Infinite Retraining Loop?

[Joren]

Playing as the Dwarves, I have some Iron Guard units at Khazad-Dum, which has a Master Armourer and an Armoury available. Their stats are:

Soldiers: 151
Experience: 0

Attack: 11
Charge Bonus: 5
Weapon Type: Melee (duh)

Total Defense: 24
Armor: 16
Defense Skill: 3
Shield: 5
Hit Points: 1

Recruitment Cost: 850
Upkeep: 350

I have four of these units, and they show up as available to be retrained. Having done so, their stats do not change one iota, and they show up again the next turn for retraining. This goes on forever as far as I can tell...

There is also another unit of Iron Guard at Khazad-Dum, with Experience: 1 and Attack: 12. All other stats are the same, but these do NOT show up as available to be retrained.

Any idea what is going on?

[DoktorJ]

When you are retraining for experience sometimes you have to do it several times. I'm sure there is a reason for it or a method to the madness but I've never figured it out, but if you do it over and over for 4-5 turns max it will give them the exp bonus, though I don't think it actually changes the base stats at all unless you are retraining for armor too.

[Seleukos_I.]

If you go colour up e.g. from silver to gold they get an icrease in attack and defense. I think it's +1.

[NSFW]

When you are retraining for experience sometimes you have to do it several times. I'm sure there is a reason for it or a method to the madness but I've never figured it out, but if you do it over and over for 4-5 turns max it will give them the exp bonus, though I don't think it actually changes the base stats at all unless you are retraining for armor too.

This is something which used to happen in vanilla M2TW too, & it's not entirely random, I believe it's actually a minor bug.

It effects both:
- newly trained units which should start with experience, &,
- units which are can be re-trained to increase their experience, at the settlement in question

Basically the solution is to order all your training/retraining, that involves experience bonuses, *just* before you hit end turn.

So far as I can tell the game is loosing track of the fact that these units should get an experience bonus from (re)training whenever the campaign map is exited for some reason, i.e. when you quit, re-load, or when you switch from the campaign map to the battle map.

Personally I like to plan as much of my important spending (including training & retraining) as early in the turn as possible. So I work around the problem by planning as normal, & then re-issuing my experience related recruitment queue orders just before the end of the turn (i.e. I remove the unit from the queue, and then put it back on.)

It's a bit of a pain, & once your empire gets large using the city lists tab to check where you're recruiting becomes essential IMO, but it seems to work. Plus, obviously you don't need to bother with the mucking about if you haven't either re-loaded, or fought on the battle map, since making your recruitment orders.

I can't promise that there aren't other triggers for this behaviour, but am 100% certain that re-loads cause it, and about 95% certain that going to the battle screen does too.

Hope that's some help!

[axnsan]

I liked it better in RTW. You could have peasants with 13 attack, 3 armor, and 10 defense.

[Joren]

Mine were gold already. Are you telling me this is just how it is? Seems odd to have ~360 go down the hole every turn and not have a single stat change.

-- Joren

[Soviet]

This has happened to me with Isengard as well.

[Burke]

This just happened to me with some Gondor Militia - at Turn 10 in the campaign. There's no armor upgrade, no weapon upgrade, no Military Academy, yet they seem stuck in an infinite retraining loop. I've tried to retrain them 3-4 times now, but nothing's changed and they keep appearing in the Retrain tab.

[Yarrum]

I've found that it always works if I have enough money to retrain the unit when I queue the retraining and there is an open recruitment slot. It doesn't seem to work if I do it any other way though.

[Momus]

what seems to work for me is retraining the units with one unit being trained for the first time (recruited) on the last slot of each batch of slots so it would look like:

retrain/retrain/recruit/retrain/retrain/recruit/retrain/retrain/recruit

or adapt it to suit however many recruitment slots you have if you see what i mean

[DoktorJ]

Wow, this is very interesting. I never realized this was a bug, I just assumed it was the way it was supposed to be since it happened in vanilla too. Putting that trailing recruit unit always works. I usually forget to redo them just before end turn, though.

[NSFW]

Wow, this is very interesting. I never realized this was a bug, I just assumed it was the way it was supposed to be since it happened in vanilla too. Putting that trailing recruit unit always works. I usually forget to redo them just before end turn, though.

With all respect to Momus, that trailing recruit unit is a red herring, it's presence on the recruitment queue makes no difference to this problem, so far as I can tell.

I ran a set of tests which are very quick and easy to replicate, here's what I found:

Starting a new game as Mordor, using Minas Morgul as the test settlement (since it has the ability to train orc band and orc raiders at exp 1, & starts with a unit of each at exp 0)

Test 1
-Put exp 0 orc band & raiders on retraining queue, recruit a unit of either too, to fill the queue
-Quick save (so you can quick load back to turn 1 for the other later tests)
-End turn,

Result: all 3 units have exp 1 at the start of turn 2

Test 2
-Quick load back to position with the 2 retraining units & one new unit already on the recruit Q
-end turn

Result: the retrained units still have exp 0, as does the newly recruited unit

Test 3
-Quick load back to save made during test 1
-remove all units from recruit Q
-replace all units on the recruit Q
-end turn

Result: as with Test 1 both retraining units and the new unit have exp 1

Test 4
-Quick load back to save made during test 1
-remove all units from recruit Q
-replace ONLY the retraining units, do not order a new unit of band or raiders to be built

Result: Both the retrained units have exp 1, even though they weren't followed by a new unit on the recruit Q

This behaviour is consistantly reproducable, and demonstrates that the problem comes from the campaign map being reloaded, regardless of whether or not a new unit is placed at the end of the recruit Q.

[DoktorJ]

Yeah, after playing some more, I have also realized that it wasn't the trailing unit but that it just happened to work that particular time. I just wind up reloading my "End Turn" save that I always create if I need the unit retrained quickly and forget to requeue it before I end the turn.
<edit> and by just happened to work that particular time, I'll just assume that it was bc I didn't have a battle that turn or anything.</edit>

[NSFW]

<edit> and by just happened to work that particular time, I'll just assume that it was bc I didn't have a battle that turn or anything.</edit>

Yeah, it's such an odd little problem that it took me a while to figure out why it was happening; So easy to attribute these kinds of problems incorrectly *shrug* which I can only assume is what Momus has done.
Thanks for confirming my theory though, as I said above, I'm pretty much 100% certain I've nailed down the cause, with the campaign map reload thing, but it's always nice to have one's work "peer reviewed"

[wudang_clown]

Actually, the issue was resolved some time ago, the thread about this is somewhere in the M2TW tech forum... Anyway +rep for hard work.

[NSFW]

Actually, the issue was resolved some time ago, the thread about this is somewhere in the M2TW tech forum... Anyway +rep for hard work.

Thanks By "resolved" do you mean there's a fix for it somewhere?

Also, I don't suppose you have any idea what the thread might be called do you? I've used the search but the only related thread I found was this.

[wudang_clown]

By 'resolved' I mean 'described' (I should use that term). There're few threads like the one you've posted the link to. I don't remember their titles. AFAIK there's no fix for the recruitment bug.

[NSFW]

By 'resolved' I mean 'described' (I should use that term). There're few threads like the one you've posted the link to. I don't remember their titles. AFAIK there's no fix for the recruitment bug.

OK, thanks for taking the time to answer mate!