Army war question

[carlc]

Two things--(1) how do your units replenish? I've put the army back into a settlement, but the unit numbers are the same? I took one army back to the location where they were built, hoping the "retrain" button would activate, but nope. Such did happen in another settlement where I had an army that had been in battle, but I had also just upgraded the leather tanner so after watching it a few times, it looked like they were only getting better armor. So, do units just fight till they die and that's it?

(2)I still don't get the "Free upkeep" bit. I've got one settlement with walls and the little info card says that two units are free upkeep. But, all three of the units in there seem to still be costing me money, or at least their info card tells me the normal upkeep. Earlier, someone said something about a unit being blue if it was the free one, or something like that. Is there a specific unit that needs to be selected for that role?

(3)can you merge units...this is especially needed if I can't actually replenish the troops?

[Dreadnought]

you can only replenish your army if a settlement can *recruit* them.
so dont send a militia spear to castle and dont send spear somthing to town expecting to be replenished.

Free upkeep last i cheecked... it only works for units that can be recruited localy.

can only replenish from same type of unit.

[carlc]

Well, I guess that makes some sense. And I realize this is one of the things that causes people to not like modern TW games, that the army just replenishes basically everywhere and instantaneously. Still, in a small geographic core area, it would seem more logical that an army could replenish within its home area.

Here's another question about war, though: On the battlefield, the units move sooooo slooooowly. What is up with that? And, I know where the run/walk icon is.....but even when I give them an attack order, everyone just leisurely strolls toward the enemy. And, when I click the run button, I swear that 5 seconds later they are back to walking.

Perhaps I am messing it up by how I use the mouse. In Warhammer (and I think Shogun 2) you could double-click and the unit would run towards the enemy.

I do understand the idea about fatigue and being careful to not run everywhere. But not only do the battles play out in slow motion, but for the life of me, I can't get cavalry to charge. Is there some sort of set distance you have to be away to effectively charge? I feel like I've tried every distance, and no matter what, the cavalry just strolls up to the enemy which is obviously no charge at all.

Lastly, do you have a way to tell your units to defend? I'm thinking about the spear units mostly when confronting oncoming horses. In S2 you could tell those units to get into a wall. And in Warhammer, as long as they weren't moving for a tiny bit of time, then they braced for the attack. I can't tell if my spear units are doing that or not.

[𝔗𝔢𝔞 ❀]

The joy of holding a castle with two guys and not having auto replenish.

[Odin]

1. As someone else has said, units can only be retrained in a settlement can recruit those units but it is not restricted to the location they were originally recruited in. So any castle, for example, that can produce Feudal Knights can also be used to retrain Feudal Knights. Should also be noted that retraining has the same limitations as recruitment, so if the settlement can only recruit 2 of a certain unit, you can only retrain the equivalent amount of that unit. If your army is heavily damaged, this will be especially noticeable and may take a while to properly retrain that army.

2. The free upkeep troops are typically militia type units recruited in towns and cities. Things like Archer Militia, Levy Spearmen ect. Low quality stuff.

3. You can merge units by selecting unit cards with your mouse and dragging them over one another. You can only merge the same units together though.

[Inardesco]

You press the M key and recruit new troops.

Only units that you can recruit in that settlement AND having the free_upkeep attribute are free upkeep. But basically all militia units recruitable in cities.

Battles in Medieval 2 can last very long. This is reflectedin movement speed and how long it takes to kill something.

That said, they can also be over in a single cavalry charge. I always play Med 2 on x2 speed.

[carlc]

Thank you Odin and Inardesco....so, is there a mechanism to see that a unit is being counted as free upkeep?

On the retraining, does that lower their experience?

And, also, does one retraining make up the full damage to a unit? I couldn’t tell in my couple of attempts, but that is also partially because I am unaware of proper unit sizes.

[Inardesco]

Unita being merged will share their experience. So if you have 2 half units with 2 experience, merging them together yields 2-4 experience.

Retraining will always bring a unit back to full size but it also lowers the experience because of the soldiers that have not had any combat.

This is because soldiers gain the experience, not the unit. The unit shows the experience when all hsve it.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

In order to replenish, the unit needs to be stationed in a settlement with the buildings that allow the training of that unit, and you must go into the tab and select them.

