yes.  agreed.

also, let my troops gain experience....and with experience, new abilities based on weapons (ie if you give it a spear, let it get 'first strike' or somehting like tha

Furthermore a way to combine individual soliders to parties (once the tech is available) would be nice.

I have to disagree on a simple auto-upgrade, having units decide to upgrade themselves for no reason would be annoying, especially if i 'upgraded' my foot soldiers to archers or archers to cavelry.  Sometimes i'm building at the edge of what i can produce in metal and materials as well, and considering the games happiness is putting you indept, i don't like the thought of being put 100's of metal in dept late game in the middle of a war.  Also i like having stronger and weaker units.

That being said, while i don't like the idea in the way it's been suggested, the idea itself is solid:).  As a suggestion not make it auto, but a special action you can perform on units currently inside a city, with that in mind, the time cost and the resource cost seems quiet good to make early game units you';ve looked after worth something late game.

The join units together (assuming you have the tech for whatever the next group size is researched) is a definate want:P

Given the way that units are custom designed, this could very, very easily be exploited if not implemented carefully. For example, it is simply impossible to allow unit upgrades in the field since it means you could simply deploy a bunch of really wimpy units quickly right at the enemy and then upgrade them to fit whatever role is needed on the battlefield.

I haven't gotten very far into the game yet, but really, c'mon. Who do you think is going to win: a few champions or a few champions each with an army at their disposal?

Anyway, because of champions, I'm not sure if it's necessary to have regular units gain experience.

Don't care about combining units.  Should be able to upgrade troops, like we can in GalCiv2.

Ever fought against a company of anything? They simply wipe the floor with any champion you can build. 200 HP+ (about up to 1000 in a town) is not a funny thing when combined with several hundred attack and defense. Yes, even a company of pioneers (why he built that I do not know) killed 4 of my level 11 heroes with full plate and claymores or bows  including 2 magic users. 

There should be a building/tech that allows units to train/upgrade, other wize you just end up disbanding/deleting old unit types, which seems like a waste.

Gameplay

- Build peasants

- Build foot soldiers

- (disband/delete pesants)

- Build basic knight

- (disband/delete foot soldiers)

wash, rinse, repeat!!!

I was told before units don't gain experience, only champions, too bad, I would have liked to see unit gain experience and maybe even be able to upgrade to a champion. Without upgrade paths and experience, units become little more than just cannon fodder.

not sure it would work with experience ect.. the way units are currently treated (as 1 large unit and not a mass of individuals) the units to be merged would all have to be the same type.

How about the ability (once tech is upgraded) to have a unit in a city train additional recruits to become a squad, company whatever? this would take population from the city.. and expand the size of your unit.

Hmm, how about this simple solution: Add an option to training to have it instead "upgrade" any unit in the city, but have that upgrade consume the old unit, but discount the new unit by the cost (in resources and population) of the old unit.  

Even simpler would be to make it so that any time you disband a unit in a city, you recoup the resources (perhaps a *fraction* of the resources).  This would also be a convinient way to move population between cities if you so desire - train a bunch of peasents in one city, march them to the next one, and then disband/retire them there.