Regular, Veteran & Elite units
Upgrade existing soldiers and ships without confusing equipment ranks with stat research.
On this page
Two different upgrade systems #
University Health, Armor, and Damage ranks improve every owned unit of that base type. Veteran and Elite equipment are separate unit variants made by improving existing stationed units in their recruiting building. Researching a rank does not convert your army automatically, and you cannot recruit Veteran or Elite variants directly.
Rank gates and bonuses #
Veteran conversion needs the facility at level 10 and that unit's Veteran research. Elite conversion needs level 18, Elite research, and existing Veteran units. Equipment adds 20 or 40 percentage points of base Armor and Damage, not Health. These add to the stat-research bonus: Elite plus rank-V Damage is +65% of base Damage, not a compounded 1.40 × 1.25.
The full research path #
Complete Health II, Armor II, and Damage II for the unit before researching Veteran. Veteran research then opens the three rank-III stat projects. Complete all three tracks through rank IV before researching Elite; Elite research opens rank V. University levels, Crystal costs, and times differ by unit and are shown on its own page. Conversion also has its separate recruiting-building gate.
Separate improvement lane #
Barracks, Archery Range, Siege Workshop, and Navy each have their own sequential improvement lane, alongside normal recruitment. Up to 20 improvement batches can be queued per facility. Paying reserves the existing source units immediately; they cannot fight or move while improving. Units finish individually while offline.
Cancellation and speed-ups #
Canceling an improvement keeps completed improved units, returns unfinished source units, and refunds 75% of the unfinished conversion cost, rounded down per resource. Training speed-ups work on the active improvement batch and move later batches forward by the time saved. Princes and the scouting-only Scout cannot be improved.
