Reduce the Upgrade cost.

[kazrick]

I have absolutely no problem with the cost of upgrading units. I just wish it didn't cut your experience back to 10. Upgrading experienced units are the only ones I ever spend money on anyway...but it a tough decision when you have a unit with 50+ experience points, knowing it's going to drop back to 10.

 

[naterator]

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

Agreed. it's really not an issue for me either, just shock and awe, but i was floored to see such a huge % (they only pay 5% on diety, but of course once you go there, you're asking for it), they also on settler pay 1/2 unit supply cost. i'm guess if anything it just makes montezuma's axeman rush (after everybody else has musketmen) all that much more confusing.

 

[Jaybe]

You shouldn't be able to do massive upgrades often -- leave costs as they are. If you are financially challenged, get a religious shrine.
The AI gets substantial discounts on upgrade costs (more than half, even on Settler) and they need it.

 

[JoeBas]

Yet another of the "Warmongering is the only way to go from CIII" nerfing in CIV that drives pure warmongers up the wall...

I generally research at the lowest percentage that makes slow money (after, of course, spending my Goodie Hut stash at first). This money slowly accrues, until the point where I reach an upgrade. I then sell a few techs for the extra cash, and upgrade.

The reason this works is, I'm not upgrading a huge warmongering army of death in most cases... my units are either working (attacking and dying), or garrisoning. And the trick is... don't upgrade the whole garrison.

For example, in my current Monarch game, I have a decent sized continent to myself... I have a small force of fast defenders at either end of the continent, and each city has 3 defenders -- 2 garrison units, and a fast counter-attacker. The trick is, LET that second tier garrison unit be not the latest and greatest.

For example... I build 2 archers to start with for garrisoning. Longbowmen come along... ONE per city gets upgraded. The other one stays an archer. Gunpowder comes along. The 2nd archer gets the upgrade... the longbowman stays a longbowman. Rifling comes along, the longbowman goes to rifleman, the musketman stays a musketman. Here comes assembly line, guess who's getting upgraded? I also do the same with my fast response units... the fast response stacks get one upgrade, the city fast responders get the next, etc.

Doing this, I've never had to reduce my research below 60% the entire game, and have been running at 80-85% for the last 200 turns or so. Is every unit the latest? No. But making it so cheap that upgrading and going to war becomes automatic was one of the failings of the series in the past, and I for one am glad to not see them repeating the mistake.

 

[gettingfat]

The main problem is not that upgrading is too expensive. It is the upgrading by AIs is too cheap (I think 10% cost?). The last thing I want to see is start an attack on an apparently weak civ and in the middle of the war their archers suddenly all turn into longbows in one turn after they learned Feudalism from his/her buddies. I guess there must be a better way for the game designer to encourage AIs to build new units or upgrade only when necessary.

I also hate the current upgrade system. Very tedious. (in fact, selecting units in Civ4 is tedious. All those grouping, degrouping, finding units to promote is the most time consuming thing IMHO)

 

[Red_Coat]

Upgrade costs are expensive because not only do you keep the experience of old units, but in certain cases you get to keep promotions which are otherwise unavailable. My personal favourite is City Raider III grenadiers - watching them carve through Renaissance/early Industrial cities is easily worth spending a few turns at 0% science, and you can't normally promote Gunpowder units with City Raider.

 

[·Imhotep·]

Upgrade costs are expensive because not only do you keep the experience of old units, but in certain cases you get to keep promotions which are otherwise unavailable. My personal favourite is City Raider III grenadiers - watching them carve through Renaissance/early Industrial cities is easily worth spending a few turns at 0% science, and you can't normally promote Gunpowder units with City Raider.

@Red_Coat:

Exactly, but I upgrade my Raider III and Raider II Maces normally to Riflemen and then to Infantry. A City Raider III Rifle is bloodbath, and even greater with Infantry. I love those City Raider Gunpowder units.

Nonetheless I hope that Leonardo's Workshop will be included in the Warlords Expansion. It could have features as follows:

Required tech: Military Tradition
Required buildings: Forge & Barracks
Cost: 1000
Effect 1: Reduces upgrade cost by 25%
Effect 2: Increases chance of getting a Great Leader (Warlord) by 15%
Obsolete: Genetics

·Imhotep·

 

[TrailblazingScot]

I find upgrade costs pretty prohibitive and given at Emperor level the A.I pretty much gets them free (or does, not bothered to find out exactly) that makes things rough.

