Gold efficiency of unit upgrades

It occurred to me over the weekend that there can be a big difference in the cost of some upgrades vs. the benefits of the upgrade. when you have a ton of older units laying around, it can be tough to prioritize which ones you want to upgrade first. If you're at war its easy, you upgrade what you need. But when you're not at war and just looking to increase military might in general, it's not as easy.

some of them are super obvious, like infantry upgrading to mech infantry for insanely cheap.

what i was hoping was that someone more dedicated than myself had put together some kind of list telling which upgrades will provide the most "bang for the buck" in terms of increasing the "soldiers" demographic.

It's not always the bang for the buck, at least for me. It's more what you need and when.
Also, the goal to creating a strong military is not researching the tech then building/buying the unit.
For example, getting galleases to frigates upgraded is a faster way of getting a fleet than building them outright.
Get Battleships ASAP, if you are focused on a navy. Battleships are OP.

Land units, you want the most advanced unit ASAP. For example Siege units are a must to upgrade. Infantry not GWI tend to last quite long and can actually be held off on being upgraded.

When playing Mongolia, players love keeping their Keshiks as long as they are viable even when able to be upgraded.

Privateers to Destroyers, prohibitively expensive but gets you prize ship destroyers.
Caravels to Destroyers is far more viable.

I don't have a sure fire list on what and when to upgrade. But having a cash stack does add to your 'soldiers' demographic. So spending money on upgrades won't necessarily improve that score by a lot but will cost you more in terms maintenance.

Really though you know when you need to upgrade when the AI hurts you more than you do it.

Thanks for the response, and I understand all that. What i'm looking for is a guideline for that specific situation when I just want to improve my power ranking with the least gold possible.

The amount of hammers a unit costs compared to the amount of hammers it's upgraded unit costs is what determines the upgrade gold cost. Usually it's close to nothing for atomic age and later units.

So for power ranking (demographics), it actually won't improve at all when you upgrade a unit for a mere 5g. The more expensive, the more powerful the game considers a unit for that purpose.

I don't think there's much need for a list as it is highly situational.

I believe though to recall two upgrades that usually aren't worth it as they don't give any real power increase albeit costing quite a bit, that would be:
Longswordman --> Musketman (same CS, it's just that they don't need iron)
Pikemen --> Lancer (from being tanky and good versus horses to dying vs anything that gazes at you for a split second (of course they're mobile and not useless, but I usually hardly find a good use for them vs the AI)).

Oh I didn't know a unit's power ranking was based on the cost. I thought it was based on the actual stats. But if that is true, you are absolutely right...no list is needed.

FeiLing said:

So for power ranking (demographics), it actually won't improve at all when you upgrade a unit for a mere 5g. The more expensive, the more powerful the game considers a unit for that purpose.

Click to expand...

That was actually wrong

In fact it does scale with combat strength rather than hammer cost! (most of the time, sometimes not... and there is also stuff without combat strength that still gives "power" like an atomic bomb).

List of unit hammer/gold costs and their MM (military might): http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/units

So the cheap upgrades are actually the best ones to get.

Upgrading Chu-Ko-Nus is a good idea (anyway of course since they don't lose their second shot now in G&Ks!). But also for a bigger increase in CS/MM than if they were regular xbowman.
Upgrading Hwachas to Cannons though hardly increases your MM rating.

well back to the drawing board I guess...lol

if there is an updated version of your link for G&K, I could do the work.

Infantry upgrade to mechs for 10 gold and according to the table, the MM value nearly doubles. Things like that (but the less obvious ones) would be good to know.