Reduce the Upgrade cost.

[Danicela]

I make this topic to have a poll to know the common wish of Civ4 players, to the asking of some members, who said that the other poll about this had only 13 voters that is insufficient.

When you have an unit in one of your cities (and in your territory i think), and when you have the ressources you need, you can evolve/upgrade an existant unit in the higher level of this unit, if you have the corresponding technology.
(Exemple : A Axeman to a Maceman)

You need to pay gold for this evolving/upgrading.

But this gold cost is extremly too high, you can't afford this evolution, only to give some power points to an existant unit.
(I never did it, but do you preserve experience and experience level of the unit, when evolving?)

You have only one way to get enough gold : Decreasing Science rate.
But if you do it, the science goes too slow, and you'll lose.
If you see the years, you see that you are already in late with a good science rate, so you'll be too late with a tiny science rate.
And even if you decrease the science rate, the needed gold sum is too high that you won't ever have enough gold, even with a good income.

Reduce this gold cost, from ~100, to 60, or even lower.
These are the costs for the first units, so if you want a general rule, make a division by 2 to have a balanced gold cost. (100:2=50 or 250:2=125 or 600:2=300)

See my original topic about that :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=160866

See the poll.

 

[BadHorsie]

I don't think it's necessary. The whole point is that if you want to recycle your old units, you have to pay for it or build new ones, but either way it comes at a cost. Otherwise everyone would just be upgrading their whole armies every time they get a new tech - i.e. whoever is the most technologically advanced will pretty much be able to dominate.

 

[Danicela]

I understand your point of view but at classical age, when all cost 100, you can't afford more than 1 unit upgrading... this is too high !

 

[Giaur]

Modern Age ... costs of upgrading are to deal with but earlier it's a disaster. It must be changed ...

 

[TheNiceOne]

I understand your point of view but at classical age, when all cost 100, you can't afford more than 1 unit upgrading... this is too high !

They don't all cost 100. They cost less if the hammer difference between the two units is less than 25 hammers.

And no, I don't think it is too high. The current cost is so high that the player need to think before upgrading, and possibly pay a turn or two of zero science to get the money to upgrade. That's good, as it requires strategic decision making before you upgrade.

In my latest (Monarch) game, I started a war with the French using Axemen, and I upgraded most (but not all) of my army to Macemen in a few turns after getting the required tech, so upgrading units with the current cost is certainly doable.

It would be less fun and give an overwhelming advantage to the first to discover a military tech if the upgrade cost was much cheaper.


And you can easily mod the upgrade cost yourself.

 

[riadsala]

UPgrading a unit probably should cost more than the equivalent of building a new one. in most cases, an upgraded unit will be better than a new one, as the upgraded one will have it's experience and be significantly more powerful.

I guess a the upgrade cost shoudl depend on the unit you're upgrading. a green unit with no experience should cost less to upgrade than building a new one (think: the army only has to do some retraining, rather than recruiting and training new troops). but as soon as a unit gets XP points, it should start to get more expensive (think: you don't jsut have to retrain your troops, you have to retrain them to the same level as they used to be, which is obviously going to require more effort than just training some novice troops).

Maybe to counter this, it would be nice to have a partial upgrade system. so you can pay to improve outdated troops. no a full upgrade from axeman to maceman, but given the technology has improved, it makes sense that your axemen will have better equipment and tactics, etc. (think: it's often easier to buy a new computer than upgrade an outdated one to a new state of the art model. But you can quite easily and effectively partially upgrade your computer (new graphics card, some extra ram) which will keep it from being completely outdated for a while).


Either way, Civ really really needs a better way to upgrade your units. Far to fiddly just now, to locate which units you want to upgrade. A nice menu screen where you can use some easy filters to slect which troops to upgrade. for example:

you could select "city garisons" to select all troops in cities. then select the cities you want to uprage in (if you couldn't afford to upgrade all units in one go, it makes sense to upgrade border/important cities first). then maybe select which units you want to upgrade.

or you could filter by XP. So there should be some options so that you could easily upgrade all your units with more than so many Xp points, as it makes sense to upgrade your best troops first.

etc.

Surely it can't be too hard to make such a menu screen?

