Armored Princess Unit Analysis Extra: Military Academy Regular Training

I didn't go over the Military Academy system originally because it didn't seem terribly important, and I figured that surely there's guides out there covering this system? And, well, no; I have not been able to find such a guide anywhere online. So I decided to do it myself, and here we are, years after I last touched on Armored Princess.

The Military Academy system is straightforward enough; you equip a Regalia given to you early in the game by the first Military Academy (The 'Officer's Patent'), so long as it's equipped you gain 'Trophies' for winning fights, and then these Trophies can be spent at Military Academies.

The primary thing to spend Trophies on is, of course, upgrading units into other units. Initially your options here are limited: you can only upgrade units of a few factions, and you can only upgrade units of a low Level. This leads into the other thing you can spend Trophies on: purchasing the right to upgrade units of other factions, and purchasing the right to upgrade to higher Levels. These latter purchases are flat costs of just Trophies, whereas upgrading units costs Trophies and Gold and has the cost scaled to how many units you're trying to convert. Amusingly, even though there's Military Academies assigned to the various factional islands, you can purchase factional licenses anywhere; you don't need to go to the Dwarven Academy to be able to buy the license for upgrading Dwarves. Which is honestly nice, but a bit surprising.

Anyway, upgrading units itself is straightforward in concept but a little janky in execution. You go to an Academy, you inform them you want to upgrade a unit, you pick a stack you're able to upgrade (Meet all the conditions to be allowed to upgrade that stack, including Trophy and gold costs), pick the unit you want to upgrade them to out of the list the game offers, and voila, the stack vanishes, replaced by a stack of the unit type you picked. Sensibly enough, the game uses Leadership as the foundation for this conversion; if you're converting 1000 Leadership of units, the resulting stack will be 1000 Leadership of the new unit type.

The jank comes into play when the game can't manage an exact match: say you have 1150 Leadership of a unit, and attempt to convert it into a unit that is 200 Leadership per head. In that case, you'd end up with a stack of 5 units, so 1000 Leadership, while your remaining 150 Leadership of units simply vanished. The game always vanishes any incomplete 'extra' Leadership like this, and doesn't actually communicate to you that this will happen and can be avoided.

Awkwardly, this particular jank is primarily significant in the early game. Say you have 6 Guardsmen -300 Leadership- and decide you want to convert them to Knights. What'll happen is that your first four Guardsmen qualify you for one Knight (With 40 Leadership wasted!), and then your next two aren't enough to get you a second Knight, so you'll end up with 1 Knight having wasted almost three full Guardsmen on getting nothing at all. That's just about half of what you spent on Guardsmen being lost!

Meanwhile, later in a run, doing something like converting a few hundred Dwarves-the-unit into Cannoneers and whoops having literally two of them 'lost' in the process is basically noise. This is a bit unfortunate of a progression, since it means the most wasteful and problematic possible mistakes are happening early in a player's personal learning curve, where they're a lot more likely to be sufficiently ignorant of the game they don't even notice the issue when they run right into it. (And thus run into it repeatedly, unaware they're throwing tons of gold in the trash for no benefit)

A sub-component of this jank is that effects modifying unit Leadership actually affect these ratios! This isn't too bad for, say, Archmage-the-Skill, as many of its units Train into/are Trained into by other units affected by it... but not all. Peasants can turn into Priests, for example, and Archmage will result in this being more efficient. Conversely, Priests can turn into Witch Hunters, and Archmage will make this less efficient! And even Items that affect Leadership fall under this banner, which is a lot more player-leverageable; equip the Item(s) when it improves efficiency, remove Item(s) when it worsens the efficiency.

Anyway, one final tidbit I'll be getting into more next post: very late in the game, you'll get the option to 'corrupt' your Officer's Patent. This corrupted Officer's Patent is unable to accumulate more Trophies, but retains your existing Trophies, and lets you instead convert non-Demon units into Demons. (The Demon faction, to be clear) Notably, this conversion does not work off Leadership, but rather off of raw numbers: 200 units will become 200 units, even if one has twice the Leadership of the other. But that's for next post.

Anyway, for the most part the Academy system's possibilities are straightforward and unsurprising. You can't upgrade Level 5 units at all (Unless we're talking demonic conversion, but that's for later), and many Level 4 units are off-limits as well. If a unit has two clear variations where one is higher Level or otherwise signaled to be the 'better' version, you can probably upgrade the 'worse' one into the 'better' one, while the 'better' one will either be a dead end or be able to go on to upgrade into something related and still higher Level. In the vast majority of cases, upgrades occur entirely within factional lines: Humans tend to upgrade into Humans, Orcs into Orcs, Elves into Elves, Neutrals into Neutrals, and so on. Note that, when it comes to your factional possibilities being limited, the game only cares about the base unit; for example, you start out able to upgrade Humans but not Undead, and Archmages can be upgraded into Necromancers. You don't need to unlock Undead as an option to be allowed to perform this upgrade. (Though you'll need to raise your allowed Level, naturally)

Still, it's worth documenting for two basic reasons: first of all, there are some surprising possibilities that can give unexpected uses to stockpiles of units you might otherwise be disinterested in, and second of all some upgrades 'chain', where the game itself doesn't clearly communicate that you can turn A into C because it only shows that you can turn A into B when you're looking at A and only shows you can turn B into C when looking at B. As rarity of unit stocks tends to fall in line with the Academy system in the sense that units you can upgrade from tend to be more common than units you can upgrade to, this can be useful to know if a unit you really like or that is essential to your current strategy is running out of stocks to buy directly.

