Troop Upgrading Strategy?

[morahed18]

Here's a strategy question that I've pondered many a night, and yet never had the patience to research...

What is a more efficient strategy towards always having a sizable, modern army:
1) Accumulating troops throughout the game, and running science at a low enough percentage to give you a reasonable gold surplus which will ultimately go towards upgrading obsolete units.

2) Deleting/Gifting out of date troops as new, state of the art troops are produced.

The 2nd strategy allows you to run maximum science, ensuring that your army is as modern as possible. It also saves money by avoiding troop maintenence costs on large stacks of troops which will remain useless in mounting an offensive until you get around to upgrading them. However, I don't know if you can produce troops as fast as you can upgrade them (or alternatively, I'm not sure you are more powerful with a relatively small number of modern troops, as compared to a larger number of out-dated troops). Has anyone looked into this?

When the final power tally is made, which strategy comes out on top?

 

[Galileo44]

Interesting question. I usually have very few units left from each age by the end . These I use to keep captured cities happy. Then, I will train an entirely new army for my next war occaisionally upgrading units. It depends though, as if you have enough cash on hand, you could have quite a large number of cutting edge troops right when you get a military tech. I would like to know how others do this, thank you for asking an interesting stratigic question.

 

[Sojourner<><]

I have a couple of tactics that I like to use when upgrading depending on the situation, but I don't have it down to an exact science so I can't tell you what is the most efficient.

Replacing the units one by one and disbanding the old ones is obviously the easiest transition to make if the situation allows it. I'll do this when my major producion centers have all of their critical projects out of way and I have a sufficient lead over my opponents so I don't have to worry about time.

However, there are some times when you need a brand new army and you need it asap. To do this, all you have to do is maximize your gold output for a few turns - build gold in your cities and reduce science and culture output to zero%. Hopefully you'll be making somewhere around a few thousand gold per turn in the later stages of the game. If that is the case, it should only take you a couple of turns to completely retrofit the core of your army. This tactic will ensure that you pay a price in the technology race so use it sparingly.

 

[Cervus]

I believe one should rather consider this issue from two points: defensive and offensive units.

With regards to defensive units, in most games I still have warriors/archers/axemen as defenders of my cities even in late stages just because there is no point in upgrading them. However, if an opponent manages to strike my empire, I still can upgrade one or two units in the very place of the enemy's attack.

With regards to offensive units, I generally try to have them all killed before a war ends, so I don't need to support them in peace time. And, preparing another war, I am just building a brand new army. Perhaps you should keep (and upgrade) the most experienced units, so this method is quite variable anyway.

 

[HectorSpector]

Here's a strategy question that I've pondered many a night, and yet never had the patience to research...

What is a more efficient strategy towards always having a sizable, modern army:
1) Accumulating troops throughout the game, and running science at a low enough percentage to give you a reasonable gold surplus which will ultimately go towards upgrading obsolete units.

If you just got the latest military tech and you're wanting to go to war... Science = 0%. Get the money in as fast as you can over a few turns, get most of your units upgraded, get to war, and get the science rate back up as you do so. The rest of the upgrades can be paid for by the war loot. By running science lower in the run up to war, you're delaying things unnecessarily.

2) Deleting/Gifting out of date troops as new, state of the art troops are produced.

Don't really see the point in this one either. Gift units to your enemy so that he can upgrade them to use against you? Delete perfectly upgradable troops? To heck with waiting for a new army to be churned out. Move your current troops into position, run wealth in your cities whilst doing so, and upgrade them on the way to battle.

Both strategies you mention are just time wasters, imo.

edit: I suppose it really all depends on your war situation though. If you've finished warring, then you may want to delete/gift a lot of offensive units, and slowly upgrade the defensives.

 

[Diger]

I would agree with Cervus on the most he said.

1. I tend to leave archers too for very long. But as soon as I get my hands on big chunk of money (from Great Merchant for example) - my first priority is to upgrade military units. Units in the cities on the borders with some neurotic leaders get upgardes first. Then the capital and then the most significant cities, then the rest (but it never actually gets to them in reality)

Meanwhile If you can smell gunpowder - it is usually enough time to upgrade the city which is object of agression.

This strategy saves you money for inevitable technology race and at the same time keeps you relatively protected. I didn't play huge number of games so far but as of yet this strategy has worked for me fine.

2. As of the offensive units: last time I tried to get rid of them the same way Cervus described. In my case I smashed them of unbombarded city walls. They all died all right, as I wanted. But this gave an enourmous experience upgrade to my potential enemy. In my case he was too weak for the rest of the game to afford any war. But theoretically he could return the favour by bringing those experienced units back to me.

As ironic as it sounds but I come to the thought that you're better off to perform this genocide on your units yourself. You don't give experience to your enemy, you don't spend any money on upgrade,.. you build the new units.

And with all this said, when setting a city to produce wealth for military upgrades - please do keep in mind that only half of hammers are converted into commerce.

 

[Galileo44]

With regards to defensive units, in most games I still have warriors/archers/axemen as defenders of my cities even in late stages just because there is no point in upgrading them. However, if an opponent manages to strike my empire, I still can upgrade one or two units in the very place of the enemy's attack

With regards to offensive units, I generally try to have them all killed before a war ends, so I don't need to support them in peace time.

I totally agree with Cervus, particularly with the part about keeping defensively upgradeable but outdated units for city defense. If you are attacked, then you only need to spend the money where it needs to be spent. If you have large enough borders, then you even have 2-3 turns to turn on money for upgrades before the first stack reaches you.

