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Thread: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

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    Research Fiend Technical Administrator Tetris Champion, Summer Games Champion, Snakeman Champion, Ms Pacman Champion therother's Avatar
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    Post Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

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    Last edited by therother; 12-11-2004 at 16:19.
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  2. #2

    Default Re: Research suggestions and discussion

    Did some XP tests today (yes, I know I've got too much time on my hands).

    My Greek side had the following units: 1 General, 1 Mil.Cav, 1 Peltast, 2 Armored Hoplites (1 with 1XP and 1 with 2XP), 2 Archers
    The enemy rebels had 1 General, 2 Velites, 2 Peasants
    The odds were 20:9 in my favor. I thought it would be a nice battle to start tests since archers can easily avoid casualties.

    Below is the raw data for kills for the same battle above fought 5 times:
    All kills are made on non-routing units.

    Code:
    Archer1
    91 Peasants, 28 Velites		XP1
    69 Peasants			XP1
    59 Peasants			XP0
    65 Peasants			XP0
    3 Peasants, 66 Velites		XP1
    
    Archer2
    25 Peasants, 49 Velites		XP1
    51 Velites			XP0
    63 Velites			XP0
    6 Peasants, 68 Velites		XP1
    68 Peasants			XP0
    Conclusion: It takes exactly 69 kills to level up an archer unit from XP0 to XP1. Quality of kills do not seem to matter.


    I can upload the saved file if anyone is interested in helping to test. If there are enough interested parties, we might want to split this post off and make a separate thread titled say "XP and kills".

    EDIT: It occurs to me that 69 is a rather odd number and I'm not sure if there are other factors modifying this so I will qualify the above results as being played on VH/VH and on normal unit size (40 men for an archer unit).
    Last edited by zhuge; 12-11-2004 at 15:07. Reason: adding observation and comments

  3. #3

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    A few more observations:
    1)The level up kill requirement may not be linear.
    If it was linear, 138 kills would get you 2XP. Tested it and it only gave 1XP. In fact, I made 173 kills later on with 145 kills on non-routers (102 Peasants and 43 Velites) and 28 kills on routers (7 Peasants and 21 Velites) and still received only 1XP.

    2)Killing routers appears to net less value in terms of getting the next XP level
    Killed off 46 non-routers (17 Peasants, 20 Velites and 9 General's Bodyguard (rebel)) and then an additional 25 routers (15 Peasants and 10 Velites) for a total of 71. Would have gotten the next XP level if routers were counted towards a total of 69 just like non-routers but apparently it isn't so because I received no XP. However killing routers also cannot be of no value, because killing 67 non-routers and 10 routers does give 1XP, which mean that those 10 routers are at least equivalent to 2 non-routers (since we've established earlier that we need 69 non-router kills for XP1).

    Would be nice if someone could help test out archers on Normal campaign and battle difficulty. Just want to rule out some possible complicating factors.

    EDIT: I vaguely recall that in Shogun, you got 1XP if every man in a unit made 2 kills (but I think that was only for the first level) and some players mentioned that you seemed to get less XP for killing routers as well. If someone has done more extensive analysis in Shogun/Medieval it would be nice to paste the findings here as I suspect the pattern may be grossly similar.
    Last edited by zhuge; 12-11-2004 at 15:39. Reason: adding request for similar shogun/medieval data, corrected typing errors

  4. #4

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    I'm getting awfully confused.
    There may be some randomness involved in deciding whether a unit gets the next XP level. I've tried to tie in all factors I can think of and standardize them: involvement in a previous battle, number of other friendly units in the battle, whether the enemy general was killed by the unit under study (KillGen).

    Open a new game, choose Julii, VH/VH, regular unit size and you'll have my current setup. Use Flavius to hit Segesta on turn 1 (he has 1 Archer unit, 2 Hastatis and 1 Triarii). Brought them all and fought Segesta (1 Warband and 1 Barb Peasant).

    Code:
    Warband	Peasant	Total	KillGen	XP
    49	41	90	N	0
    54	39	93	N	0
    54	41	95	Y	0
    56	39	95	N	0
    59	36	95	N	0
    59	41	100	N	0 ??
    
    57	41	98	N	1 ??
    56	47	103	N	1
    58	45	103	N	1
    58	46	104	Y	1
    58	48	106	Y	1
    60	46	106	Y	1
    As you can see there is a seemingly unexplainable difference for the 2 datasets which have ?? at the end.


