[0.92] [Suggestion] Let me upgrade soldiers to new Designs

yes.  agreed.

also, let my troops gain experience....and with experience, new abilities based on weapons (ie if you give it a spear, let it get 'first strike' or somehting like tha

Can't believe I haven't noticed this yet, definitely needed! 

Furthermore a way to combine individual soliders to parties (once the tech is available) would be nice.

Agreed on all counts.

EDIT: Agreed with poster below me. Don't make it an automatic or mandatory upgrade but rather optional. Also, infantry should probably only be able to upgrade to other infantry, archers to other archers, ect. And definitely add unit experience before release and let them keep it while upgrading. Lastly, like the user below me, allow for unit grouping.

I have to disagree on a simple auto-upgrade, having units decide to upgrade themselves for no reason would be annoying, especially if i 'upgraded' my foot soldiers to archers or archers to cavelry.  Sometimes i'm building at the edge of what i can produce in metal and materials as well, and considering the games happiness is putting you indept, i don't like the thought of being put 100's of metal in dept late game in the middle of a war.  Also i like having stronger and weaker units.

That being said, while i don't like the idea in the way it's been suggested, the idea itself is solid:).  As a suggestion not make it auto, but a special action you can perform on units currently inside a city, with that in mind, the time cost and the resource cost seems quiet good to make early game units you';ve looked after worth something late game.

The join units together (assuming you have the tech for whatever the next group size is researched) is a definate want:P

Frogboy, will regular troops be able to gain experience in the release?  Otherwise it seems the player might as well use champions rather than regular trained troops.

Best regards,
Steven. 

Given the way that units are custom designed, this could very, very easily be exploited if not implemented carefully. For example, it is simply impossible to allow unit upgrades in the field since it means you could simply deploy a bunch of really wimpy units quickly right at the enemy and then upgrade them to fit whatever role is needed on the battlefield.

I haven't gotten very far into the game yet, but really, c'mon. Who do you think is going to win: a few champions or a few champions each with an army at their disposal?

Anyway, because of champions, I'm not sure if it's necessary to have regular units gain experience.

whoever has more champions will win, regardless. As it is right now, the sovereign can take out a whole army within a couple of turns with spells heh.

Don't care about combining units.  Should be able to upgrade troops, like we can in GalCiv2.

Who mentioned auto-upgrade? Surely it should be something you decide on and I would do it as easy as queuing the upgrades into the normal train queue.

Ever fought against a company of anything? They simply wipe the floor with any champion you can build. 200 HP+ (about up to 1000 in a town) is not a funny thing when combined with several hundred attack and defense. Yes, even a company of pioneers (why he built that I do not know) killed 4 of my level 11 heroes with full plate and claymores or bows  including 2 magic users. 

Yeah, auto-upgrade wouldn't be good.  Definitely agree with being able to upgrade units though; maybe to limit the exploitation factor say the units would still have to be queu'd up, maybe for a few turns to be outfitted and trained in the new eq.

Why not just go the way of MoM and Civ, and have regular units advance from regular - veteran - elite?  Maybe throw a few more levels in there...

There should be a building/tech that allows units to train/upgrade, other wize you just end up disbanding/deleting old unit types, which seems like a waste.

Gameplay

- Build peasants

- Build foot soldiers

- (disband/delete pesants)

- Build basic knight

- (disband/delete foot soldiers)

wash, rinse, repeat!!!

I was told before units don't gain experience, only champions, too bad, I would have liked to see unit gain experience and maybe even be able to upgrade to a champion. Without upgrade paths and experience, units become little more than just cannon fodder.

+1!

not sure it would work with experience ect.. the way units are currently treated (as 1 large unit and not a mass of individuals) the units to be merged would all have to be the same type.

How about the ability (once tech is upgraded) to have a unit in a city train additional recruits to become a squad, company whatever? this would take population from the city.. and expand the size of your unit.

Either way would work for me. If I can only combine same units, that's fine. I also like the option of training additional units to fill a squad or company. Both options would work better then just having a bunch of single guys that need disbanding/murdering.

Hmm, how about this simple solution: Add an option to training to have it instead "upgrade" any unit in the city, but have that upgrade consume the old unit, but discount the new unit by the cost (in resources and population) of the old unit.  

Even simpler would be to make it so that any time you disband a unit in a city, you recoup the resources (perhaps a *fraction* of the resources).  This would also be a convinient way to move population between cities if you so desire - train a bunch of peasents in one city, march them to the next one, and then disband/retire them there.

Your on to something with the whole population disbanding thing! I hadn't thought of that.