Upgrading does not make economic sense!

[Shillen]

I really don't see what all you guys have to build so much of that you don't have time to build units.

With few exceptions, you will have cities where commercial production is miniscule. These cities aren't worth build banks, markets, and libraries in. So then, you have them build units for the rest of your cities.

Furthermore, I recently played a game as Financial/Expansive on Prince where I kept the slider as much on the science as possible. Even with, in theory, the most speedy research bringing me new buildings to build, I reached rifling and pretty much had nothing to build but Redcoats with which I took over the world.

So in conclusion, I really don't understand how you (1)accumulate any money to upgrade with, since science is so much more valuble, or why (2)ya'll have such pressing buildings to build in your cities that you don't run out of things to build around the industrial revolution, or have cities where building military units is the only thing worthwhile. Short of being threatened, I don't see where upgrading makes sense.

Are you playing a mod? It sounds like you have the mod that makes production normal speed but the tech rate is epic speed. If that's not the case I don't know how you can possibly run out of stuff to build in your cities.

 

[Smirk]

I think the posters point was that gold is better spent elsewhere, or not accumulated at all. I hear many of you saying that you have plenty of gold to spend, and with the exception of the one poster's strategy of using great merchants all of it is meaningless, because if you are amassing a great fortune you've already won the game and just lack the decisiveness to finish the AI off sooner, this has been true for Civ I, and from the looks of it is still true in Civ IV.

Think of it in light of competitive play such as gotm, just beating the AI is not enough.


I haven't really played enough myself to know definitively whether upgrading is as bad as it seems, that is compared to Civ3 where upgrading was a major part of early warfare.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Are you playing a mod? It sounds like you have the mod that makes production normal speed but the tech rate is epic speed. If that's not the case I don't know how you can possibly run out of stuff to build in your cities.

No, but I did keep on Organized Religion almost the entire game. And to be honest, this was the first game where I really ran out of buildings to build. But, even in other games I never have a whole lot more than 10 turns or so worth of extra buildings to build. Some of the posts in this thread sound like they're going to be crippled if they take time off of city improvements and build units.

 

[gibbie99]

In my current game, i had too much cash (small number of large POP cities), so upgrading really made sense. Now as to how to use that excess cash is another question. I also dont' think cash, research and production is really equal, since you can't hurry research with more money (unlike the real world, sorta - I'm in research). So if you are sitting on a mountain of cash and no other use for it, then upgrading makes sense. Although I probably should not of had that much cash, since Gahndi beat me to the space race, by oh 50-100 turns

 

[Vizzini]

Evolve or die.

If you're not upgrading your units then you're paying maintenance for mediocrity. If I have to zero my tech slider for a turn to get the cash needed to upgrade all my units in one turn, I will, and I won't even blink at that.

I usually hold off upgrading unless I need to, but if it gets to the point that I need to then I can't afford not to.

There are also times it makes MUCH more sense to upgrade than it does to build new - like going from Caravels to Destroyers and other big tech shifts. (Cavalry to Gunships etc) By upgrading to destroyers rather than wasting time and production building new ones I can spend that production on -new- units, like Battleships, or new improvements like drydocks etc..

Hammers are, IMO, about 100x more valuable than gold.

 

[DaveMcW]

In Civ3, hammers (shields) were 3x as valuable as gold in a military game. 2x in a space race game.

I'm not sure what the conversion value in Civ4 is, but it's probably in the 2x-3x range too.