A somewhat related point is that it can often be awkward to transition to a new force composition, particularly if you've done so multiple times and so your castles are filling up. Being able to free up a slot by converting a unit you're no longer interested in into a type you're still using or intend to switch to is a nice functionality for reducing this issue.

All that out of the way, specifics!

Level 5 units, which thus never upgrade

On the off-chance you can't see these images, they are: Rune Mages, Ancient Ents, Giants, Ogres, Orc Chieftains, Trolls, Cyclopes, Red Dragons, Black Dragons, Emerald Green Dragons, Bone Dragons, and Tirexes.

I'm a little surprised the devs didn't let you 'upgrade' live dragons into Bone Dragons, given that's totally a mechanic in the Heroes of Might And Magic series, but not hugely surprised. The (regular) Academy system sticks pretty stringently to conceptually 'vertical' changes, where you take a unit and make it into a more powerful and experienced unit. There are cases of Training options where the unit's Level per se doesn't go up, but they're uncommon, and still usually fit into conceptually improving the unit, such as how Imps and Scoffer Imps are both Level 2 for whatever reason but Scoffer Imps are roughly Imps with an extra Talent.

And honestly, Level 5 units wouldn't be terribly appealing to transform via the Academy system. Much of the appeal of it is getting to liquidate large stocks of extremely common units to get a hold of less common units, particularly ones your file has an inadequate supply of. Level 5 units are some of the most prone to being units you have inadequate supplies of; not a great starting point for conversion.

So this is probably for the best.

Other units that don't upgrade

On the off-chance you can't see these images, they are: Horsemen, Paladins, Marauders, Bowmen, Engineers, Foremen, Cannoneers, Guard Droids, Druids, Dryads, Fauns, Hunters, Lake Fairies, Forest Fairies, Goblin Shaman, Orc Trackers, Blood Shaman, Goblin Catapults, Pirate Ghosts, Skeletons, Skeleton Archers, Black Knights, Necromancers, Decaying Zombies, Ancient Vampires, Cursed Ghosts, Undead Spiders, Cerberi, Scoffer Imps, Demonesses, Sea Dogs, Assassins, Demonologists, Lake Dragonflies, Fire Dragonflies, Royal Griffins, Royal Thorns, Witch Hunters, Devilfish, Berserkers, Wolves, Royal Snakes, Hyenas, Evil Beholders, Polar Bears, Fire Spiders, Chosha, Brontors, Hayterants, and Gorguanas.

It's a little surprising you don't get to change one of the Skeleton types into the other Skeleton type, and a little inconvenient; Skeleton Archers are a very useful unit that is actually prone to having inadequate stocks. They'd have really benefitted from being integrated into the Academy system.

I'm also a little surprised that Lake Dragonflies and Fire Dragonflies aren't allowed to be turned into, say, Emerald Green Dragons and Red Dragons, respectively. They're one of those units you tend to have much larger stocks than you're liable to use, and thanks to their eggs you can in fact get non-trivial amounts for free. It would've been nice to have another use for them. And The Legend suggested they were relatives to actual dragons -as we'll be seeing, that kind of connection is something Crossworlds is absolutely willing to use as the basis for an Academy upgrade.

I'm particularly caught off guard by Bowmen having no Training options. The game has a few Training options that cross species, both in the mechanical sense and in the in-universe conceptual sense, so it's weird you can't upgrade Bowmen into Elves or Hunters.

Overall, though, most of these make sense and most of them are, as we'll see, units you can upgrade to, not simply outside the upgrade system entirely.

Now the actual point of this post!

Training Possibilities

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8 gold/trophies

You spend 4 Peasants per Robber, and thus effectively spend 48 gold per Robber if you always use a multiple of 4 for your Peasant count: this is 2 gold less than hiring a Robber directly.

I'm down on Robbers overall, but this is an okay conversion; Robbers are somewhat uncommon in Armored Princess, while Peasants are one of your guaranteed Hordes. It's absolutely plausible a player might find their Robber stocks inadequate and appreciate this option existing, so long as they're fond of Robbers in the first place.

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1 gold/trophy

Why only 1 gold and trophy a head? Presumably because of how the ratios work out; each Swordsman requires their normal hiring cost in Peasants to convert, so actually you're losing out on 1 gold per Swordsman you acquire this way. Given Swordsmen are one of the units the game is willing to give you Hordes of, this is a pretty bad deal!

To not be losing out on even more gold, you'll need your Peasant stack to be a multiple of 7, resulting in 2 Swordsmen per 7 Peasants. Though honestly I have difficulty imagining why a player would bother...

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1 gold/trophy

Same situation as Swordsmen: each Pirate requires their cost in Peasants in the first place, so this token cost is still wasteful, especially since Pirates are another unit you expect to get a Horde of.

In the event you insist on it anyway, you'll want your Peasants in a multiple of 5, resulting in 2 Pirates per 5 Peasants, as that's the perfect conversion point with the least wastage.

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1 gold/trophy

Yet again, this token cost is because Bowmen already require their cost in Peasants, and thus you're paying an extra gold per Bowmen; Bowmen are sufficiently easy to come by this is unlikely to be worthwhile.

If you do find yourself wanting to do it, ideally your Peasant stack will be a multiple of 5, as that's the perfect conversion point.

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1 gold/trophy

For the final Peasant Training option, once again you're wasting 1 gold per head because Priests already demand their cost in Peasants. Also once again, Priests are a very common unit you're unlikely to run out of, making this largely worthless.

Yes, this means the Peasant to Robber conversion is the only particularly decent option in their list. That's a bit disappointing.

Regardless, if you end up doing this, ideally your Peasant stack is a multiple of 5, resulting in 1 Priest per 5 Peasants with the least wastage.

