As you go up the ages in Rise of Kingdoms (formerly Rise of Civilizations) and you upgrade your Headquarters more and more, you will eventually unlock new troop types via research.
And once you do, you are faced with a dilemma: should you upgrade your existing units into the better tier troops or keep the old ones and start training new ones?
I am assuming from the beginning that it’s pretty much obvious that the newly unlocked units are always better than the old ones and you should never train a previous type of unit anymore. This is a rule.
To prove that, here are a couple of screenshots comparing the Arcuballista (level 2 Siege Unit) with the Battering Ram:
As you can see, everything but the Marching speed is way better with the superior level unit. So this is what you should be focusing on after unlocking these new units: better stats and numbers!
Even though the marching speed is slower, you won’t really feel the difference and the time “lost” is greatly compensated by the added power your new units have.
And as you go up the tiers in Rise of Kingdoms, you will see that troops get slower and slower anyways!
But what about the existing ones? Should you upgrade the existing troops or let them be and start training new ones?
Should you instantly increase your army’s strength by upgrading to the new tier units, or just start training the new and better troops, keeping the old ones as they are?
My opinion is that you should take the time and upgrade existing units into the better ones instead of ignoring them and only training new ones.
If you are wondering why I say that, there are actually various reasons. The most important is time required to get the better troops, as you can see in the example that I will be listing below.
Taking some infantry troops as an example – just for the sake of diversity – we can see that training new Level 2 units (Swordsman) takes a bit over 2 hours:
However, if I am to upgrade the existing troops, I only need a bit over one hour and a lot less in terms of resources as well:
But this is not the only reason why you want to upgrade your existing troops before you train new ones. Each commander in the game has a specific troop capacity.
So simply getting a million units won’t actually help make you better in battle: you need the best troops you have available in the game in order to achieve that.
Previous tier troops become obsolete extremely fast and simply upgrading them basically doubles your nation’s power, while increasing the stats of the said units a lot.
So this is the route you should always follow in order to make sure that you’re doing what is best for your civilization: start upgrading existing troops first, as soon as you get to a new tier. And only afterwards start training new units for your kingdom.
But make sure that you are active and log in often in order to get done with the upgrade process as fast as possible in order to get that boost ASAP.
Exception to the rule
There is one situation where I would say that you should stick to your old troops and train new, better tier ones first: if you don’t have enough troops to fully fill three main armies.
Eventually, as you reach Tier 2 and Tier 3 troops, you will be able to send a total of 3 armies to battle at once. By that time, your commanders will probably be of a really high level and they will be able to carry a lot of troops.
If in this situation, in some cases (for example, if you have been attacked often and lost many troops), you might not have enough units to fully fill three armies.
In this case – and this case only – you should start training new troops first and only start upgrading previous tier units once you have a large enough army to go fully stocked with three sets of commanders.
If you need more tips and tricks about Rise of Kingdoms, you can simply browse this website and search through the archives to find useful content that helps you get the most of the game.
If you’re just getting ready to start, for example, you can check out my guide to civilizations here or read the tips and tricks for beginners.
I’m also publishing new content constantly and you’ll have more and more to choose from, so make sure to check back often or like us on Facebook to be up to date with the latest articles.