 

[RoddyVR]

in the few games i've played, i've changed my thinking from one extreme of this thread to the other. originaly i upgraded every unit, as soon as i could. that was just dumb, cause they'd sit around doing nothing anyway.
then i decided, i'll only upgrade units i'm going to attack with, (or ones about to be attacked).
spent too much gold for my taste.

now i just upgrade the lucky units that have gotten good promotions.

the oldest units (like warriors) sit around provinding the military presense needed for cities (my capitol in my current game is defended by the one original warrior i got at game start, lol, and its a 25 pop capitol)
the slightly outdated units are used for the outskirts defences (can be upgraded if i'm attacked, or stay as they are if i'm attacked weakly). and they are used to soften up enemy stacks and to slow down/bait enemy attackers.

and the heavy hammer producing city (6 or 7 hills i think) that has hero's epic (+100 production to units) is where i pump out the majority of my units. when musketmen came about, i was doing 2 turns/musket.

 

[Shillen]

There's definitely a balance to it. I don't think anyone is saying to upgrade every unit you have as soon as you can. Only upgrade when you need to. We're only disagreeing with the thought process that upgrading is always a waste of money. There are many times where you're better off upgrading old units than producing new ones.

 

[Astax]

As far as people claiming you can have enough time that's not always true. Time is relative to the game speed. I as a war mogner love to play others on Normal, beacuse it punishes the carebearing ways of building nothing but buildigns and 2 archers to guard your cities. Once I come knocking he cant just turn around and put up defenses in 4 turns.

Upgrading is great!

Also if u dont use up your XP I believe its capped at 10 after u Upgrade. So you lose any unspent XPS beyond 10. Somoen correct me if Im wrong.

 

[homegrown]

I made a really simple change the xml that some of the "upgraders" might like and might sway some of the others. I changed the xp retained after upgrade from 10 to 26.

 

[Keith Larson]

in the few games i've played, i've changed my thinking from one extreme of this thread to the other. originaly i upgraded every unit, as soon as i could. that was just dumb, cause they'd sit around doing nothing anyway.
then i decided, i'll only upgrade units i'm going to attack with, (or ones about to be attacked).
spent too much gold for my taste.

now i just upgrade the lucky units that have gotten good promotions.

the oldest units (like warriors) sit around provinding the military presense needed for cities (my capitol in my current game is defended by the one original warrior i got at game start, lol, and its a 25 pop capitol)
the slightly outdated units are used for the outskirts defences (can be upgraded if i'm attacked, or stay as they are if i'm attacked weakly). and they are used to soften up enemy stacks and to slow down/bait enemy attackers.

and the heavy hammer producing city (6 or 7 hills i think) that has hero's epic (+100 production to units) is where i pump out the majority of my units. when musketmen came about, i was doing 2 turns/musket.

That was the point I was trying to make all along. I was mass upgrading as well and found it both unnecessary and a waste of gold. It is a no brainer to upgrade your best units and those in your border towns, but just to be upgrading is pointless. Besides everytime you upgrade you pay a 25 gold penalty, so you can save some cash if you skip an upgrade cicle or two.

 

[userqwerty]

As chinese i had in early middle ages threatening Japanese civ arise to the east. I had only source of iron and could produce 130 gold a turn at 0 science. I disconnected my iron and began piling gold.

for 10 turns my 7 cities produced archers. rushing with pop as it was under slavery

i got some 20 odd archers that way.

i also used the civics and barracks to push thier exp to 8 each

then i connected iron as i was having a glut of weak archers and upgraded all of my archers to cho ko nu

this allowed me to save money on mainteinance and bumrush the japanese with their samurai

a cho ko nu that has 2 free attacks and promoted to 3 more attacks with collateral damage and str 6 vs samurai with str 8 is a really really winning proposition

Do not discount gold rushing. Gold rushing allows you to save valuable turns producing commerce buildings when you are done producing cheap units. you also have to pay upkep for the units for fewwer terms as you can build an army quicker.

 

[Vizzini]

Also if u dont use up your XP I believe its capped at 10 after u Upgrade. So you lose any unspent XPS beyond 10. Somoen correct me if Im wrong.

Not capped at 10 - capped at the minimum for that units current level. Ie, 2, 5, 10, 17 etc.. if it has 18 when you upgrade it'll have 17 when you're done. If your unit is close to the next level, like 16 or 9... I'd try to hold off upgrading it if possible.