If you have ranks in Archmage this does actually save some gold, but... still dubious.

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3 gold/trophies

Robbers convert into Marauders perfectly at a 3/2 ratio -every three Robbers will result in two Marauders. Cost-wise, that's converting 150 gold of units to get 160 gold of units -with the Training cost of 3 attached, you're paying 156 gold per pair of Marauders you would normally pay 160 gold to get. (Or even less, if you converted Peasants to get those Robbers)

Marauders are also pretty easy to run out of if you're a fan of using them, so this is a nice option to keep in mind, especially if you find one or two Jackboots. I prefer Royal Snakes myself, but Marauders aren't without merit.

The main flaw with this Training option is that Jimmy simply does it better, directly converting each Robber into a Marauder for only 5 gold a head; that's paying 55 gold for 80 gold of units. As Jimmy really ought to be grabbed immediately by more or less every run and is available from nearly the beginning of the game, you're unlikely to ever turn to this over having Jimmy handle the Training.

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15 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion efficiency of Swordsmen to Guardsmen, you need a multiple of 10 Swordsmen; Swordsmen being 35 Leadership vs Guardsmen being 50 Leadership is awkward.

Assuming you always do that and so never throw Swordsmen into the trash, you're saving 35 gold per batch of seven Guardsmen produced this way, compared to the 840 you'd be spending if purchasing the Guardsmen directly. Yeah... it's a small savings; a little over 4%. That's something, anyway, but for one thing if you're being sloppy and ending up with Swordsmen in the trash it can easily be negated.

Guardsmen are also a reasonably common unit, so it's not like it's particularly helpful for solving access gaps.

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580 gold/trophies

To get perfect efficiency, you need to convert Guardsmen in multiples of 16, with this producing 5 Knights per batch.

If you do this perfectly efficient conversion, you're effectively spending 4,820 gold to get 5,000 gold of units. Not quite 200 gold saved, or put another way about 4% gold saved.

That's not much, but fortunately Knights are also one of the units you don't necessarily get in particularly large numbers in the first place. Converting common Guardsmen into possibly-rare Knights can be a nice option to have in a run. (Assuming you're fond of Knights, of course)

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890 gold/trophies

To get perfect efficiency, you need to convert with multiples of 22 Guardsmen, resulting in 5 Paladins per 22 Guardsmen.

If you do that, you're effectively spending 7,090 gold to get 7500 gold of units, a savings of about 5.5%.

This is unfortunately basically the only reason to consider doing this: Paladins are absurdly common throughout Teana, found in large numbers in a surprisingly large number of shops. In conjunction with their incredible durability and innate ability to undo some casualties in themselves and adjacent allies, you'd basically have to be trying to deplete your Paladin stocks for it to be particularly likely to actually happen.

It's also unfortunate that so much is spent on the conversion tax itself. Trophies are generally much more of a limiting factor than gold, aside maybe in the early game, and this will drain your Trophies extremely quickly. I have difficulty imagining this ever being worth doing, honestly.

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610 gold/trophies

You'll need to convert multiples of 18 Guardsmen to get perfect efficiency, resulting in 5 Horsemen per 18 Guardsmen.

If you do this, you're effectively spending 5,210 gold for 5,500 gold of Horsemen, which is once again a small savings -about 5.5%.

Horsemen are at least somewhat uncommon, and aren't a bad unit. It's plausible you might find your stocks running out and turn to this... though, as with Paladins, it's unfortunate that you spend so many Trophies in the process. It won't be very sustainable.

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100 gold/trophies

To get perfectly efficient conversion you have to at minimum convert 44 Knights, resulting in 32 Paladins. This will have cost you 48,400 gold, to get... 48,000 gold of Paladins.

That's right, you're wasting gold on this Training option!

That's on top of the point I've previously covered that Paladins are ludicrously common, far more so than Knights. It's basically impossible for this to make sense to do.

As a further bonus, if you have Gaudi he can perform this exact conversion with actual savings, causing you to save nearly a third of your gold over purchasing Paladins directly. (1,100 gold per head as opposed to the normal Paladin price of 1,500 gold a head) I'm unfond of Gaudi, but if you're running him then this option makes no sense to consider, period.

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85 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you simply need an even number of Priests, resulting in half their number in Inquisitors.

If you do so, you save 15 gold per Inquisitor, paying effectively 285 gold instead of 300 gold. That's a small savings, but still nice. It'd be more appreciated if Inquisitors weren't ridiculously common in Armored Princess... but at least it's not the Knight-to-Paladin conversion.

Note that if you have Gaudi you should have him handle this Training. He charges only 25 gold per conversion and does a 1:1 conversion; if you have him convert 2 Priests, you'll effectively spend 250 gold and end up with 600 gold of Inquisitors, saving almost 60% compared to purchasing Inquisitors directly.

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45 gold/trophies

You'll need to convert Priests in multiples of 12 to get perfect conversion efficiency... assuming you don't have Archmage-the-Skill, since it reduces Priest Leadership but not Witch Hunter Leadership. In any event, this results in 5 Witch Hunters.

Ignoring Archmage, perfect conversion results in you paying 1,425 gold for 1500 gold of units. A small savings, and Witch Hunters are generally less common than Priests, so there's reason to consider this possibility.

As noted earlier, the Archmage-modified Leadership is accounted for dynamically by the game. For example, if you convert 120 Priests, normally you'd get 50 Witch Hunters, but with Archmage at Rank 3 you'll instead get 38 Witch Hunters. (These are both perfect conversions, to be clear) Which is to say you're spending 13,710 gold for 11,400 gold of Witch Hunters, more than buying the Witch Hunters directly! So whoops, leveling Archmage is actually a disadvantage if you want to make yourself some Witch Hunters -Priests are the only option for Training up Witch Hunters, it should be noted, so you can't work around this issue.