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

And no, I don't think it is too high. The current cost is so high that the player need to think before upgrading, and possibly pay a turn or two of zero science to get the money to upgrade. That's good, as it requires strategic decision making before you upgrade.

This is the crux of the matter. To upgrade, you turn science to 0% for a few turns. Thus you have a trade off. Maintain your technology lead with obsolete units or upgrade and risk losing the tech advantage.

I like "interesting decisions" as the Firaxians would put it.

Leave it as-is.

 

[wiser3]

I do an enormous amount of upgrading. I know if i don't upgrade or produce gunpowder units the civs around me will attack. I'm in a game where i'm upgrading all my archer units into gunpowder units. I've planned for this. My econemy is set up to produce about an extra 110 gold per turn which allows me to upgrade one unit per turn. That's fast enough to keep my defenses up without depleting my science rate too much.

 

[ferenginar]

The upgrade cost is too high, because it is strictly financal. I manage my civ with the highest level of research that is possible without going broke. This is very rarely above 80% for large proportions of the game. The only time I'm likely to have sufficient cash for upgrading is when I have just failed to complete a wonder, or at the end of the game.

I can't wait until the end of the game to upgrade warriors, archers, axemen, horse archers .. etc, it needs to be an ongoing process, I manage ba few upgrades, but the rest is reliant on building new units and dispanding the old to keep support costs down, after all production is more readily available than cash.

What I would like to see is a production upgrade facility, where you cah take your horse archer and add him to the build queue as a cavalry unit. He might be unavailable for use during this retraining, but it would be quicker than building from scratch, and maintain athe cash balance. I don't see this as a complete switch, but as an alternative option.

 

[Kerrang]

I try to upgrade whenever possible, but I do think that the expense of upgrading is too high, and this prevents me from upgrading the bulk of my armies. In many cases, it is easier to use those old units as cannon fodder, and just build new ones. By time I hit AD 1, my prime military city is generally able to pump out one of the newest melee unit per turn, and I am normally able keep this capacity for the rest of the game. In contrast, at normal research rates of 60%-80%, it normally takes quite a few turns to save up enough cash to upgrade a single unit. This does not seem right to me, it should take less time and investment to upgrade a new unit than it does to produce one from scratch.

I understand the concern that this would unbalance the game in favor of more experienced units (the OP asked if experience carries over when you upgrade: an upgraded unit retains all of its promotions, but its experience is reset to 10, allowing them to advance more quickly). To mitigate this, I think it would be appropriate to remove any promotions a unit has when it upgrades, this would force you to make a choice between keeping a highly promoted unit as is, or upgrading it and losing the promotions. At the very least, if upgrade costs are reduced, I think upgraded units should lose any promotions not appropriate to the new unit type and keep the same experience/level as they had before the upgrade.

What I would like to see is a production upgrade facility, where you cah take your horse archer and add him to the build queue as a cavalry unit. He might be unavailable for use during this retraining, but it would be quicker than building from scratch, and maintain athe cash balance. I don't see this as a complete switch, but as an alternative option.

I think this is a very good idea, even better than reducing the upgrade cost. I think the new building should be a National Wonder, or maybe just add that functionality to the Ironworks. Perhaps even two buildings along these lines, one for land units, and one for sea units (Navy Shipyard?).

 

[Giaur]

But the point of all of this that upgrading is UNBALANCED. 1000g coins in Stoneage era is quite a lot while in modern era it is nothing. Perhaps the creators bet that in modern era every produces twice as much units as in Stoneage.

 

[shmily_dana]

I hope the "warlord" has some ability to provide cheap or free upgrades. I would also like to see "upgrade" as a possible unit promotion.

 

[salty mud]

No keep it. In fact, I would sometimes say INCREASE it!

 

[theimmortal1]

Yeah the cost in late game is nothing and earlier game its more substantial.

But this comes along with one thing I've noticed about this site. Theres many people totally addicted to science. In the past it would be compulsive building, but now it seems everyone is in some race to be in the top technological wise. If you run your science all the time at a break even pace, then how do you expect to upgrade your units? Perhaps thats why it seems high.

You should either run science a notch below, where you garner some extra cash per turn. Or you should be prepared to push it down to 0 or 10 percent in order to upgrade your units. Its realistic. You can't have your economy focused on every little thing optimally. You need to prioritize.

