[Suggestion] unit upgrades

Thoughts on how this would impact the AI:

I’m not sure the AI upgrades anything… in which case all of these changes would hurt the AI bc they let the player more effectively employ options beyond the AI.

If the AI does upgrade additional coding would be required.

(2) Obviously scouts and pioneers should never be upgraded. Hopefully, that could be taken care of by the rule never to upgrade something unless it is leaving your territory with the intent of combat, but it could be hard coded. It certainly should be used as a sanity test of any upgrade AI. The AI would need to effectively weigh the costs of many upgrades vs benefit and opportunity cost of spending that crystal for a dragon cloak upgrade elsewhere.

(3) is a little more tricky, the AI has to be able to weigh the benefit of a partial upgrade now vs the long term cost of a more expensive path to fully upgrade that unit. It may be a simple rule to upgrade so something not the best when it has plenty of some resources but lacks stores and income in the resource required to upgrade to the best.

(4) should be a net boon to the AI as it wouldn't forget to check if it could afford partial upgrades, it would simply be applied anytime has resources and would like to upgrade but doesn't have sufficient resources for the upgrade.

You don't. The upgradeable option is only there so the design itself gets automatically updated. The trained unit can always be upgraded. At least that is my experience.

Hrm interesting, the upgrade behavior appears to sometimes do what I want with that respect but is *inconsistent*. Here is what I found after experimenting to discover the exact behaviour. If you specify a low tech armor/weapon you can indeed upgrade it later. If you specify NO armor for a slot you can NOT upgrade it later. At the beginning of the game you can specify no armor but also specify the upgrade option- for these you can upgrade them with armor later, this no longer works once you have reach leather armor bc selecting the upgradable option automatically puts the best armor there. Pre-defined units like spearmen can be upgraded later with armor, but the designs themselves do NOT upgrade.

#1 LH does indeed have the option to upgrade squad counts (a very welcome addition).

#2-4 The obvious solution to this and every other complaint about upgrading units would be to let the player upgrade units using the Unit Designer.

As far as balance, the AI already does upgrade its units fairly effectively in my experience.  A few tweaks to that API to give it the option to add items and mounts and it would be able to do everything the human could do in the designer.

Adding extra figures should cost the same amount as getting that number of figure's worth of equipment, mounts etc.  Currently, if you want to, if you are short on crystal, metal or mounts you can train a 3-figure unit and add however many figures you want (up to 6 figures if you have them unlocked) for only 30 gold per figure.  You should have to pay the resources for each extra figure, PLUS a gold cost for getting the extra figures up to the experience of the stack.

I'm OK with most of the upgrade aspects of units. There are two things (maybe one if implemented appropriately) that I would like to see changed. Allow the player (and #2: the AI when it uses the appropriate sovereign - explained below)) to create/design (a) unit(s) that is(are) an upgrade of a current unit. This way some armor (not all) and/or some items, and/or a mount, and/or some traits may be included in the 'new' upgraded unit. This has several affects: First, *when* a Fortress is upgraded, and new abilities are added to troops trained there (like first strike, or +3 moves on first move of battle, +def, and/or new items become available, etc), *then* the player (#2 sovereign) may create an 'upgrade' of the unit and commit/order it upgraded. This eliminates the need to disband 'obsolete' troops that have experience but lack items / abilities available to new troops. Instead, your trained, experienced cadre of troops can be upgraded to the new abilities, items available. Such an upgrade 'path' would be saved in the units file/folder, just like player made units and sovereigns. #2: If the upgrades are saved in the game files properly, I think the AI will also use them, just like they now use player made sovereigns, and player made units of that sovereign. Costs: Upgrades that include new abilities, magic items, etc., should perhaps cost more than just material and items. Perhaps some time spent training with the new skills, items might be included. Perhaps the upgrading units might need to actually go to the Fortress to get upgrades that derive from the fortress's "settlement upgrades.' -> The important thing is that veteran units are trainabled up to the current max standards that other 'new' units are capable of, without losing all their battle experience. <-

I agree 100%