A rather old issue that I keep forgetting to ask about.

[Somebody613]

When a merged unit gets a Quality promotion and is then split and re-merged, it's not uncommon for it to lose General-type promotions, which is clearly a bug.
Basically, it's a combination of two "features":
1. When you split units, if the original one was "unique" in some way, the "non-unique" pieces lose their "unique" promotions, but normally they can simply promote to "non-unique" options.
2. When you Quality-promote a unit, its EXP is reduced to literal 0, so if it is then split, it doesn't have any EXP to level up with, causing a one-directional "black hole of EXP".
I guess when you combine both issues, you get what I hate experiences time and again due to forgetting this bug and walking straight into it AGAIN.
No need to upload saves, you can easily test it by giving any merged General-promoted unit enough EXP for it to Quality-promote, then split it and re-merge, and you should see what I'm talking about.
Just create a random unit, give it a General and tons of EXP, promote it into something only Generals can access, then split it and re-merge. And see it (most probably) lose that General-based promotion.
Stupid bug is stupid, really.

 

[Thunderbrd]

When you split a unit, some promotions like the attached leader promo (I assume this is what you mean by general) won't go with all 3 units. This is because it could only ever have been assigned to one unit to begin with. Therefore it only stays attached to one of the 3. When you merge units, only one unit is doing the merging and the other 2 are then selected to blend into the finale form. Only the unique promotions like this type will continue to be held if they are on the unit initiating the merge. So yeah, it's easy to split, then remerge and merge and lose it if you aren't using the one unit that kept the unique promotion to initiate the merge. (Thus being the primary unit in the merging.)

If you don't do it this way, think of what you could do.

You could take a unit and put a general attached to it then you can split that unit into three units, all of which have the great general attachment. Then you can split 2 other units without the general attached to it and you could merge each of those fragments of units in with the one that was part of the original that had the general attached, and now you have spread that general attachment to all 3 remerged units. In this way you could attach one great general to all of your units of the same kind. Would take a while but... cheaters do love to exploit loopholes, particularly in pvp.

The alternative to rules like these is to have a much more complex system of recollection among units as to what the unit was before a split, what each of the 3 units in a merger brought originally into the merge and other seemingly innocent complexities that require the game to remember the details of every unit that ever existed rather than throw that data away, which as you know with our memory limitations was absolutely impossible to do without getting memory crashes in the prehistoric.

There is a reason that I made it so that you could not take a quality up promotion without it being the last promotion you can take and it is because if you could, you would often oopse and take it early disqualifying much of the rest of the experience you may yet have for levels yet to be assigned. Therefore quality promotions has to be last and unfortunately this can sometimes lead to some prerequisite issues when you merge and the unit is rebuilding. I'm not sure why you'd be splitting then remerging often but yes, it can lead to some incompatible reconstruction recoveries.

 

[Somebody613]

First, LOL, I actually used to do the "split a General into 3, merge it as 3 new ones" cheat, or so I think. Not 100% sure it ever worked, actually, but I definitely WOULD have done it, lol.

Second, I still can accumulate Astrological Signs via merging, even though they are also "personally attached to specific units", but it may be because it works in the other direction.
I also used to cheat via "split-merge-split-merge", until some Signs poped up randomly on "new" units, lol. It was slow and boring, but sometimes was FUN, if LUCKY enough.
Not sure if it still works, though.

Third, no idea what you said abut Quality Up, because it sets your current EXP at 0 (and causes dumb glitches via splitting-merging, again), but you CAN accumulate more once again.
I literally have a unit now that has gone through enough battles to Quality Up TWICE, lol. It's extremely NICE a feature as well.

Fourth, thanks for pointing out the kinda intuitive (yet not sufficiently) fact that I'd need to always use the General as the BASE unit in a merge.
As of why I do it, you can call it "testing", mainly because I did want to "cheat with splitting-merging around", lol.
Thanks, anyways.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Some programmers have thought to try improving things with splitting and merging and may have introduced some problems and I also might not've fixed them all yet either. Double quality upgrades were always a little 'not sure' zone if all was fully considered enough there. One thing too... quality was supposed to be one of the aspects of what could and couldn't merge right? If you'd given a quality up to one unit of the 3 then it's technically a different unit type, so it shouldn't be losing qualityups in splits to begin with?

 

[Somebody613]

And now I CAN'T merge units of different Quality, indeed. It's as if they are incompatible. Not sure how it was some years ago, though.
My point was that you made it sound as if Quality Up was a one-time thing that stopped any further accumulation of EXP, but I've never seen it work like this ever.
It simply makes it harder to reach the next EXP level (and I find it... kinda dumb, let's be honest), but nothing prevents me from making a unit Quality Up several times eventually.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's as if they are incompatible.

They were when I set things up and I'm not sure if someone tried to change that ever or not.

My point was that you made it sound as if Quality Up was a one-time thing that stopped any further accumulation of EXP, but I've never seen it work like this ever.

No, if you take it early, and you had lots of xp, enough for another promotion beyond, then it would wipe out the xp before the level was assigned and you'd lose the added xp since the level was never set higher. I recall at times this create a situation with multiple qualityups being obtained such as on a unit just upgraded that for that reason might need to have a string of quality ups reassigned thereafter and you couldn't choose one until it was the last promo you could choose and still quality up after the upgrade.

It simply makes it harder to reach the next EXP level (and I find it... kinda dumb, let's be honest), but nothing prevents me from making a unit Quality Up several times eventually.

I get it. Turn off the effect and see how truly godlike a unit can get and then ask yourself, is this good for pvp play? Does this remove a super tough decision as to when to pick a quality up? Doesn't it make the quality up a no-brainer pic as soon as you CAN select it then so that no other promotion can even possibly compete so does it not sort of take away any sense of meaningful agency? Is your complaint that there IS meaningful agency and that it does then matter and nothing is so obvious a decision that you can't play the game in a bit more mindless attentive state? I get it... for some players, it's nicer just to have a carved out auto-canal for promo decisions. I just say, if that's the case, let's take away the decision and make it an automatic selection or something.

 

[Somebody613]

Auto-promotion actually exists, or at least used to exist, lol. I never used it, but it WAS an option that YOU (modders) allowed.
Also, I anyways basically never use about 80% of available promotions, because it takes me forever to complete the list of those which I "must" use.
So one more promotion wouldn't change much in that regard, not that it's easily abused anyways, given how many levels it requires.
And, well, it IS subjective, but I kinda tend to play as Powerhouse Heroes, as opposed to Spamming Meatshields, loool - so you can guess my promotion style preferences, ya know.