Unit upgrades - worth it?

[paulcarri]

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.

Im playing 1 island per player games at the moment and a fleet is SO vital, i wasnt too happy in current game to find that due to the feature of 'galleys can move into ocean if in cultural borders' i had monty as a very early neighbour

It was about 6 turns after meeting that he decided to start demanding tributes

 

[UncleJJ]

One of my favourite upgrades is crossbow or grenadier to machinegun. That can give the machinegun several promotions it could not otherwise get. The unit can be an astonishingly good stack protector if you're protective and either build the unit with lots of xp or fight a few battles to get some xp before the upgrade. I'll often field several machineguns with CG3 for ultimate defence of newly captured cities and some with Guerilla2 and Woodsman3 for use stack defence in terrain.

As others have said frigates and privateers are seldom worth upgrading. But galleons can be worth upgrading if you really need the extra movement point and extra capacity although they usually do well right to the end of the game and I just build a few extra transports. Another rare case when galleons are worth upgrading is if you face a large number of enemy wooden ships (e.g. big stacks of caravels and galleons) as transports (strength 16) are very good at killing any wooden ships which are all a lot weaker and for a few turns they become cheap warships. If you have an advantage in naval technology it is a good idea to kill off the AI's large stacks of obsolete ships before they upgrade them as it gets a lot harder later on.

 

[The Rook]

I find the lowly Musket to be a practical upgrade unit. They come about at just the right time to assist early Cannon warfare. The fact that they are expensive (but also draftable) makes them cheap to quickly mass upgrade once that Rifling is acquired. CR promotions aren't available, but who cares if you are using Cannons?

 

[Nials]

Rifles can also be drafted with just one pop and are the most efficient units to draft. I don't like upgrading Muskets because they don't offer any other promotions than later Gunpower units do. I'd much rather upgrade CRII/III Maces to Rifles.

 

[Seraiel]

Muskets are good units (i. e. drafted Muskets + Cannons is really powerful and reachable really early, like when libbing Steel while trading for Nationalism) , and upgrading Muskets -> Rifles in the stated scenario (without Siege) isn't efficient, because one could let cities grow, reach Rifles earlier, and draft them directly, instead of Muskets. As Muskets itself are too weak, to do anything, they're only good with the named Cannons, while Rifles itself (without Siege) works better than most think.

 

[UncleJJ]

I tend to agree with Nials. Occassionally, I will upgrade a draft musket if it has gained some useful promotions but spending 110 gold to upgrade a basic 2 xp musket to a rifle seems expensive when another rifle can be drafted in a few turns anyway.

On marathon where the relative costs of drafting and upgrades are different I would be more inclined to upgrade the muskets.

 

[Culture Bomb]

Airship -> fighter is also a cheap upgrade.

You don't necessarily want to do this, as fighters have less range than airships so in some situations are worse, but if your enemy has fighters then airships get much less powerful as they get shot down too easily. Airships also can't be put on carriers which makes them less useful for intercontinental warfare.

 

[The Rook]

Rifles can also be drafted with just one pop and are the most efficient units to draft. I don't like upgrading Muskets because they don't offer any other promotions than later Gunpower units do. I'd much rather upgrade CRII/III Maces to Rifles.

As Seraiel mentions – Muskets are obviously lousy on their own, but they can be very effective when paired with Cannons. The good thing about Muskets is that it is very practical to begin war preparations the moment that Steel is reached (libbed). Muskets may not be near as good as Rifles, but they can still be good enough to clobber an AI (with Cannons) while heading to the more solid Riflemen for "relatively" cheap upgrades.

I tend to agree with Nials. Occassionally, I will upgrade a draft musket if it has gained some useful promotions but spending 110 gold to upgrade a basic 2 xp musket to a rifle seems expensive when another rifle can be drafted in a few turns anyway.

On marathon where the relative costs of drafting and upgrades are different I would be more inclined to upgrade the muskets.

A single trade mission could potentially upgrade the majority of a stack from Muskets to Rifles. While it is true that drafting further Rifles may be more cost efficient, this does not factor that the main stack is now on the other side of the continent. Time is a less visible expense than gold, but still exists, and becomes very apparent at faster game speeds. The time lost waiting for cost effective reinforcements might well prove more expensive than the monetary cost of upgrading the (now well promoted) troops on the scene.

 

[Culture Bomb]

A single trade mission could potentially upgrade the majority of a stack from Muskets to Rifles. While it is true that drafting further Rifles may be more cost efficient, this does not factor that the main stack is now on the other side of the continent. Time is a less visible expense than gold, but still exists, and becomes very apparent at faster game speeds. The time lost waiting for cost effective reinforcements might well prove more expensive than the monetary cost of upgrading the (now well promoted) troops on the scene.

Yes, I was just going to post something along these lines - It may be better (even if less efficient) to upgrade units that are already near the enemy you want to attack rather than building new units that may take 8 turns to reach the war zone.

 

[plasmacannon]

It looks like everyone has covered many of the responses I was thinking of, such as C3 Maces -> Rifles, Trebs -> Cannons, and xbows -> MGs. Those are the basics.
I like to promote high xp Keshiks to Knights and Calvary to Gunships.

If one is Elizabeth [Fin/Phi] and has the Gold and GMs, then upgrading is easy.

I'll add, if one has the Kremlin it can be cheaper to hurry production of a unit, then to upgrade a low xp unit. Especially, if both are in the homeland.