Unit Upgrade and Purchase Costs

[CrazyG]

How much should it cost to promote units, especially late game units, has been debated in a few separate threads. I thought I would make a dedicated thread and put some information out there.

These are the unmodified costs to buy or upgrade a unit. I only did the list for the melee line. From what I can tell, there is no pattern to how much upgrades cost

Spoiler Picture :

Here are the potential modifiers (I could be missing some)

Spoiler Modifier List :

The cost to purchase can be lowered by

• the Forbidden Palace
• Industry Policies
• Autocracy Policies
• Stock Exchange

The cost to purchase is increased by the number of cities owned and number of techs discovered
Banks will also provide 15% of spent as a boost for purchases, but not upgrades.

The cost to upgrade can be lowered by

• Imperialism Policy
• Autocracy Policy
• The Pentagon

Other things to consider

• its much less important to have a fully modern army later in the game. Riflemen can beat infantry, but warriors can't really beat spearmen
• upgrades occur very slowly initially (big gap between spear and pike) but later on very quickly (small gap between unlocking rifles and infantry)
• sometimes you will upgrade due to supply cap issues (more common early on)
• sometimes you will upgrade due to experienced units

My thoughts
-The Fusilier in particular has a crazy upgrade cost
-I think the late game upgrade costs in general a little bit too high (or purchase costs too low?)

Maybe we should set a goal, where late game units generally cost X% of their purchase cost to upgrade into. Perhaps 70% or 80% would be good numbers?

 

[Txurce]

Maybe we should set a goal, where late game units generally cost X% of their purchase cost to upgrade into. Perhaps 70% or 80% would be good numbers?

Thanks for the chart. I agree that late game, upgrades have less of an effect, and no line jumps out ar=t me as deserving a higher cost... so settling on a uniform % price for gunpowder units seems like a good idea to me.

 

[Funak]

These are the unmodified costs to buy or upgrade a unit. I only did the list for the melee line. From what I can tell, there is no pattern to how much upgrades cost

Think upgrade-costs are based on the difference in hammer-cost between the units with some fluff thrown in for good measure.

Also unit-promotion-costs have absolutely nothing to do with unit upgrade costs, misleading title.

 

[Gidoza]

Yeah, I've wondered about this as well.

I generally think late-game units are too inexpensive in their costs and that their prices ought to be raised (gold is plentiful at that point). Whereas, it can occasionally be a struggle early in the game to upgrade a Warrior to a Spearman. So that's my first comment - gold doesn't mean the same thing in Ancient as it does in Modern.

As for upgrade costs - I think some kind of meaningful formula would be good to use, such as 1.25x the difference in price between the two units. No need to make it complicated, but perhaps this is too simple.

 

[CrazyG]

Think upgrade-costs are based on the difference in hammer-cost between the units with some fluff thrown in for good measure.

Also unit-promotion-costs have absolutely nothing to do with unit upgrade costs, misleading title.

I fixed the title

If the fusilier was smoothed out there would at least be a pattern of steadily rising costs. I'm not suggesting every unit have the exact same % upgrade cost, some fluff is fine and G clearly wants things to cost increments of ten. I just think it should be roughly consistent

 

[Grabbl]

I think upgrade costs are already based on difference in production costs (as Funak said). The upgrade cost/production ratio varies only between 2.3 and 2.7, with the higher values at later eras. That's quite consistent. As far as I observed, it's the same ratio for other combat types, with the exception that upgrading into late-game-siege units (Field gun + ) seems to be more expensive.

Rush-buy costs are based on production, not production difference. That's why comparing rush-buy and upgrade shows these irregularities.

 

[CrazyG]

Well there's the problem. Rush buy costs aren't really based on production costs, or if they are its done its a weird way.

A warrior costs 3 for every 1 . That amount declines drastically as the game goes on, mech infantry actually cost more than they do . I've always favored buying units late game, but I never realized the disparity was that extreme.

The issue isn't upgrade costs too high, its purchase costs being too low. They get way too low, compared to upgrading or building new units.

 

[tu_79]

I think all those changes were introduced as a mean of preventing too fast replacement for units during wars. Because there's already a purchase cooldown, probably it wasn't tweaked the same way as production.

In certain way, I prefer that investing in buildings is more profitable than rushing units. Rushing units has its own tactical advantages, so it does not need to be profitable.

Moreso, gold is more aplenty later game than hammers, so the relative cost of producing is even worse.

If I had to use a fast rule, I'd suggest that any current unit costs roughly 10 turns of city production or 15 turns of city net gold income. Set upgrade cost at 75% of purchase cost. Roughly because ranged are cheaper than mounted.

 

[CrazyG]

Ok, I edited the OP so that it now also shows a unit's cost. I also have a column, which the cost divided by the cost.

The trend I see is that using gold to buy units becomes drastically cheaper than slow building them in the late game. Using gold instead of hammers already has many advantages, such as generating gold in city A but buying the units in city B. This lets me stacks things like Heroic Epic, Alhambra, or military academies easier. It also means I can use resources generated from a far away place to create units near the front. Given all these advantages, which become more apparent as the game goes on, I don't see any reason for the gold price of units to decline so much.

It would be one thing if purchasing outclassed building or upgrading when I have industry + banks + forbidden palace, but even without any kind of modifier it seems to me to be a clearly better choice later in the game. I think we should increase the gold cost to purchase units in the late game

 

[CrazyG]

Here is a realistic comparison. Lets say I have 3 warriors in ancient era, and about 200 gold. I could upgrade all, or buy 1 spearman. Which force is better? I usually would upgrade, 3 spearmen are more powerful than 3 warriors and 1 spearman. Really its a question of 1 spear, or 2 warriors?

Now lets say I have 4 riflemen, and about 4,000 gold. I could upgrade all 4, leaving me with just 4 infantry. Or I could buy 3 infantry, leaving me with 7 units total. Either way I get 3 infantry, so do I want 1 more infantry, or 4 more riflemen? Probably 4 rifles, its a lot more power on the field. I might make an exception for a super highly promoted unit or something else, but for someone playing defense its easily better to just buy more units. When you add things like industry or banks to this discussion, it becomes even more in favor of buying the units.