On the plus side, a run that really leans into the Archmage Skill probably isn't going to burn through their Witch Hunter stocks and want more in the first place, but it does mean that if you grab ranks in it just to give it a whirl, perfectly happy to move away from such a strategy later in the game, that you may be disadvantaging yourself without realizing it.

At minimum, you should endeavor to do any Witch Hunter Training before leveling the Archmage Skill, rather than after.

Fortunately, this is the only example of this particular problem. It could easily have been so much worse...

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250 gold/trophies

You only need an even number of Inquisitors for this to be a perfect conversion.

So long as you do perfect conversions, you're effectively paying 850 gold per 900 gold of Archmages. Another small savings. Archmages aren't usually rare in Armored Princess, but they are much less common than Inquisitors, and sufficiently useful throughout the game it's plausible you might run through your stocks; certainly, I've had a run end up buying all the Archmages in the world...

So this is potentially a useful Training option, and it's nice it also saves a little money.

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50 gold/trophies

Perfect conversion is to have a straightforward multiple of 10 Archmages, resulting in 1 Rune Mage per 10 Archmages.

This results in you paying 9,050 gold for 15,000 gold of Rune Mage, shaving off more than a third of the cost! If you rush to unlock the ability to Train to the maximum Level, this is a pretty good choice if you want to try out Rune Mages, especially if you've been running Archmages but would like to move on from them. (Such as if you were primarily using them to hurry along the Guardian Angel Medal, and have finished it or are close enough to finishing it you don't feel the need to hold onto them any longer)

One of the best uses of the Academy system.

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85 gold/trophies

This converts perfectly by default, as Archmages and Necromancers have identical Leadership; you don't need to pay attention.

You save 15 gold compared to purchasing a Necromancer directly, too. Conveniently, Necromancers are a great unit you rarely have good stocks of until fairly late in the game, where Archmages are very accessible and this Training option only requires you raise your Level limit to unlock; if you want Necromancers from very early in the game, it's really not hard to arrange. Even if your run's direct Archmage stocks are limited, you can almost certainly convert Inquisitors into Archmages to then convert them into Necromancers. So this is potentially a very nice option to take advantage of -Mage runs in particular should keep it in mind, since mass Plague is such a good boost to Spellcasting damage.

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225 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need to convert in multiples of 21 Archmages, resulting in 20 Demonologists.

If you do this, you effectively pay 23,625 gold for 24,000 gold of Demonologists, providing you an... extremely tiny savings. Still, Demonologists are overall pretty rare for a long portion of the game (It's not uncommon to get an early source, but it also tends to have a pretty small number of Demonologists), and are a very, very good unit, and just like Necromancers you only need to raise your Level for Training, so it's possible to do it relatively early. Potentially worth considering.

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45 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need a multiple of 4 Miners, resulting in 1 Dwarf-the-unit.

If you do this, you effectively pay 205 gold for 220 gold of Dwarves-the-unit, a small savings.

I'm skeptical this ever makes sense to do, though. You tend to get Miners and Dwarves in large numbers at basically the same time, and while Dwarves are overall slightly better by default than Miners you're honestly a lot more likely to want specifically Miners than wanting specifically Dwarves-the-unit, as Miners have some impressive support (eg Foremen) while Dwarves-the-unit mostly get supported by tools that... also support Miners equally well.

Miner Hordes are at least more common than Dwarf-the-unit Hordes?

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215 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to use Dwarves-the-unit in multiples of 11, which will result in 8 Foremen.

If you do this, you effectively spend 4,140 gold to get 4,800 gold of Foremen. That's pretty decent savings!

Unfortunately, this does return to the issue that Trophies run out faster than gold. In particular, reaching Montero is around the point a run is generally leaving behind gold being a limiting factor, and Montero is where you usually first see Dwarves-the-unit; Foremen tend to actually have very good stocks in Montero, good enough you'd have to be quite careless to be running out even into the endgame, and you probably don't care about the gold savings, making this a bit difficult to care about.

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170 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to use multiples of 11 Dwarves-the-unit, resulting in 4 Cannoneers per set.

If you do this, you effectively pay 3,100 gold for 3,200 gold of Cannoneers, a very small savings.

Cannoneers are sufficiently prone to relatively small numbers of relatively small stocks this is potentially worth doing. Among other points, Cannoneers are a good unit for Keeper fights; even if you don't like using them in regular fights, they can be worth breaking out for Keeper fights, and it's plausible you'll burn through enough of your relatively limited stock while still wanting more. So this is nice.

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11 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to use multiples of 19 Alchemists, resulting in 13 Engineers.

If you do this, you effectively pay 17,623 gold for 14,950 gold of Engineers, throwing more than 2,000 gold in the trash per batch.

Unless you're actively running out of Engineers, this makes no sense to do. You usually get Engineers earlier than Alchemists, actually, and it's not unusual to have Engineers more common than Alchemists too!

This is just all-around a bad deal, unfortunately.

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10 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need a multiple of 3 in Repair Droids, getting 2 Guard Droids for every 3 Repair Droids.

If you do this, you effectively spend 510 gold to get 600 gold of Guard Droids. That's decent savings, which is good since otherwise there wouldn't be much reason to bother -most sources of either Droid offer both of them in large numbers, so you're pretty unlikely to use up stocks of either one, let alone Guard Droids in particular, and Repair Droids are overall the more valuable of the two, so it's not ideal that the Training runs in the direction of expending Repair Droids to get Guard Droids.

