How do I retrain Dale Calvarymen Mercs?

[SuwinTzi]

I'm playing as the dwarves and had hired several units of Dale horsemen to counter archers and skirmishers in battle, but 2 of them have gotten fairly low in number, (4 and 10) but both have 3 silver chevrons and so I'd like to keep them. I remember being able to retrain before, but now I keep getting the "no units available" message every turn I check. Is there some condition I'm not meeting or what?

[Ngugi]

Welcome to TWC SuwinTzi

You can retrain them in settlements that are within the area of which you may recruit them as mercenaries, as soon as the unit pool is full enough.

In vanilla TATW you can recuit them in Erebor_Province and the Iron-Hills_Province, which quite easily mean Erebor and Iron Hills is the place to send them to, to retrain them.
The pool replenishment rate is 0.02 - 0.06, meaning a new unit will be avilable between every 16th and 50th turn. It will go faster than so as you do not have to wait for a full unit to recruit, but only enough soldiers in the pool to be able to retrain your unit.

[SuwinTzi]

Only those 2 provinces huh...

Final question, is there a guide/manual for TATW that I can check? I've just started with TATW and there's so many things I'm wondering which unit better for what, especially battlefield tactics that the faction "guides" don't really cover.

[Flinn]

Hi SuwinTzi, well met and welcome to TWC

afaik there is no specific guide exclusively dedicated to units. Almost any faction guides report some general info over the units, but there is nothing really specific about comparison between units. Basically, TATW units are similar (with few exceptions like Trolls) to the Vanilla M2:TW, so if you know that game you can easily figure out what a unit is good at in TA:TW.

for general purposes, simply check faction guides; I also suggest you to check this guide, which offers some ideas on how to approach strategically TA:TW. If you are a turtler, you can also check my guide.
If you are looking for units stats, have a look here; however, consider that sometimes the stats do not really represent the real impact of that specific unit in the battlefield.

You can also ask questions regarding units and tactics in the fora, but then I suggest you to do this in the specific guide thread for each faction; you can find the list here, along with all the other guides made for TA:TW

[DrDragun]

For unit guides, the Palantir is good
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Third-Age-v3-2

Also, there is an online unit stat guide at Honga
http://totalwar.honga.net/faction.php?v=tatw3

Another method for retraining in the field is "drag and drop" where you drag the unit card for one depleted unit on top of another which combines the men to form 1 full unit and 1 with leftovers (note this does not add any troops just consolidates them into full companies). This way you can simply recruit more at home and march them to the front lines, rather than marching wounded units back then forth.

[Flinn]

IIRC you can also hit "M" key to aumatically merge all the similar depleted units, although if you are concerned with experience of units, it is better if you use the "drag and drop" technique to merge units with similar experience.