SP - General Fixing Upgrade trees (1.5.0)

[King_Peter_Of_Swadia]

Hello once again,

I have noticed that some upgrade paths don't make sense with the "Skills" gained or the equipment gainned.

For example:

The Swadian Recruit can upgrade into the footman, all fine, but then you can either go for the spearmen, or the infantry, both of these units have the same exact skills and weapons according to the in game wiki. The only difference is the Armour and which weapon is in their number one slot. It would be much simpler if they were merged into a single unit, and we could actually command our infantry to take their spears or with to their one hand/two hand.

It gets worse.
The spear man Upgrades into the bill man. Altough the Bill should be considered a poll arm it is a 2 handed axe, therefor the Skill level of the infantry for pole arm suddenly drops by 10 like he frogot he was a spearman and his 2 hand skill increases drastically. The 2 pike units choice after the billman then get lvl 130 in 2hand and polearms because they use 2handed polearms.

There is no reason to pick this line at all when the Infantry man line can not only become light cav, but has spears with skill level of 130, shields and 1hand. Meaning not only will they live longer against archers, they are more effective against cav since the skill level in pole arm never drops along the line.

I have noticed this weird dip in skills in the line toward the batannian falxman and Swadian Pikemens, as well as the loss of good equipment which is present in other trees

I think a Unit should never lose its skilled gains nor lose equipment (ex:not having a shield after having one, losing its spear when it came from a spear men and is going to a pike which is an upgrade but first has to pass trough a 2hand axe phase).

The gear might not affect the calculated battle but when your fighting in it you regret going for their higher tier upgrades as they lose vital equipment or suddenly change role.

lastly, units should not go from trowing skirmishers to suddenly being archers. The sturgians have this weird quirk meaning you have to waste valuable time and money getting them to be archers, while other factions have direct lines from the recruit like the vladians.

Here is a final example as conclusion to applying these changes:

Khuzait recruit upgrades directly to a mounted archer, But then you can upgrade it to a better mounted archer, or a melee infantry, since it loses its hability to use a bow it makes no sense, we are downgrading his skills, it also means he loses equipement in the prosses wasting time and money, therefore we take that branche and drop it down meaning the recruit can not be upgraded into a horse archer OR a Melee archer branch, alternativaly, we make the first horsman a 1hand melee cav, since the archers maintain their 1hand and shield as well as the skills

In conclusions here are the 3 rules to check if a line makes sence
1. Is it losing skills
2. is it losing good equipment for the role it was going into(think vladian billman dip to 2hand axe and the line losing its shield when it has the equipement slot, making it vulnerable to archers)
3. is it completely changing role(breaking 1 and 2) resulting in lost of time money and training.