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370 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need to convert Werewolf Elves in multiples of 6, getting you 2 Assassins per set.

If you do this, you effectively pay 1,700 gold for 1,600 gold of Assassins, throwing 100 gold in the trash for no reason.

This is particularly unfortunate given you tend to get Assassins sooner than Werewolf Elves. Assassins are at least uncommon enough -and good enough- you could plausibly run through your stocks and want more, but this is still pretty unfortunate.

And yep, Werewolf Elves become Assassins. I guess because they're both humanoids with blades on both arms? It's one of the less intuitive conversion options...

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50 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to convert Ents in batches of 60, netting you 13 Ancient Ents per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 48,650 gold for 46,800 gold of Ancient Ents, throwing nearly 2,000 gold into the trash every time. And that's if you pull off perfect conversion!

Ancient Ents are at least rare, good, and impossible to Sacrifice up more copies of -it's genuinely quite plausible to burn through the world's stocks of them and find yourself wanting more, so you may wish to take advantage of this option in spite of the waste.

But by default, you should just buy Ancient Ents directly. Among other points, you don't tend to get regular Ents particularly earlier than Ancient Ents; often if you have ready access to one, you have ready access to both. So usually this is just pointless...

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180 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to use multiples of 15 Elves-the-unit, resulting in 8 Hunters per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 5,490 gold for 5,600 gold of Hunters, a small savings.

You generally get Elves-the-unit and Hunters in good numbers at about the same time, and honestly you may well wish to use them together, not just one or the other, so I'm skeptical of the utility of this option.

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95 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to use multiples of 30 regular Unicorns, resulting in 26 Black Unicorns per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 18,970 gold for 19,500 gold of Black Unicorns, a decent little savings.

My own experience has been that Black Unicorns are actually much more common than regular Unicorns, making this basically pointless, but it's possible I've just had a weird streak of luck. In any event, Tolerant on Black Unicorns gives a decent reason to specifically want them over regular Unicorns, so it's plausible a run might burn through its stocks and still want more.

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2 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need to convert Goblins in multiples of 18, resulting in 16 Furious Goblins.

If you do this, you effectively pay 932 gold for 960 gold of Furious Goblins, a very small savings.

My experience is that Furious Goblins tend to be much more common than Goblins, rendering this laughable to have as an option, but maybe I've had a weird streak of luck. 

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140 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need to convert Furious Goblins in multiples of 78, resulting in 27 Goblin Shaman per batch.

If you do this, you effectively spend 8,460 gold for 6,750 gold of Goblin Shaman. Yeah... don't do this. If you really feel the need to convert Furious Goblins into Goblin Shaman, you can use Instruction to avoid spending Trophies and then just Resurrect the Furious Goblins to avoid spending gold; until you're running out of fights entirely there's probably easy fights lying around to do this safely in.

Note that if you have Rakush, you should just have him handle this Training, as usual with Companions: you effectively pay 80 gold for 250 gold of Goblin Shaman; that's paying just over 30% of the Goblin Shaman base price! Indeed, this is one of the best arguments for taking Rakush; Goblin Shaman are a very notable unit that can burn through a lot of gold pretty quickly.

Among other points, if you're fond of having them sacrifice themselves without bothering to undo the casualties afterward, a cheap way to replace the losses you're inflicting on yourself is very appreciated.

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75 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you just need an even number of Orcs, resulting in half as many Orc Trackers.

This will result in you effectively paying 455 gold for 500 gold of Orc Tracker, a savings of nearly 10%.

My own experience has once again been that Orc Trackers tend to actually be a lot more common than basic Orcs, and in this particular case I have doubts it's just a streak of weird luck, so I'm very skeptical this is particularly worth doing. Among other points, by the time you have access to decent stocks of Orcs-the-unit, gold is generally largely a solved concern, where even this relatively high gold saving is difficult to care about.

But hey, if you obsessively use Orc Trackers throughout a run until you run out of stocks and still want more, the option exists.

Note that if you have Moldok, you should have him perform the Training instead. He charges 40 gold per head, which is already less than the Training surcharge here, and then he converts 1:1, so you end up with more efficient conversion of stocks; if you convert 2 regular Orcs into Orc Trackers with Moldok, you end up with 1000 gold of Orc Trackers having only paid 460 gold, ie saving more than 50%.

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18 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Orcs in multiples of 7, resulting in 4 Orc Veterans per batch.

If you do this, you effective pay 1,402 gold for 1,520 gold of Orc Veterans, a small savings.

Orc Veterans tend to be uncommon enough this is absolutely worth considering, especially since Orc Veterans are a very solid unit, and one where straightforward use involves a slow burn of casualties; it's easy to run through literally all the Orc Veterans you can purchase in the entire world, in part because Orcs as a whole tend to have somewhat poor purchase access.

As with the option to Train up Orc Trackers, if you have Moldok you should have him do the Training instead; if you had him Train 7 Orcs, you'd pay 1,540 gold and end up with 2,660 gold of Orc Veterans, ie saving a bit over 40% compared to purchasing directly.

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245 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Orc Veterans in multiples of 50, resulting in 7 Ogres per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 20,715 gold for 21,000 gold of Ogres, a (very) small savings.

Armored Princess is by far the best game for Ogres, and much like Orc Veterans it's not that hard to run through their stocks in part because there tends to not be that many of them throughout the world. If you want to give Ogres a shake in the game they're best in, you may well end up falling back on this if you stick it out. So this is a nice option to have exist.

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450 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Orc Veterans in multiples of 60, resulting in 7 Orc Chieftains per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 25,950 gold for 28,000 gold of Orc Chieftains, a little over 7% savings.