    I then tried taking 2 units only (Flavius and Archer) and refought the battles:

    Code:
    Warband	Peasant	Total	KillGen	XP
    49	34	83	N	0
    57	36	93	N	0
    57	38	95	N	0
    56	44	100	N	1
    Having 100 kills didn't seem to get 1XP if you brought 5 units but it does when you bring 2??
    It occurs to me that I might have recorded the result wrongly for a dataset or two (though I sincerely believe I haven't). There is no question about routing as all kills are made in the town square which gives infinite morale.

    Would like to have some help here if anyone's interested. If there is indeed some random factor then there will be little point in continuing to probe in this area.
    Comments and criticism are very much welcome.

    P/S - Not sure if it matters but more than 69 kills are required here for the next level probably because the Archers under Flavius already start with XP1 and levelling to XP2 may need more kills.

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    Spends his time on TWC Member Simetrical's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    I suspect it's hopeless. There have been ample anecdotal reports of units not participating in the battle and still gaining experience. I should think that there are lots of factors, quite possibly including some random ones. I doubt there's any way to properly isolate them.

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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by Simetrical
    I suspect it's hopeless. There have been ample anecdotal reports of units not participating in the battle and still gaining experience. I should think that there are lots of factors, quite possibly including some random ones. I doubt there's any way to properly isolate them.

    -Simetrical
    Yes, I've read of a few rather weird reports on the official forums recently. Still I haven't experienced having a unit go up by 1XP if it didn't fight or for that matter didn't make any kills in the battle so I'm not willing at this stage to make conclusions on anecdotal evidences.

    Rather hard to test for though. We might need a huge amount of data to really arrive at any conclusion. As mentioned before, I don't think I can do this alone anymore. But if other members want to chip in every now and then we might be able to build a small collection of findings and hopefully from then we can piece together something.

    There is another way to approach this problem and that is to directly decipher the saved files and get the exact XP for each unit. The XP is brought forward from battle to battle so it must be saved somewhere in the saved file. RomeSage (a modding tool) can currently alter campaign, and battle difficulty, change unit size, amongst several other functions. If we can figure out how and where XP is stored then I believe we'll have made an important step to cracking this puzzle.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Here to confuse the issue.

    I have, on more than one occaision, had a unit with no kills gain exp (always to a unit with no chevrons) Last night I had a cataphract archer gain "0" exp after running over 201 routers...I thought they were worth something in bulk

    Kinda miss the log files from MTW; was nice to look at every now and again and see what happened.
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    Research Shinobi Senior Member Tamur's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Wasn't there mention of the game tracking the experience level of individual soldiers, so that troop combinations would come out correctly? I suppose its existance doesn't imply that there's a history logged to go along with it.
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    Spends his time on TWC Member Simetrical's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by zhuge
    There is another way to approach this problem and that is to directly decipher the saved files and get the exact XP for each unit. The XP is brought forward from battle to battle so it must be saved somewhere in the saved file. RomeSage (a modding tool) can currently alter campaign, and battle difficulty, change unit size, amongst several other functions. If we can figure out how and where XP is stored then I believe we'll have made an important step to cracking this puzzle.
    Definitely. My guess would be that XP is stored as a noninteger value from 0 to 9, or some equivalent. If a soldier* gained, say, .1 XP from simply being in a battle, plus an additional .05 for every enemy killed, that would explain things nicely. We could quantify things very precisely if we had precise values for unit experience, since we could save, check the values, start up a battle under reasonably controlled conditions, and then recheck the values afterwards to find the difference. The other possibility would be a percentage chance of gaining a full experience point for various events, but that would be hell to figure out, so let's all hope that it's the gradient possibility. Now all we need is to hack the save files . . .

    *[aside]I think XP is stored by soldier, not by unit. For one thing, that would explain units' actually losing experience—if the unit happened to lose its more experienced soldiers, then its XP would go down. The alternative would be the unattractive possibility that units can actually lose XP from routing or something, but that explanation falls short of explaining my second piece of evidence: the merged-XP phenomenon.

    For example, take a unit of 40 soldiers with one bronze chevron (Unit 1) and a unit of the same type with only 10 soldiers, but one silver chevron (Unit 2). