fiddly bits.  So why bother?

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 8

Quoting Cruxador, reply 7Yeah, this retraining makes sense. But the XP reallocation doesn't. If we're representing that the same dudes go back into the force, each individual person's XP should be stored, and people with the most should be recruited first. Then the XP for large groups should be averaged, with no unit having less XP than the level you selected before training. This has the flaws that it's a very fiddly system on the users end, and that it would probably be a hassle on the programming end as well.
When it gets averaged - after going though all the fiddly micromanagement of single figure XP - you get the exact same end result as if you hadn't done all the fiddly bits.  So why bother?
End of Gazz_'s quote
There is then a limited amount of experienced individuals who can be employed in any size unit. It accurately models the situation of rehiring individuals who had previous experience.

I agree that it's not the optimal solution, though.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Cruxador, reply 9
There is then a limited amount of experienced individuals who can be employed in any size unit. It accurately models the situation of rehiring individuals who had previous experience.
I agree that it's not the optimal solution, though.
End of Cruxador's quote

Yes, of course. But if the XP from those few individual units is spread between their new selves and the newly added recruits, you get the exact same average as if you had "dumped their XP into the pot" when retiring them and drawn from the XP pot to create the new unit.

There would probably be cases where the end results would differ a little up or down between the systems - when having all highly skilled or all lesser skilled soldiers - but I don't see how that would matter on a strategic scale.

But again: if you want actual XP levels to matter, you can also do that with just storing 2 numbers per "barracks".

You have a counter for how many retired troopers go in and and an XP pool with their combined XP.

That means if you retire 12 veteran soldiers there, their number and XP is fully stored. If you then retire 5 regulars at the same place, you have a troop count of 17 but a lower average XP.
I think that's as accurate as you could want to get on a strategic scale.

And it's a flexible system. If you just want to upgrade your crack troops, reserve a barracks / city for them and retire only the high-XP units at the place. That way they come out of retraining with all or nearly all their XP intact.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Or add a couple of options

disband unit - XP lost, half the gold and materials used in the equipment are regained

Retrain unit - same calculation as for training a new unit but only for the equipment elements that are added, any equipment that is removed, half the gold and materials are recovered. XP of original unit is retained.