 

[cleverhandle]

Not capped at 10 - capped at the minimum for that units current level. Ie, 2, 5, 10, 17 etc.. if it has 18 when you upgrade it'll have 17 when you're done. If your unit is close to the next level, like 16 or 9... I'd try to hold off upgrading it if possible.

No. There is a hard cap at 10, regardless of experience level. You will learn and remember this the first time you experience the pain of upgrading a 25XP unit.

As for the general point of the thread, one thing that I've noticed is that I have a bad tendency to run my tech slider too high in this game. Dropping my tech slider 10-20% may mean only a 1 turn delay in tech. Sometimes not even that. But it also means a lot of gold. A lot more than I usually expect, and certainly enough to pay for the most pressing upgrades if not every single one. Somehow, this seems much more noticeable in CIV than CIII, though I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the overflow retention or overall lower maintenance costs than CIII, but that little tax bump can be a big deal.

 

[Astax]

Dropping my tech slider 10-20% may mean only a 1 turn delay in tech.

That is only the case if u got some scientists :/ Yes I had lot of sicentists while running 40-50% and I was still on par techwise for hte most part. Good tip for war mongerers, once ur army is set switch your engeneer to scientist.

 

[Yushal]

I find a cost of 25 gold above par value to be cheap.

I think you are disregarding about the time factor. I get a modern unit for a basic surcharge of 25 gold in ONE turn. I think that is all there is to be said about it. All comparisons seem fairly well even offhand. Basically, upgrading is just another form of hurrying production.

 

[parachute4u]

This is doubly true if this swordsman has lots of experience, if you upgrade him he goes back to only 10 experience points. Keep pushing that swordsman’s experience up and only upgrade when your opponents no longer have ancient units (which by the way is often very late in the game if ever).

But he keeps his skills...doesn't he? Lvl4 goes back to lvl2, keep his lvl 4 skills and will learn more skills when he gets to lvl4 again. Right or wrong?

 

[cleverhandle]

But he keeps his skills...doesn't he? Lvl4 goes back to lvl2, keep his lvl 4 skills and will learn more skills when he gets to lvl4 again. Right or wrong?

He keeps his promos and stays Lvl4, but with 10XP. So he still needs 16 more XP to get any new promos. No "bonus" skills here...

 

[Nilrim]

I think there is one other thing to keep in mind when considering upgrading. If you are not strickly war minded and would prefer to be left alone by an aggresive AI for a perriod of time the way is to appear stronger. I am sure that the AI looks at your over all military strenght not just your total number of units. If you know the AI is getting ready to attack you, by stacking units near your border, canceling trade agreements etc. and you have cash to spare with many out dated units, one mass unit upgrade to your militray can keep the AI from attacking, or at least make you a lot more able to fight him off.
Personally unless you are at constant war I think upgrading is not a bad way to go, it allows my citys to keep pumping out cultura and improvments while still keeping me strong. Best of both worlds.

 

[KAuss]

Gold rush buildings, as they take WAY longer to build and the time spent building them is not using the building's added features...

A city uses all the building's features while producing fresh units...

Your cities actually should be producing nothing but units all game round until you get the building that you do need... Cause rushing buildings is a LOT cheaper than upgrading units...

XP is not as hard to come by as one thinks... Catapult stack and attack after two suicides usually earn you some easy kills... So if you got a lvl 4 warrior or something and wanted to spend a wad making a riflemen, you'll soon find that it's not going to help that much having a lvl 4 riflemen because you don't wanna risk him by dying first... If that Riflemen dies to another Riflemen (very high odds) then you've just wasted that $$$ forever... Where as if you used it to rush a building, it'll be there for a good long while doing you plenty good...

I ONLY upgrade when I see nme attacking someting near by that needs to be defended... Or to get my first lvl 5 unit to build West Point...