Training the Troops

[tonystowe]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what approach you all take towards training your military. I recently experimented with the 2/3's rule - 2/3's on the line and 1/3 in training. The game isn't far enough along for me to offer any significant finds but thus far it has worked pretty well.

Tony

[red]

I never train units. From an actual game perspective, I think it's usually a poor use of money. Training costs are many times the cost of the actual unit and result in a marginal efficiency advantage, when in most cases where efficiency is truly needed you are more likely to benefit from spending money on global military efficiency spending, which also reduces your dependence on units which, because of training, have high time and cost requirements from beginning construction to being at their peak use. I think training is worth it only if either you have some serious need to keep down casualties or make up an efficiency gap with an opponent which can't otherwise be met, or you have money you don't know what to do with.

[Leafgreen]

Perhaps a better question is does training even affect anything? XP? Leadership? Urban? If it does, then shouldn't there be something on the unit stats showing that they've had training in something?

[Draken]

Training increases experience (plus some of then gives bonuses on certain situations, ie: close combat) and from other post I remember that Chris said that 100 points of experience makes the unit perform twice as good as the same unit with 0 experience points. Disclamer: I'm working from memory here!

Desert, Jungle, Mountain and Close combat bonuses are hard to messure, but in some of recent games I've been using stacks of 4 infantry units each with a specific terrain training and they seem to perform better than non trained stacks...

[Leafgreen]

I knew training could make the pretty experience bar fill up, but didn't see any differences - yet. Just making sure it wasn't something taken out of the game mechanics but left in the interface to waste money on.

[bergsjaeger]

there is also an icon that shows up when u view a units stats with any special training like urban and such. As u know u can train a unit for only one type of terrain. i usually have units with a certain terrain because I know i will fight in the terrain the units are trained for sooner or later

[Leafgreen]

Err.. didn't know that, thanks.

Hesitant to train for bio/chem because even though I did research for them a decade ago, I don't see any to build or a ROE box to allow a unit to use them so I'm assuming they aren't in-game or were taken out.

[BigStone]

There is no chemical or biological warfare in the game.
There is / was a lot discussion about that on the boards but
personally i'm happy with that...

[haenkie]

Working from my memory i remember cris saying that training does give certain bounses, BUT 100 poitns against 0 exp points DOES NOT mean twice as effective.

Still not worth the money! Little experience gained against HUGE costs

Better training more troops or use it for faster research development.

[Draken]

You're right/ It wasn't Chris who said it but George, and he said "strong" not effective:

Oh yes, experience certainly does work and have an effect

The "Kills" number (shown on the right side of the unit popup information) is really just for interest sake, and does not directly affect experience by itself. The true "Experience" factor is the bar next to the medal icon at the top right of the unit popup (it also appears in a number of other places in the User Interface panels, when looking at units).

Usually the bar next to the icon is 'zero', but when a unit starts to gain experience a green bar will start to grow from there. If you mouse over the green bar, it will report an experience rating as a number.

As a very general rule of thumb, a unit with experience 100 will be about twice as strong as an equal unit with experience 0. Now, there are many things that can affect that result, including efficiency, morale, alert level, and of course the old standby modifiers like terrain, but as a very general rule this should work.

Also note that there is a diminishing returns factor at play here - a unit with experience 200 will only be about 2 1/2 times as strong as a 0 experience unit, etc.

In one game I somehow ended up with some strike fighters that had reached experience 300 or so, and they were a very formadable set of units - I could strike AntiAir stacks head on and come out with few scratches, it took an interceptor attack outnumbering me 2:1 to finally get my fighters out of action back in the repair hangars.

-- George.

From http://www.battlegoat.com/forums/viewto ... highlight=

[tkobo]

Ive never really done any training for my units,but i have gone out of my way to get "favored" units tons of exp.

I can say for sure, exp is a major + in combat.

I have one extreme case which consists of a stack of 7 DDX-21s.

One unit in the stack i ran all over the world map oceans (with supply support only) and let it kill mass amounts of units to get its exp up.

Then i put it back in the stack with the other 6 ddx-21s.
The favored unit is getting kills by like 15 to one vs the amount of kills the other units in that stack of 7 are getting.

I dont if its firing faster, doing more damage ,etc... BUT its clearly WAY out performing the other 6 units in its stack.

So exp can be a huge factor.

[bergsjaeger]

experience is a major factor when u get up there. Had one A-10 squad that seems like it destroy any unit in the 1st run. Then there was my favorite unit the light infantry i had along time ago. It could take on a army it seemed. As for training i think u will get more experience for a unit by letting them fight other units.

[Leafgreen]

Thanks for the replies, good info.

[BigStone]

This can happen when you DON'T train your troops.....

http://www.virob.com/virob/videos/686.html

[margab]

This can happen when you DON'T train your troops.....

http://www.virob.com/virob/videos/686.html

OMG! ROFL