Upgrading equipment on soldiers

There really needs to be an "Edit" button for the custom troop maker thingy.

I don't want to change an existing design.  I want to give some guys that are out in the field better equipment.

I bet this is on Stardock's "To-Do" list... I hope it is. Was kinda hoping this would be a possibility. At least they actually level up now!

Despite it making sense, I too see no way to make unit upgrades after its been built. Really bad design and a step back IMO.

How do you equip on your sovereign now?  I got a Sword of the Sovereign, but didn't see any way to equip it.

i guess it just promotes quantity over quality, as there is no reason to gain exp until you hit the "end" of the tech tree and cant produce better soldiers, as if you stick with a high quality low tech unit, you will probably get rolled later on.

Perhaps those lowly peasants are only meant to be canon fodder... Actually it is sort of similar to Total War with its un-upgradeable units

Good point with the comparison to RTW. However, even in RTW you could improve their weapons and armor slightly (with blacksmiths and armorers).

Perhaps, but when I was playing the BETA for a while finding shortswords was a common reward so I had a dozen of those in my inventory that I wanted to give to my peasants rather than sell them. I probably would not give a peasant the best of the best but if I find a sharper stick than the one he is carrying, no reason not to give it to him.

not got to play the release yet but...

for sovereigns and friednly NPC's you could pass equipment around by drag and drop and then double click on an item in their inventory to get it to equip. 

don't know if the same would be true for the peasants...

I actually like that you can't upgrade forces already in the field.  It's a tradeoff between putting units out now and putting them out later.  The ones in the field have been trained with the equipment they have.  Substituting new equipment that they haven't been trained in wouldn't make sense.  For gameplay balance reasons, I hope it stays the way it is.

The idea that there's no reason to recruit troops until you have exhausted the research tree.  lol..  I'll gladly play you in multiplayer if that's the approach you'll take. 

Nah I like it the way it is... it doesn't make sense that you can train a troop in a certain weapon/armor and then just equip them with new ones and expect them to be able to fight effectively...

Now combining single units into squads... that's something that should be in there....

Please Stardock tell me you're adding that in the future...

Agreed, that is a problem. Units have became obsolete fast... and its pain to drop old veteran units.

That probably isn't in there for the same reason equipment upgrades aren't.  That's a tech advance.  Training involves learning to work in the bigger unit sizes.  Allowing troops to merge would negate the point of the tech upgrades or make previously recruited troops too valuable if you could later combine them.  I like it the way it is.

You could have a re-train building. A unit returns to a town with this building and it allows the unit be converted to unit type that have been upgraded. Space Empires IV had something similar with the retrofit option but that had some additional rules to stop an abuse (something about converting a Ship with 50% different components)

That could work - so long as there was a relatively decent cost and production time for the upgrade (certainly shouldn't be free).  It wouldn't be 100% of the new unit cost, but defrayed by a % based on the original unit cost and possibly by the amount of xp the unit has gained (higher lvl units cheaper to retrain - but they revert to lvl 1 upon being retrained because they're new to that equipment and/or squad size).  I think that would work well.

Yes, excately what I was thinking but I would keep the 100% xp but some how make sure that peasants can't be converted to mounted knights, for example. I am not sure how this would be done as there are no unit classes.

Once you've gotten the equipment in the proper inventory you can click on the shield icon next to the HP bar to actually choose what items are equiped.

Have new equipment have an exp cost, representing the difference between what they know, and what they have to relearn. Small changes in equipment would mean your units still have some veterancy(sp?), major upgrades mean the unit starts over effectively.

Then give an option to re-equip them for a fee and training period. I hate the way it is, I don't want my entire army to become obsolete and worthless at any point.

Upgrading experienced units is kind of a Stardock staple.  It is obviously something they wanted to do here, the system either is just not working or we don't know how to make it work.

The idea of having the units take time/resources to "upgrade" is also rather obvious for anyone who has played GalCiv2.  You could also make them come back to a city in order to upgrade to get away from the whole "upgrade in the field" thing.

What I would like to reward is people who manage to keep units alive in battle, otherwise it is just a matter of who can create the most units and throw them against an enemy and experience really has little meaning.

I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed that I couldn't upgrade my existing units at all. Strange, since they are battle hardened soldiers. I'll need to play quite a bit more before I can really comment on how I feel it effects balance.