Orc Chieftains are another unit it's not that hard to run through your stocks of. They're actually overall more common than Ogres, but it's worth noting here that Orc Chieftains have a habit of showing up in stores as 1-3 individuals as the primary reason they're more common; this can make it a nuisance to find all your Orc Chieftains if you're not making notes (Reminder: the game's map system lets you make notes in-game!), and even if you have made notes it can still be annoying. Grabbing a bunch of Orc Veterans and converting them into Orc Chieftains is thus more convenient than hunting down 10 Orc Chieftains scattered across six stores, which can be appreciated all on its own.

It's worth noting that while the game won't let you directly cram units beyond your Leadership into a deployment slot, you can work around this with a Castle: if you pull a unit from a Castle, it will stack with any existing stack of its type in a deploy slot in full, regardless of Leadership. Thus, if there's a unit you want to Train efficiently where that's over your current Leadership, you can manage it anyway; the military academy system itself won't raise objections. So you can get perfect efficiency here even if you don't have the Leadership for 7 Orc Chieftains/60 Orc Veterans.

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380 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Orc Veterans in multiples of 55, resulting in 7 Trolls per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 23,560 gold for 25,200 gold of Trolls, a small savings.

Trolls are another unit that's really easy to burn through their stocks, and even more so than Orc Chieftains they tend to be scattered about in a range of stores that has no obvious pattern to it; Trolls are in fact one of the only units in Armored Princess that as far as I can tell don't have a 'home' region you can reliably expect to find them in good numbers, and there's also no distinctive Troll Store that's liable to stick in one's memory. (Where eg Montero has a dragon-focused store guarded by dragons that's easy to remember) It's thus easy to be unsure where to go looking if you decide you want to swap in Trolls; it may be more convenient to go to Dersu, buy a bunch of Orc Veterans, and convert them into Trolls than to manually search for Trolls, if you haven't been making notes. (Or more precisely haven't made notes about Trolls in stores)

As Trolls are also just a really fantastic unit, the option to convert for them is nice.

Mildly unfortunate is that you'll often see decent stocks of Trolls before adequate stocks of basic Orcs or Orc Veterans, where eg your run can buy Trolls in Verona before you get enough basic Orcs or Orc Veterans to convert into Trolls. It would've been nice to be able to trade Trophies for early access to Trolls, given they particularly shine in the early game.

Even so, this is one of the better uses for the Military Academy system.

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75 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need multiples of 27 regular Shaman, resulting in 20 Blood Shaman.

If you do this, you effectively pay 17,700 gold for 18,000 gold of Blood Shaman, a very small savings.

This is another case where my experience is that the unit you're using up tends to be less common than the unit you're turning it into, with Blood Shaman showing up in decent numbers in a surprisingly wide variety of stores throughout the game while Shaman are mostly found in Dersu, and not in particularly exceptional numbers. Like with Orc Trackers, I'm skeptical this is just a weird streak of luck, too; as such, I have doubts this is liable to be worth doing. Blood Shaman aren't even a unit that's encouraged to get into the thick of things and die; they're good at standing back, doing damage, making it that bit less likely you'll run through their stocks.

This isn't even getting into the point that Blood Shaman are arguably less useful than regular Shaman in the first place.

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1 gold/trophy

The gold-to-Leadership ratio on Zombies and Decaying Zombies is identical, hence this token 1 cost. Of course, in practice this means you're always throwing gold in the trash, even if you always pursue perfect conversion.

Speaking of, you need multiples of 4 Zombies to achieve that, resulting in 3 Decaying Zombies per batch.

I'm... not sure why you'd bother, unfortunately. Zombies and Decaying Zombies aren't different enough in form of utility for this to be all that valuable, nor is it like you can then convert Decaying Zombies into something else. This just really looks like a trap option to me, where a player going through the game casually is unlikely to notice it's just throwing money in the trash.

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85 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need multiples of 21 regular Vampires, resulting in 12 Ancient Vampires per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 4,380 gold for 5,520 gold of Ancient Vampires, shaving off something not far off from 20% of the cost. Undead access is sufficiently erratic until you get access to the Nameless Island it's entirely possible for you to have a decent stock of regular Vampires while not yet having access to Ancient Vampires, so that's another reason this can be worth it. Ancient Vampires are also notable for their impressive Initiative, particularly in bat form, if less so than in The Legend; a Mage in particular may really appreciate getting early access to Ancient Vampires to get Initiative advantage over things like Sea Dogs and Devilfish.

So this is a pretty nice use of the Military Academy system.

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15 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need multiples of 13 Ghosts, resulting in 8 Cursed Ghosts per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 2,200 gold for 3,040 gold of Cursed Ghosts, shaving off nearly a third of the price!

And just like with Ancient Vampires, the erratic Undead access means it's entirely possible to spend a good chunk of a run with access to stocks of regular Ghosts but no Cursed Ghosts, making this potentially useful for that reason.

Cursed Ghosts aren't as impressive as Ancient Vampire Bats at winning Initiative wars, but they're still a nice enough unit this conversion can be worth it. Among other points, Armored Princess is a bit friendlier to their scream being useful for the shoving component.

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1 gold/trophy

Like Zombies and Decaying Zombies, Imps and Scoffer Imps have their gold-to-Leadership ratio identical, resulting in this token cost. Also like the zombies, this still means you're throwing gold in the trash; I have difficulty imagining why you'd bother.

In the event you feel the need, though, perfect conversion requires Imps in a multiple of 3, resulting in 2 Scoffer Imps for every 3 Imps.

