can you retrain guild units any where? Or just settlements with said guild buildings?

[sinosleep]

Like say if I have a Hospitaller guild building in one settlement, but only Baron's Stables in the castle next to it, can I retrain the Hospitaller knights at the castle?

[Muagan_ra]

I'm going to say no. You can only retain units in settlements with the ability to produce those units - the chapter house has to be there.

[sinosleep]

That's pretty weak considering how random it can be to get your guild of choice offered to you. I kind of assumed you couldn't but I was hoping that since their essentially suped up heavy cavalry that I could at least retrain them at the best available castle stables. Guess I'll just keep on ignoring invites from the templars and hospitallers.

[Leonidas_I]

That's pretty weak considering how random it can be to get your guild of choice offered to you. I kind of assumed you couldn't but I was hoping that since their essentially suped up heavy cavalry that I could at least retrain them at the best available castle stables. Guess I'll just keep on ignoring invites from the templars and hospitallers.

Its quite easy to get the guild you won't you must doing the right thing to get for example creating a lot of Priest in one city will help.

[Soulghast]

Well, it makes sense. Being able to retrain specialized guild units should be a privilege of said guilds, as realistically, they would be the only place where more said units are trained.

[sinosleep]

I get what you're saying but it really limits their usefulness. I mean, why would I bother using expensive Hospitaller Knights at important battles when I know I can't immediately ride to the closest fortress or citadel and retrain them? Retraining is one of my most used tactics in this game so now I feel like I wasted two city's guild spots on Hospitaller guilds that provide me with troops I can pretty much only use locally since I don't like bringing along units that aren't easily retrainable for battles far from home. I tend to sack multiple cities/castles one after the other so it's important to me to be able to sack a city/castle, leave a few of what ever unit took the most losses there so they can be retrained and provide garrison, and move on to the next city/castle.

[Muagan_ra]

I get what you're saying but it really limits their usefulness. I mean, why would I bother using expensive Hospitaller Knights at important battles when I know I can't immediately ride to the closest fortress or citadel and retrain them?

Because they're probably the best heavy cavalry you can get your hands on. They're supposed to be an elite, so, it makes sense dosn't it? They're not part of the regular unit roster.

[Conquistatore]

Just keep them with your army and try to limit their use and casualties, or if you really need them to break through somewhere then send them and after the battle, send them to their guild and bring them back. Use ships, they move much farther than land armies.

[Commander5xl]

Guilds aren't random you have to, complete a certain deeds to earn points to their guild.

Rebel has a great thread to everything you need to know, including guild requirements:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82878

[Owain Glyndŵr]

If you really need to retrain that much then perhaps it's your strategy that's flawed? If your heavy cavalry take serious casualties, you must be misusing them. Try limiting your heavy cavalry charges to the flanks and rear of an already-engaged enemy, or else just use them to plow through significantly weaker units.

[sinosleep]

If you really need to retrain that much then perhaps it's your strategy that's flawed? If your heavy cavalry take serious casualties, you must be misusing them. Try limiting your heavy cavalry charges to the flanks and rear of an already-engaged enemy, or else just use them to plow through significantly weaker units.

Nah, it wasn't specific to heavy cavalry or anything. Actually, they're prolly my least damaged unit more often than not considering I rarely use more than 2 or 3 units of them.

The thing is though, that regardless of how well you plan it, and even against the absolute worst of the worst units against say heavy cav, you're GOING to take at least a few losses. Hell, I've seen peasant crossbowmen take down 1 or 2 knights while they're gaining distance for a 2nd charge.

Like I mentioned before I like to use the same army as often as possible to get my experience up, and those single digit losses being to stack up. Once the unit is down to less than 30 I like to retrain on the off chance that a) I just screw up and lose track of something during the battle that leaves me losing 10 knights or b) I wind up in a situation where the ai just gets lucky (siege equipment just so happens to hit a unit of knights dead on before I can reach it) I don't wind up with a unit at half strength and easily routable.

Also, at the end of the day, I just like having the option there. There have been times, (like my current Russian campaign on vh/vh) where I'll take a calculated risk that's going to result in some units getting down to half strength or less. I had already taken over the entirety of the lands north of Turkey and had allied with the Turks, HRE, and Hungary. At that point I went to war with Denmark since they were the only neighbor I wasn't allied with (using Hungary as a buffer in between Byzantium) and I noticed that they had just stocked a full stack crusader army do they would be short on money/men for at least a little while.

I took 4 castles and two cities leaving them with only 1 city and fortress left when I realised that their Crusader army had never actually left. After sacking their black sea port the army had no boat to jump on so it just sat there. At this point my troops are spread kind of thin being as I've been hopping from heavily garrisoned are to heavily garrisoned area and killing any stray rebel/Polish armies in between. So, I figure the best bet is that instead of waiting to retrain troops now, or make new troops that won't get there in time, to simply use two armies from the last two areas I took over to take the last two and make that giant crusader army rebel. Rebel armies seem to be a LOT more passive so I'd have more time to create/restock a proper army to handle that giant stack.

This is where retraining will come in very handy. I know I can take those last two areas, but I'm taking them with units that already depleted and will be damned near dead when I win. The fact that I can quickly retrain them because they are stock units is a HUGE boost since I can do it straight from the two areas where the units are going to end up instead of having to travel god knows how far, or more than likely just disband and get new units, wasting both time and experience.