To be a worthwhile option for the human player I think upgrade costs should be much reduced. I know WHY they are that high, to stop the ole warrior spamming to upgrade to excellent units later, but they've gone a little OTT in my opinon.

Come back Leonardo's as many have also said, in fact I'd like several Leonardo type wonders, or the effect something a Great Leader such as a Great Engineer could perform (upgrade all units) which would make for an interesting decision.

 

[dalamb]

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.

I've only played a few games so far (acquired it about 2wks ago ), so my experience means little, but I've usually been able to upgrade everything once a Great Merchant makes a delivery.

I'm not sure I am able to carry out the "upgrade only the best units" strategy -- I have a hard time with micromanagement already.

 

[jimbob27]

Yet another of the "Warmongering is the only way to go from CIII" nerfing in CIV that drives pure warmongers up the wall...

It can work the opposite way as well though. If I want to play a building game, in previous versions, I could build an army in 2000bc and then never have to worry about building any more units. When I play warmonger (which is far more often) I'm usually churning out units so fast, it doesn't usually bother me too much when a load of them become obsolete, because replacments are on the way.

I think in this version, its just down to the promotions factor. We can make units far more deadly than previous versions with all the promotions, and a human player is far more capable of keeping units alive, so they accumulate loads of promotions. If upgrades were cheap..... then people would have mechanized infantry that started off as warriors, and have managed to get about 20 promotions.

 

[GIO888]

It's fine as it is.

You have to prioritize which units to upgrade, the AI doesn't upgrade so you can use a tech advantage, riflemen to longbowmen or whatever.

I agree upgrading veterans should cost some of their experience - give a musket to a Pikeman, he isn't going to be a sharpshooter right off, is he?

Upgrade costs should be scary, you have to juggle resources, make decisions, and that makes the game fun!

 

[BearMan]

Other : choice to upgrade at reduced cost but lose the promotions, how about that ?

 

[Kerrang]

Another viable option would be to reduce overall upgrade costs by say 25%-50%, but have each level of the unit (not experience, mind) add 20% or more to the upgrade cost.

 

[Sohan]

As the system is at the moment, with upgrades improving a unit's strength considerably and giving it the natural bonuses of the more advanced unit coupled with the promotions it earned as a veteran, the upgrade costs are perfectly fine as they are. If upgrades were to cause the removal of promotions and such, then maybe upgrading costs could go down, but then the point of upgrading would be partly lost too. I'd much rather have an old veteran unit with bonuses like medic than upgrade them to a more advanced unit and watch their cool promotions be lost so they have to start all over again. Thus, I recommend that the upgrade costs remain the same and the system of upgrading also go unchanged. There isn't a problem.

The big issue I see from Danicela's POV is the early Ancient/Classical/Medieval upgrading periods. But the truth of the matter is that upgrading at this early stage SHOULD be a very hard decision. It isn't supposed to be easy or cheap. It isn't supposed to be something you can do easily while still concentrating on science. Honestly, the best decision if you want to upgrade is sacrifice your science for a couple turns, make a whole bunch of money, and then upgrade only the units you need to upgrade. Once that's done, switch back to research and keep going on the tech trail. Trying to do both at once will inevitably result in you falling behind in both. Specialize and concentrate on one or the other for a certain time period, and you'll do well, but try to do everything at once and you'll inevitably be sub-par at everything. A Jack of All Trades is a Master of None, as they say. Make tough choices.

 

[Danicela]

Reserved for future use.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I'd like see the flat 25 gold fee eliminated.

I think the cost of upgrades is: 25 gold + (cost modern unit - cost obsolete unit) times four gold. Right? I wouldn't mind seeing that "25 gold" disappear.

 

[jimbob27]

Reserved for flaming Danicela.

 

[manwiththehands]

Upgrade costs are not that bad ... but I still think that there should be NO WAY EVER that a spearman can defeat a tank.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I voted to leave it alone, but if I could have voted to raise it a bit more, I would have done that.

Upgrade costs were way too low in Civ3, this was a big problem.

 

[dh_epic]

Why are you making this into an issue? The game too hard for you?