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750 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need multiples of 12 Demons, resulting in 10 Executioners per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 15,492 gold for 16,000 gold of Executioners, a small savings.

Executioners are sufficiently uncommon/erratic you may find yourself with inadequate stocks for your needs, so this is potentially nice, especially since Executioners are a pretty strong (and fun) unit. 

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50 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need multiples of 40 Executioners, resulting in 9 Archdemons per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 64,450 gold for 54,000 gold of Archdemons, ie throwing a ton of gold into the trash.

Don't consider this unless you really desperately want Archdemons while having run through your store stocks. And even then, the Corrupted Officer's Patent provides better options, as we'll be seeing next post.

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15 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need multiples of 8 Pirates, resulting in 5 Sea Dogs per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 475 gold for 500 gold of Sea Dogs, a small savings.

Sea Dogs are accessible in good numbers throughout the game, and in particular tend to be found alongside Pirates, so you shouldn't be particularly quick to turn to this option, but if you're playing the game relatively casually (by which I mean 'not obsessively going for no-loss victories') they're a powerful unit that's going to take casualties at a decent enough clip where it's totally plausible for a run to burn through its currently-accessed stocks and turn to Training up more.

That said, just like Robbers to Marauders, Jimmy is simply better at this job, converting 1:1 at 7 gold a head; if you have Jimmy convert 8 Pirates, you'll spend 456 gold to get 800 gold of Sea Dogs, a far better ratio. So the Military Academy is unlikely to be what you turn to, especially since Jimmy's support is a big boost; if you dismiss him in favor of a different Companion so you no longer have his Training available, you're a lot less likely to want Sea Dogs in the first place.

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180 gold/trophies

You just need an even number of Pirates for perfect conversion, getting one Pirate Ghost for every two Pirates.

This results in you effectively paying 280 gold for 300 gold of Pirate Ghosts, a small savings.

Pirate Ghosts are uniquely good and... well, extremely abusable if you have the patience, and are much more erratic in access than regular Pirates. This is thus a sensible Training option to take advantage of.

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370 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need multiples of 15 Sea Dogs, resulting in 4 Assassins per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 2,980 gold for 3,200 gold of Assassins, a small savings.

Unlike converting Werewolf Elves to Assassins, this has pretty good odds of being worthwhile, as you reliably get Sea Dogs in good numbers early (If nothing else, you can Train Pirates into Sea Dogs), very possibly before you spot Assassins in stores at all. Even if you actually spot Assassins first (Which I'm pretty sure is possible, if unlikely), Assassins tend to show up in small enough numbers it's entirely possible to have your Leadership grow past the numbers you can currently pull from stores, where having the option to Train them via Sea Dogs can avoid you being forced to discard Assassins because they're too far below your Leadership.

A solid Training option.

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9 gold/trophies

Perfect conversion is automatic, as Barbarians and Berserkers have identical Leadership.

You save exactly 1 gold per Berserker by performing this Training.

I'm... not sure why you'd bother? I understand why this exists, but it's not particularly high in utility. Berserkers and Barbarians are found in broadly the same areas, including potentially being found in the same store outright, and Berserkers aren't a clean improvement over Barbarians anyway; you're unlikely to need to turn to Training if you do want Berserkers, and you're unlikely to want to replace Barbarians with Berserkers. The 1 gold saved is difficult to care about, even considering that gold tends to be tight early in a run. So I'm skeptical of this being meaningfully useful.

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190 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Griffins in a multiple of 15, resulting in 4 Royal Griffins per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 4,660 gold for 4,800 gold of Royal Griffins, a small savings.

Royal Griffins are a sufficiently great, and sufficiently rare, unit that it's entirely possible to have a pretty long stretch of the game in which you're Training them up because you haven't found them in a store yet but have found regular Griffins. They can especially excel in the early game if you're lucky enough to find an early supply of Griffins, and the game is reluctant to give Royal Griffins to you that early in terms of direct store access. So this has some nice potential.

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85 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need a multiple of 95 Thorn Warriors, resulting in 2 Royal Thorns per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 1,120 gold for 1,200 gold of Royal Thorns, a small savings.

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85 gold/trophies

This is completely identical to converting Thorn Warriors into Royal Thorns.

Royal Thorns can make a tremendous difference in your ability to get through the early game on higher difficulties, particularly if no-casualties is a goal. (Which it should be until you have Grand Strategy maxed, at least) They're pretty consistently offered in stores directly in the early game, but in small enough numbers it doesn't take long to grow past their Leadership total, so the option of converting Thorn Warriors or Thorn Hunters to fill that gap is worth keeping in mind, as they're a lot more common in the early game than Royal Thorns. And as I've noted before, it's generally better to deploy a Royal Thorn to summon Thorn Warriors and to a lesser extent Thorn Hunters than to deploy them directly; this lets you hold to that truism while still using what basic Thorns are in stores.

So these are some of the more worthwhile Training options to keep in mind in the early game.

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75 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you just need an even number of Snakes, resulting in one Royal Snake for every two Snakes.

Doing so results in you effectively paying 215 gold for every 240 gold of Royal Snake you get, a nice little savings.

Personally, I'm dubious on this option, because Snakes are pretty uniquely useful, and more importantly there's a much better way to get Royal Snakes...

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80 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need Swamp Snakes in multiples of 15, resulting in 7 Royal Snakes per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 1,460 gold for 1,540 gold of Royal Snakes, a small savings.

