Training ideas for idle CS

[Deicide4u]

Citizen soldiers (CS) are currently good for only two things. One of them is collecting resources other than food. The other is dying before becoming good at combat. Not a lot of your CS survive until the Elite rank, when they truly excel, both at fighting and at fashion. 

Of course, you can train them at the Barracks and Stables. But, those structures can hold just 10 units, and often it's better to just let your CS gather resources. Also, you can't exactly tell which rank your CS reached while in the buildings. 

So, how can we train them quicker? One way is to make "Rigorous Training" an aura around your Barracks and Stables. This aura will provide faster training to CS, but only if they are idle. Another idea is to dedicate special "Training Grounds" areas, either buildable by females and CS or provided scattered around the map as neutral structures. 

This way, we can award players that use these units primarly for map control and combat.

[Grautvornix]

Good ideas! By the way does anyone know for how long you need to keep soldiers garrisoned to rank them up? Can there be multiple level up trainings? (i.e. after a second stay in the barracks) I tried once to setup a chain of barracks, each one training 10 soldiers that are immediately garrisoned into the next barracks. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

13 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

Good ideas! By the way does anyone know for how long you need to keep soldiers garrisoned to rank them up? Can there be multiple level up trainings? (i.e. after a second stay in the barracks) I tried once to setup a chain of barracks, each one training 10 soldiers that are immediately garrisoned into the next barracks. 

you can garrison troops into the building they train in with ctrl + click.

[Deicide4u]

2 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

By the way does anyone know for how long you need to keep soldiers garrisoned to rank them up?

There's no tooltip that's showing the current ranks or experience. But, it takes more time for cavalry. 

2 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

Can there be multiple level up trainings?

Units can go straight to elite rank, depending on the time spent inside the building.

You can build multiple Barracks/Stables and use them to house troops. That's not very efficient in the early game, though. But, neither is training CS just to rank them up.

[Gurken Khan]

8 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

By the way does anyone know for how long you need to keep soldiers garrisoned to rank them up?

I think it's about a second (or maybe 1.1) for a point of xp. So, for a rookie spearman to go to elite ~3.5 minutes?

[TheCJ]

On 14/05/2025 at 1:32 AM, Deicide4u said:

when they truly excel, both at fighting

 

2 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

So, for a rookie spearman to go to elite ~3.5 minutes?

and then they still get destroyed by a champion that took 25s to train 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Well the main way units gain experience is by having a successful fight, using healers, or moving wounded units to the back of the group. I think it is a desirable outcome that  units generally take a long time to rank up by garrisoning, but it would be nice to show the mean rank of the units on the corresponding icon of the unit garrison stack within the barracks.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

but it would be nice to show the mean rank of the units on the corresponding icon of the unit garrison stack within the barracks.

Something like

Quote

<unload instructions> 8 <unit_name>

(6 Basic, 1 Advanced, 1 Elite)

when hovering over the garrisoned unit icon. Showing the unit experience doesn't mean much, as all I need to know is if the unit reached the desired rank or not. On single unload, send out the units with the highest rank first.

Edited 7 hours ago by Deicide4u

[Gurken Khan]

A while ago I suggested an expandable garrison list.

[chrstgtr]

Adding an experience meter that looks similar to the health meter of garrisoned units seems desirable. 

As for other suggestions, a quicker experience trickle for garrison units seems reasonable as its current form is useless. I would put this behind a tech, so it would be a choice between p3 eco techs and this experience tech. That would give a quick single push real strength but would sacrifice the ability to carry out a long term fight.
 

But giving experience points to idle units seems to reward bad play and I don’t like that idea at all. 

Edited 6 hours ago by chrstgtr

[Deicide4u]

2 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

experience meter that looks similar to the health meter of garrisoned units

Again, I don't think I care if my basic units needs 1 more XP to become advanced. I need to know if it's already ranked up or not.

4 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

giving experience points to idle units seems to reward bad play

There can never be "one true way" to play the game. "Idle" units wouldn't be idle, they are training.

[chrstgtr]

12 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Again, I don't think I care if my basic units needs 1 more XP to become advanced. I need to know if it's already ranked up or not.

This is an arbitrary distinction. A unit that is 99 XP vs a unit that is 100 XP is functionally the same thing a second after entering battle. Knowing that I have 10 units that are basically promoted but not quite is much more informative than knowing I have 10 units of various XP at base rank. Yeah, you might want to know rank and XP for every unit. But that view doesn’t exist right now and this is frankly a low priority item that no one will want to spend time making. 
 

17 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

There can never be "one true way" to play the game. "Idle" units wouldn't be idle, they are training.

There can be bad game design. And eliminating a very basic distinction between good and bad play is without a doubt bad game design. 

——-

Anyways, you seem to be a SP reaching the end of basic play with AI. I invite you to join the MP lobby where you’ll learn and enjoy much more complex gameplay. 

[Deicide4u]

28 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Anyways, you seem to be a SP reaching the end of basic play with AI. I invite you to join the MP lobby where you’ll learn and enjoy much more complex gameplay. 

Thank you for the invitation, but I barely have enough time to play SP as much as I want to.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

frankly a low priority item that no one will want to spend time making. 

Why not? The data is available you just need to display it.

 

[chrstgtr]

47 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Why not? The data is available you just need to display it.

 

Great. Add it then. I don’t think anyone will oppose it. 

[Atrik]

51 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Great. Add it then.

Someone needs to make a PR.
Meanwhile: standalone mod to get this tooltip :

garrisonedInfoTooltip.zip

 

Already in Moderngui too.

Edited 3 hours ago by Atrik

[Classic-Burger]

6 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

A while ago I suggested an expandable garrison list.

How does that work? I want to understand your idea.

[Classic-Burger]

It would be interesting if formations could sort troops from basic to elite and reverse. And wounded to healthy.