Unit upgrades - worth it?

[rbj2001]

Fairly basic question: I have a bunch of Galleons and Frigates sitting around, and now everyone's researched Combustion they're pretty useless. I could a) delete them and build a new fleet of Transports and Destroyers or b) start building wealth and reduce my research to buy upgrades - although this seems pretty expensive, at 515 gold for one Destroyer.

I've heard some people recommend you only buy upgrades if you have a unit with a lot of promotions that you want to keep (although XP gets reset to 10 so you're unlikely to get any more promotions with that unit). (I can see it's worth upgrading where certain promos are unavailable to the upgraded type - e.g. city raider Grenadiers or city defence machine guns.)

Has someone done the calculations in terms of hammer - gold equivalence to show what's the best thing to do?

Is it the same for all types of unit?

 

[UnforcedError]

Well, a destroyer costs 200 base so upgrading the ones without experience for 512 each is obviously not worth it, unless you're in a hurry for some reason.

As for upgrades in general:
it might be worth it sometimes. Say you want to rush an army but don't have enough production because your land is small or you have multiple commerce cities. In these cases pre-chopping / whipping say HA to upgrade to cuirs or to rush warriors / axes to upgrade to maces can be a real time saver. As for upgrading CR maces into Grenadiers or Rifles: yes, that's certainly nice, although rather marginal (you're better off sending Cannons with them).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Normally, you wouldn't want to do it because it isn't very efficient. However, it's true that you can use upgrades to (inefficiently) divert all of your raw outputs into , which might be exactly what you need to kill the AI before it reaches a key military technology.

Normally, however, you would indeed only upgrade very amazing units or non-medic great general units (which don't cost gold to upgrade).

 

[Seraiel]

Upgrade Maceman to Rifleman, definately worth it.

Swordsman to Mace, in rare occasions.

Catapult to Cannon, also definately worth it.

Warrior in a City thats far away from the frontier to the enemy your attacking, no *lol* .

 

[Izuul]

The best use of upgrades is to do it en masse right after unlocking a new unit. The most common example is building a bunch of HAs or elephants prior to getting MT and Cuirassiers. You can use a couple of great merchants to get a bunch of gold and instantly have a stack of Cuirs ready to invade.

 

[rah]

My most common upgrades are
Cuirassiers to Calvary
Trebs to Cannons

They're cheap and quite useful.

 

[Izuul]

I do like to upgrade CR Maces to Grens/Rifles and Trebs to Cannons when i have the opportunity. Sometimes they are prebuilds for that purpose, and sometimes they are combat veterans when transitioning from a Medieval war to a Renaissance war.

 

[nfw]

Unless you are about to invade someone overseas, I wouldn't bother upgrading the galleons

 

[VSarius]

Trebs to Cannons or CR Rifles are pretty much the only times. With horses, I find the investment to go from HAs to Cuirs is a bit much, easier to just pop off a Golden Age, hop into Theocracy and pump them out.

 

[Iranon]

Good if you want to channel your entire output into military units.

Purpose-building obsolescent units for upgrading is less efficient than rushbuying... and rushbuying already requires a pretty focused economy to be worth doing on a large scale.

Can still be ok when the obsolete unit is almost as expensive as the one you upgrade to (e.g. Trebuchets to Cannons) or when upgrading gives you useful promotions you wouldn't get on fresh units (e.g. Quechuas and Oromos to Rifles).

City Raider on gunpowder units isn't terribly interesting in my opinion - they already stomp longbows, fighting against later units and ignoring some defenses means lower modifiers for the defender, which in turn means City Raider loses its competitive advantage over Combat promotions.

 

[Izuul]

Trebs to Cannons or CR Rifles are pretty much the only times. With horses, I find the investment to go from HAs to Cuirs is a bit much, easier to just pop off a Golden Age, hop into Theocracy and pump them out.

Except its often faster and easier to get a couple GMs during that GA. You can save 1000 hammers just by upgrading 20 HAs with 3400g and the HAs can be built during the GA too.

 

[VSarius]

Caste revolt to run mass Merchants eh? A valid strategy. I suppose it depends on the empire configuration, if you can 1-2t Cuirs in say ~3 cities during a Golden Age, mass upgrades become less desirable. Rushbuying is a valid alternative as well, one that I'd be more likely to undertake if I were to spam GMs.

 

[Choggy]

If I'm going for a Dom/Conquest win then I'll always look for GM's for upgrades

CR Mace to Rifles is a great upgrade if you're going down the cannon route. CR2/CR3 rifles are pretty much unstoppable up to Infantry, Trebs->Cannon must be one of the cheapest upgrades around, especially if you get early Engineering.

As Izuul said, HA's are a great upgrade unit for the horsey route, and if you haven't got access to Iron then a GM will upgrade 7 of them to Cav. It's not hard to get 3 GM's with Economics, 20 Cav will win you a lot of games.

 

[ben-jammin]

Sometimes it's a matter of speed over efficiency. Building cheaper units to upgrade for a breakout is a good use of hammers in cities that don't need to build anymore infrastructure, and it can enlarge your window of opportunity by a lot to have 15-20 cuirs/cannons/whatever instantaneously. If it would take you 10 turns to produce those otherwise, you've basically doubled your available troop count by the same number of turns after the key tech is finished.

 

[6K Man]

The standard Civ4 answer applies: “It depends.”

Some units get routinely upgraded because the upgrades are cost-effective and provide a lot of bang for the buck. Treb>Cannon, for example.

Some units get upgraded because they have useful promos that aren’t available to newly built units (the City Raider Mace>Rifleman upgrade, for example). Useful, but probably overrated, if you’re using siege properly.

When it comes to Frigate/Privateer upgrades to Destroyers, it depends on the game situation and the promotions. Where possible, I try to promote Privateers (and Frigates, but they seldom get there) to Blitz. If your opponent is still using wooden ships, a single Blitz Destroyer can sink several wood ships per turn, as opposed to an unpromoted Destroyer that can only sink one. So if you’re facing wooden ships, a single Blitz DD may be able to do the job of 3 or more ships, saving you 100s of . But if you’re facing a technologically advanced opponent, or don’t have Blitz ships to upgrade, I wouldn’t bother. Warships die easily to opponents with equal (or higher) base strength, and it’s an expensive upgrade.

Commando units are another situational upgrade. They’re scarce (hard to get to 26xp without a GG) and useful. Might as well give them a little more survivability by upgrading.

 

[Strickl3r]

It depends on the opportunity costs

The next best alternative is usually research. But if you can take out 2-3 AIs or even sweep the board there is no need to research anymore. Just run your slider at 0% and use your gold for production purposes.

You should most likely be running rush buy mode anyway by the time combustion is available.

Remember to have a clear goal how you want to win the game, that might make your decision wether to upgrade or not much easier.

 

[paulcarri]

depends on the game, this game i upgraded because i got to modern era without a war

i funded it by selling junk to backwards civs

 

[Robert FIN]

I upgrade units in late-game. Especially Rifles-Infantry upgrade is done in several turns of 0% sliders if your civ is successful at all. In early game I find it expensive, since I wanna do only science with my commerce then.

 

[Si_Lurker]

If you're playing OCC on islands you need a big fleet. If you loose fleet, you loose food and fall behind beyond recovery. Also your only city is building something more important such as factory or research or land units or additional destroyers.

 

[enKage]

trireme => caravel is a must to win circumnavigation
the same with few galleys - if u have settlers ready. Otherwise - I would make new galleons.
3rd common upgrade of naval units - privaters, those which survive usually have a lot of exp

All the other naval stuff - not worth. It is better to make a completely new fleet with drydock benefits