You usually get plenty of Royal Snakes, but in case your run ends up short this is a nice option to have; Royal Snakes are essentially flatly superior to Swamp Snakes and great to have in general, while Swamp Snakes are liable to languish in stores forever otherwise. This option existing is also why I'm dubious on converting regular Snakes into Royal Snakes; even if you do need more Royal Snakes than what stores are offering, you very consistently get fairly large numbers of Swamp Snakes in the early game. Why burn the independently-good regular Snakes on this when you could burn the largely-not-worth-using Swamp Snakes on it?

A nice Training option that can help in the mid-early portion of a run.

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19 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Beholders in a multiple of 9, resulting in 7 Evil Beholders per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 4,273 gold for 4,340 gold of Evil Beholders, a very small savings.

My experience is that Evil Beholders in particular are bizarrely rare, rarely seen in stores and tending to show up in bizarrely low numbers when they do show up. Regular Beholders are also pretty uncommon, but Evil Beholders seem to be much more ridiculously rare, to the point that you may need to Train up copies or turn to shenanigans like Sacrifice if you want to meaningfully use Evil Beholders in your run at all.

On the other hand, in Armored Princess regular Beholders tend to be more useful for the player than Evil Beholders, so I'm not sure this is actually worth doing. The Initiative advantage regular Beholders have can be make-or-break, whereas Evil Beholders rarely get real use out of their Talent and their stat advantages aren't significant enough to give them a clear niche over regular Beholders.

Alas.

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50 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need regular Bears in a multiple of 8, resulting in 7 Ancient Bears at a time.

If you do this, you effectively pay 1,630 gold for 1,680 gold of Ancient Bears, a small savings.

Ancient Bears are generally better than regular Bears, so... I guess this is worth considering? I'm not big on bears of any kind in Armored Princess, but hey, it's an option.

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80 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you need Ancient Bears in a multiple of 15, resulting in 8 Polar Bears per set.

If you do this, you effectively pay 4,240 gold for 4,320 gold of Polar Bears, a very small savings.

In theory if you could get this happening really early, it would potentially help you push through early fights with no casualties, as Polar Bears are impressively bulky by early-game standards. I'm pretty sure this isn't terribly relevant to real play, though -you get past that earliest phase of the game pretty quick in Armored Princess, and in fact often get access to Polar Bears in Bolo, ie the third island, and they're often already at the point where it's difficult to have them tank things without taking casualties. (Talking from the perspective of Hard or Impossible, anyway)

Still, Polar Bears are broadly an uncommon unit. If you do stick them out for whatever reason, this option can let you persist even if they run out in stores, which is liable to happen pretty quick. So it's nice this exists, even if I'm unsure how useful it really is from a 'playing to win' sort of perspective.

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6 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Cave Spiders in multiples of 15, resulting in 7 Fire Spiders per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 402 gold for 420 gold of Fire Spiders, a small savings.

Spiders of any kind are actually surprisingly rare in Armored Princess, with absolutely no specialist stores for them and a lack of stores that clearly include them as a secondary specialty (eg Armored Princess doesn't do Stores Run By Witches or Stores That Sell A Variety Of Animals), but Cave Spiders are effectively the most common simply because you always find some Spider Eggs and those always produce Cave Spiders, while Fire Spiders are generally the most useful. So if you're wanting to use spiders (such as because you found the Belt that boosts spider damage), this has potential relevancy.

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8 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need Venomous Spiders in multiples of 10, resulting in 4 Fire Spiders per batch.

If you do this, you effectively pay 232 gold for 240 gold of Fire Spiders, a small savings.

Venomous Spiders are horrendously rare, but they're also difficult to justify using for their own sake while, again, Fire Spiders are overall the best of the spiders; buying up Venomous Spiders to convert them into Fire Spiders is a potentially worthwhile proposition, depending on your run's luck and all. Just be sure you don't mind not having Venomous Spiders later, or retain a seed population for Sacrifice shenanigans later; it's genuinely easy to entirely run out of Venomous Spiders.

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810 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need to use multiples of 44 Gobots, resulting in 3 Chosha per set.

If you do this, you effectively spend spend 3,090 gold for 3,300 gold of Chosha, a small savings.

As it's usually better to field Gobots via spawning them with Chosha, and Chosha access in stores is prone to being poor, it's entirely possible for this to be useful to have access to, letting you effectively convert all those Gobots you have no intention of fielding into Chosha you'd actually like to field. So this is nice.

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35 gold/trophies

To get perfect conversion, you'll need multiples of 24 Gorguls, which will result in 14 Gorguanas.

If you do this, you will effectively pay 4,810 gold to get 4,900 gold of Gorguanas, a tiny savings.

Gorguanas are overall the more significant and splashable of the two, thanks almost entirely to Mark of Blood, so this is nice to have. You tend to get plenty of Gorguanas, and they're placed so late you can almost certainly Sacrifice up more copies if you really need to, but it's far from the worst Training option.

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Frustratingly, a fairly major glitch with the Military Academy system is that a file can, for no clear reason, end up with some units always insisting that 'Trophy requirements are unrealized' and refusing to even show you what you could theoretically upgrade them to. It doesn't occur at a particularly high rate -my files have had 3-5 units affected per file, which really isn't that bad given how many units there are- but it's not necessarily obvious that you're running into the glitch rather than genuinely being short on Trophies, and it can be an unpleasant surprise if you were planning around a particular Training option being available and whoops not for this file!

As far as I'm aware, no fan solution exists to the problem, alas, and of course the game is no longer meaningfully supported officially.

On the plus side, it's generally not terribly important of a glitch. I imagine the majority of Crossworlds players never run into it at all.

Of course, part of why I suspect that is that the Military Academy system is... an interesting idea whose execution isn't terribly compelling. Still, that's better than some possible fates...

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Next time, we wrap up the Academy system by covering demonic conversion.

See you then.