 

[wiser3]

But this comes along with one thing I've noticed about this site. Theres many people totally addicted to science. In the past it would be compulsive building, but now it seems everyone is in some race to be in the top technological wise. If you run your science all the time at a break even pace, then how do you expect to upgrade your units? Perhaps thats why it seems high.

That's a good point. The focus of the maintaining balace, including balancing your gold/science/culture production. I don't think your tech should always be maxed out. As i said above i live my tech down a bit so that i have cash for upgrades and it seems to work well.

 

[naterator]

The current cost is so high that the player need to think before upgrading

unfortunatly, this is phrased perfectly. it forces the PLAYER to think before upgrading. what bothers me is that even on settler difficulty, the AI upgrades units at a fraction of the cost. i'm sure they had their reasons, but i'm a bit stumped.

 

[·Imhotep·]

Well, upgrade costs are a minor issue from my point of view. Upgrading makes perfect sense for some elite units (who lose some XP by doing so) and for pulling a good defense out of thin air, but certainly mass upgrading is neither necessary nor sensible.

I'd like to have Leonardo's Workshop back though - but not as overpowered as it would be with 50% less upgrade costs. Let's say 25% and some GPP on a Warlord...

 

[mjs0]

My thoughts on upgrade costs.

First on why the AI gets cheaper costs.
Clearly the developers have set the cost structure as it is because they believe it is balanced. If you want to upgrade your units you need to sacrifice somewhere else. Yes the AI gets cheaper upgrades, but give it a break it is not very smart, giving it cheaper upgrades was one way to keep it more competitive on higher levels. Yes it means the player has to think more than the AI but that's because the AI can't think. What is the AI...it is a series of rules with thresholds and some randomness that help it appear to make decisions in the same way as a very poor human player. Without these kinds of breaks we would all be complaining that the AI is not a strong enough opponent.

Now on the costs themselves...I have mixed feelings...I like the fact that the high costs force me to make hard decisions, do I try to accumulate enough gold to upgrade my units or not? What I don't like is the binary nature of the decision. I prefer more and varied options and the high cost of upgrading forces me into very narrow strategies.
I would like to see something along the lines of these ideas...in no particular order.

• A promotion that reduces upgrade costs.
• A special building built by a warlord unit that provides the reduced upgrade promotion to all units built in that city.
• A wonder (like that in previous Civ games) that reduces upgrade costs.
• Reduced upgrade costs for highly experienced units (proportional to level)
• When a unit upgrades reduce its XPs but not all the way to 10. Rather than an dropping to a fixed value, make the reduction formulaic based on your current XPs, e.g. halve your XPs, so a level 6 unit with 30 XPs would drop to 15 not all the way to 10.
• Improve the UI for upgrading, it is non-sensical to have to upgrade units one at a time because the bulk upgrade order is based on the target rather than the source unit type. I often want to upgrade in bulk but not lose the special ability of some of my older units e.g. my pikeman's bonus vs. mounted.
• Not my own idea, but I quite like Ferenginar's alternative option of a production upgrade facility.

To summarize, I don't really think upgrades are too expensive at the moment, just give me more choices in this area than using all gold.

[ASIDE]Upgrade costs are one of the reason I value the Great Merchant more highly than some here do. I often arrange one of my GP producing cities so it produces Great Merchants just for this purpose, to pay for upgrading my armies.

 

[naterator]

the AI gets cheaper upgrades, but give it a break it is not very smart, giving it cheaper upgrades was one way to keep it more competitive on higher levels.

yes, but the AI pays 45% to upgrade on SETTLER! now i think the easy levels are easy enough, but that's a little startling, wouldn't you agree?

 

[mjs0]

yes, but the AI pays 45% to upgrade on SETTLER! now i think the easy levels are easy enough, but that's a little startling, wouldn't you agree?

It has some shock value, I'll give you that.
What really counts though is the results, hence what I think is startling is how incredibly easy it is to beat the AI on settler even with that bonus.
My five (now six) year old son has beaten the AI on settler (Pangaea, standard, 8 civs, playing as Roosevelt)!!!!
Don't forget the only difference between Settler and Deity is bonuses and handicaps...the AI code and thus how it thinks does not change.
There are people here who would beat the AI on deity if it got FREE upgrades!