You can get a lot of experience if you manually merge units. As long as you are not erasing an unit (by merging more than the current total of men) you can effectively transferer experience and when you retrain, they are retrained at the experience level that unit has.

Retraining will completely fill the unit back to full strength and apply new upgrades if available (like the leather tanner example). If you happen to train a unit in a settlement without a leather tanner, and you move it to another settlement that has one, then the option to retrain will appear and that will apply the upgrade. It might be better to use the unit and then go back for retraining once it's wounded as you can both fill its strength and upgrade without having to do it twice.

Each settlement can support a certain number of units which is determined ans specified by the level of wall (right clicking the wall should tell you the current cap). However in order for these units to be free you need to be able to recruit them locally.

As an example, a town can support 3 units for free, however in order for that to happen you need to have built the town guard building to support 3 units of town militia. If you upgrade this same building you'll be able to also recruit spear militia, and the city now can also have spear militia as free garrison. (The game picks the most costly one for the free slot). Once a unit is free, its unit card shows blue.

In the same example, if you do not upgrade the town guard to the next level , but you move 3 units of spear militia in there, those units wouldn't be free, because the city cannot locally recruit them.

3) you can merge units by click and dragging the unit card on top of another same unit, or pressing m which is the shortcut for auto-merge. I recommend manually merging though because you can better spread and mantain experience levels.

In the battlefield is common practice to have the battle speed at x2 or even x6 when the units are walking to face each other. If you group them all together on a single group, that should retain the formation if you right click. Holding alt and then right clicking the ground also supposedly orders them to walk in formation.

5)AFAIK, as long as they are stationary and looking, units should brace for a charge. However due to the nature of charges, taking a charge with anything that is not a spearman or a pikeman will cause very serious damage. Even dismounted feudal knights could be completely destroyed.

When I'm positioning my cavalry for a charge, I usually right click and have them form 3 ranks deep. Only after they formed, then i right click the enemy unit.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

in the picture: The maximum number of units is determined by the wall. However, If I destroy the building that allows for recruitment (in this case is the barracks branch, which for a city is known as "town guard" and it upgrades from there), I cannot have those units as free even though i'm below the cap.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2434472079

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2434472317

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2434472562

You can see comparing picture #2 and #3 that the pikemen no longer have a blue unit card, because I can't no longer recruit them on that settlement and therefore they are no longer free.

[Red Spot]

Might want to revisit those screenshots. They dun show any blue to me.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

The background on the unit card at the bottom center of the screen. On Screen 2 they are all blue. Screen 3 only spearmen are blue.

Quick Re: retraining: it doesn't dilute the experience. It preserves it. If you have a wounded army and one unit has reached silver status, let's say, you can keep retraining that unit and manually merging to spread that experience level. I've done it countless times.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2434494677
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2434494846

[NekRon99]

To respond to your charging questions the charge both has to have a minimum amount of space to reach a full gallop as well as not being interrupted by either uneven terrain or some other obstruction. I dont think you need to start from idle as Ive been able to cycle charge while on the move. You will know your charge is in effect by the horn blowing as well as the lances lowering. When your charge hits home hover your mouse over the enemy unit andwatch its numbers diminish. when they stop dropping quickly get your cavalry out of there as they will start taking casualties in a prolonged melee. Practice will allow you to recognize when your charge has been interrupted as well as the lack of the charging horn. in either case just pull back and try again.

[NekRon99]

There is a guard mode on the bottom of the orders screen when you highlight any unit{s}. Pressing that will tell your men to hold the line and not pursue out of formation. Other units have other stances such as spear wall, skirmish, etc.

[NekRon99]

A unit under free upkeep will have an upkeep cost of free when you hover your mouse over it.

[carlc]

Thanks Disciple. I’ve certainly not seen those type of cards showing the specifics of types of units, but I am also just in the first few turns (maybe turn 12 or so), so I’m not even close to those buildings (that I know of).

But I will also state that I don’t see the blue background on the two pictures. They look identical to me. Sorry. The two right hand units are all in blue outfits. The three to the left have on blue looking pants. But that’s what both pictures look like. I do believe you...I just can’t see it.