Unit Upgrade cost Broken?

[Levgre]

Okay, so I can upgrade a warrior to a legion for 110 gold. Seems like a bargain, huh? Here's proof:

Cost to buy warrior: 200 gold. with the upgrade cost, thats 310 for a legion.

Cost to buy a legion: 400 gold.

90 gold cheaper to go the upgrade route than the buy route! Upgrading should be the more expensive option, or at least on par with unit purchasing.

 

[Ahriman]

Add in professional army SP....

 

[Beardy Dan]

Are you still able to buy warriors when Legions become available?

 

[warpstorm]

No, you can't.

 

[nothxor]

Also: units cost maintenance. So if it's an old warrior, it's already been costing you some amount of money. I'm sure you put it to good use during that time, I'm just saying!

 

[Esham]

That actually makes sense. It shouldnt cost more than the cost of a new unit to upgrade existing ones.

Why upgrade then if you can just buy new ones every turn.

 

[Womf]

I agree with Esham ; it makes perfect sense that an upgrade would cost less than the new unit.

 

[Spark026]

Its not broken, the game is just encouraging you to upgrade rather than produce/buy all new units. The developers intended this from what they're said.

 

[Esham]

One thing is certain, its not Civ4 math thats for sure.

I think with the removal of sliders it makes sense to reduce the cost to upgrade.

In civ4 you could play with the slider to pump out +300 gpt and mass upgrade. Now the price is reduced but you can't manipulate your gpt as much.

 

[Pazyryk]

Current system makes more sense to me. A unit represents a group of warriors that has (like any group, military or civilian) a sort of group memory. It's much easier to upgrade the group's arms, armor and training than to create a whole new group from scratch. (Also, this system discourages having lots of old obsolete units sitting around, which was a problem in civ4.)

 

[SRV]

You would want to upgrade older units anyway so you can keep there promotions. It would be better than making new ones that are not as high lvl.

 

[bamboothief]

yea, Civ5 unit system is alot better than Civ4 one

 

[Olleus]

The problem is that just before you research Iron Working, you should buy as many warriors as you can in all your cities and then upgrade them a few turns later. This is cheaper than just buying legions afterwards. This forces the player (if he wants to play optimally) to use something that feels like an exploit and is very artificial. Makes for bad gameplay to have the player jumping through micro management hoops to save a bit of gold.

To use the realism card: Why should it be cheaper to recruit a unit from scratch, give it some clubs, teach it how to use said clubs and then five turns remake new weapons and armour and shields for them and re-teach them how to use the new equipment; rather than recruiting a unit from scratch and giving it the more advanced weaponry and training from day 1.


The problem isn't that its cheaper to upgrade than to train from new; but that its cheaper to train from new and then upgrade than just train from new.

 

[Nicolas10]

We saw this in the CiV livestream when Gregg was churning out Samurai, but was actually building swordsmen before buying the upgrade.

 

[King Jason]

The problem is that just before you research Iron Working, you should buy as many warriors as you can in all your cities and then upgrade them a few turns later. This is cheaper than just buying legions afterwards. This forces the player (if he wants to play optimally) to use something that feels like an exploit and is very artificial. Makes for bad gameplay to have the player jumping through micro management hoops to save a bit of gold.

Yea, like building a bunch of military units across your empire and promoting them all with city-raider so you can upgrade them to rifles.

Granted, two wrongs don't make a right... but these kind's of exploits will probably always exist in some form or another in civ and I think it's a bit more balanced since the player would like have to save up a huge cache of gold in order to rush-buy an entire army of legions ~ depriving them of other bonuses such as city-state ones which are huge in terms of growth and policy acquisition.

 

[cembandit]

If you can afford all that gold, then why not. Thats some serious city-state bribing or tile buying power being spent. Plus, if your that far behind on your economic unit cap that you can afford it, then it'd probably a good idea.

 

[Smips]

Yea, like building a bunch of military units across your empire and promoting them all with city-raider so you can upgrade them to rifles.

Don't you think the gold you spend to either make the military units or maintain them will make it about and equal cost?

 

[Bibor]

Just MAKE SURE you build at least 8 catapults or trebuchets, and then upgrade them to cannons and later artillery. Buying or building artillery simply isn't worth it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think
Buy+Upgrade
should
be equal to
Buy alone.

Build+Upgrade might be a good compromise between pure buying + pure Building, since they use different resources, but there shouldn't be 2 Gold based methods of making the unit that give the same result with one better than the other (unless the more straightforward one ie direct buying)is easier.

 

[Ahriman]

I think
Buy+Upgrade
should
be equal to
Buy alone.

Build+Upgrade might be a good compromise between pure buying + pure Building, since they use different resources, but there shouldn't be 2 Gold based methods of making the unit that give the same result with one better than the other (unless the more straightforward one ie direct buying)is easier.

Agreed, upgrading is too cheap relative to buying and its exploitative.

The reward for upgrading units should be that you have experienced units with promotions. You shouldn't get a cost advantage too, there are already enough penalties for losing units permanently. Any war where you lose a significant army is a Pyhrric victory at best, in a competitive game its likely to be too hard to come back from losing even just a few military units.