 

[lilnev]

I don't usually upgrade units in the early- to mid-game (except for emergency defense). Too expensive, I need to run science as high as possible. I might make a few exceptions for highly experienced units. In the later game, when my economy is humming, I'll mass-upgrade my offensive army. Generally Riflemen -> Infantry is the first upgrade I do on a large scale. Gold becomes more abundant than hammers.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Meatbuster]

So why would anyone delete outdated troops anyway? To minimize unit upkeep?

 

[Pogel]

I almost never delete units. Unit upkeep would have to be critical, and if it's that critical then I've got other problems. I'd rather keep them in my non-border cities.

I'll spend cash to upgrade if the unit is heavily promoted or in an emergency. I won't upgrade en-masse until Infantry. I'm now tending to use Great Merchants in my main commerce city for the food & commerce rather than doing trade runs - large cash reserves tend to lead to large cash demands.

I upgrade by keeping my military production city(s) pumping out the troops. I'll sometimes use a temporary switch to nationhood when I pick up Rifling to boost my power and provide some defensively oriented units for my border cities - can be a very nice catch-up as I've often got lots of pretty happy cities at around this point from runnng HR/Slavery and building up the research.

 

[Anjin Sushi]

2. As of the offensive units: last time I tried to get rid of them the same way Cervus described. In my case I smashed them of unbombarded city walls. They all died all right, as I wanted. But this gave an enourmous experience upgrade to my potential enemy

I often use old troops in new wars. But I use them like pseudo-catapults: to get the enemies hitpoint down. This way you can get rit of the old troops in a valuable way (as canon fodder). After this initial softening, your more modern troops go in for the final kill with fewer loses .

But you MUST be sure to have enough quality tropps to finish them of in the same turn, so the enemy do not get there experience bonus.

But otherwise either upgrading or upgrading readyness of troops in critical location is a sound strategy

 

[lilnev]

I often use old troops in new wars. But I use them like pseudo-catapults: to get the enemies hitpoint down. This way you can get rit of the old troops in a valuable way (as canon fodder). After this initial softening, your more modern troops go in for the final kill with fewer loses .

But you MUST be sure to have enough quality tropps to finish them of in the same turn, so the enemy do not get there experience bonus.

One problem with this approach is the war weariness it causes. You get three times as much WW for an attack that you lose as you do for an attack that you win. If you know it will be a very short war then go for it. But if you find yourself having to terminate campaigns because you can't sustain the WW, try leaving out the opening suicide-rush.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Phrederick]

It always depends in a game on a few factors, such as my empires production:commerce ratio, whether I have high unit upkeep or not, and on how experienced my units are, and with what promotions.If I have a lot of production but not much commerce, then it makes more sense to build new units than to upgrade old units. If I don't have high unit upkeep, then if I plan to war within 100 turns, I won't delete any units. Any unit with 3+ useful promotions (not shock or cover, or medic or woodsman/guerilla) will usually be promoted whenever I can.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I often use old troops in new wars. But I use them like pseudo-catapults: to get the enemies hitpoint down. This way you can get rit of the old troops in a valuable way (as canon fodder). After this initial softening, your more modern troops go in for the final kill with fewer loses.

This will generate an enormous amount of war weariness, which is often a big problem.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Don't really see the point in this one either. Gift units to your enemy so that he can upgrade them to use against you?

Well, duh, you aren't going to gift your obsolete units to your enemy. You would gift them to an ally.

 

[shivute]

I always upgrade units. At lower difficulty levels it is easy to build new units and not worry, at higher difficulties each unit built and lost is valuable time that could have been spent building something useful rather than a unit that becomes dead.
I will use great merchants for cash, I will tech trade for cash, I will declare war on an inferior AI to gain cash and I will also reduce my science rate to gain cash (I don't like doing this one though, but I will do so to upgrade my units).
I have field units and city attackers.
I don't care so much for the field units as they tend to have the +25% promos against melee or archery and these become obsolete.
However axemen, spearmen, swordsmen, macemen, pikemen with 3 city raider promos uprade beautifully to gunpowder units and retain these promos that new gunpowder units can't get.

A good general cares for his units and nurtures them, making them more powerful. Upgrading though expensive, is definately worth it.

 

[Proteus]

For me it depends on the role and the XP of the troops.
Offensive units get upgraded before defensive units, with garrison troops often don&#180;t get upgraded at all (its often cheaper to just build new garrison troops).
I also normally don&#180;t upgrade troops which have more than 10 XP and are only 1-3 XP short of their next promotion. In this case I just wait till they have enough XP to get promoted.
I also rarely upgrade troops with less thean 5 XP. Only if I absolutely need them modernized (for example because I really need them in a war).

As for gitfting troops:
If I do it, I do it for strategical reasons. Sometimes there are occasions where a strong rival civ invades another, much weaker civ (which, incontrast to the strong civ, has outdated equipment). In this case (espoecially if you don&#180;t want to start a war against your strong rival) it is useful to gift some of your modern units to the weaker civ. Often it helps weaken the strong rival or even prevents that his invasion is successful (and everything without negatively affecting your reelations to said rival )

 

[rustydusty10]

Just b4 i get Flight i usually mass produce Cavalries and get them the March promotion, then i upgrade them all to Gunships and use those March gunships to pillage while i'm at war since they can keep going without having to stop to heal.

 

[eric_]

I do a little of both. I do everything I can to keep highly skilled units alive and up-to-date.

But if I have an overabundance of anything, and especially if I'm having financial troubles, I will disband a bunch of units. In a game I'm currently playing, I had a whole bunch of archers in all of my cities. But I have a city that turns out longbows every turn, so I just disbanded most of them once the cities they were in had two or more longbows. I did keep and upgrade any archers with Garrison 2 or higher.

 

[iamnleth]

Does anyone ever use Nationhood to draft units?