[curtadams]

That was bad luck. My rough impression is that the life expectancy of an old unit is 3-4 years. However, even that is bad enough that I only use old units when I have no alternative. I pretty much hire them for key forgers and key battlemages - the ones doing the critical stuff nobody else can. I've not found them worth the trouble as artillery battlemages (although, to tell the truth, I'm pretty unimpressed with artillery battlemages anyway in Dom3) and I'd never hire them as researchers.