TrainingImprove your military, scum and fortresses
The battle descended into chaos. The small rearguard stood outnumbered in the pass as their families were ushered away to safety, the last line of defence against the marauding forces of Leto. Time and again they had repulsed assault, their dwindling numbers pushing any thought of 'victory' from their minds. This was their last stand, a desperate attempt to buy their families enough time to find their way through the pass and into Angelique's lands once more. The Letites smelled blood, and pressed in for the kill.
The charge crashed home, and the wave of greenskins broke against the resolute shield wall. Weight of numbers meant nothing against the skill and dedication of the guardsmen who fought for the lives of their families as well as their own. Years of drilling on the training ground prepared them for this moment - though outnumbered and weary, every inch of ground they retreated would be drowned in Letite blood.
This screen allows you to train your military units scum units and fortresses, to increase their effectiveness both when attacking other kingdoms and defending your own.
The number of units available to train will be displayed next to each troop type. You are able to select some or all of their number by typing the requisite amount in the box to their right, choosing the target level to train them to, and hitting 'train'.
On screens such as the Kingdom summary screen, or scout reports access via the thievery screen or UB, you will see a green 'G', a red 'V' or a blue 'E' next to the troop totals. These are an indication of the average level of the troops. If the average level of a bunch of troops is close to 1, then they are known as Green (G). If the average level of the troops is closer to 5, they are Elite (E) troops. Otherwise they are listed as Veteran (V) troops.
Train Rate
Displayed at the bottom of the screen is the number of units you can train per turn - this can be increased if you build more troop buildings using the Township screen. If you can train 100 units per turn, this means you can move 100 units from level 1 to level 2 in that time. You could also move 25 troops from level 1 to level 5 in one turn, or any combination which uses up to 100 points worth of training.
Most veteran players would advise that - like with most other in game functions - it's most efficient to spend one turn at a time. It's also most efficient to train up the lower level troops before the higher level troops, and the cheaper troops before the expensive one. This is all in order to keep the expenses as low as possible for as long as possible, and therefore maximise any gold that you would make during the process.
For example, with a train rate of 100 and a kingdom with 500 level 1 thieves and 500 level 1 pikemen. I would start by training 100 thieves from level 1 to level 2 and repeat this process 5 times. Then I'd do the same with the pikemen before switching back and training the thieves up from level 2 to level 3.
Upkeep Costs
It is important to remember that training troops increases their upkeep cost, which in turn will increase your expenses. Your income, expenses and treasury (chest) are displayed on this screen to allow you to monitor your economy as you train. When training large numbers of troops you must ensure that you have enough gold to cover these changes between income and expenses as you spend the turns training.
For example, if you have a training rate of 100 and you decide to train 1000 troops from level 1 to level 5 in one go, you will be spending 40 turns to do this (4000 levels divided by the 100 train rate), there is no way to stop the process once it begins and the per-turn income/expenses calculations will be based on the final expenses.
If your expenses become higher than your income, you start to lose gold equal to expenses minus income, for each and every turn spent. If you run out of gold during a turn then troops will not be paid, and will start to dessert your kingdom until the imbalance between income and expenses is resolved, and you start to make money again. It is possible to end up with zero gold, a huge loss of troops and no turns left to fix it, simply because you trained using a lot of turns at once, and did not take expenses and gold into consideration.
Leaving turns for re-training
It may seem counter intuitive to spend gold hiring troops and turns training them, only to downsize them again a couple of days later, but when doing peacetime actions, it is generally best to downsize troops first and then rehire and retrain them at the end of your turn set. This is because troops cost a lot in expenses, and by building without them, you can make enough gold to buy them back and also provide a gold pool to either Offer for more land, or go to War.
However, it is obviously a large risk to spend your turns, and leave your kingdom without any form of military protection. Therefore it is always best to leave 20-30 turns to be used to purchase and re-train your troops after spending turns building, or to purchase an train defensive troops after attacking.
Other screens related to `Training`
HIREHire new military for your army or scum for black ops
DOWNSIZEFire military or scum, destroy fortresses, or abandon unbuilt land
WARSelection of offensive and defensive military options
THIEVERY (aka SCUM)Selection of black ops scum operations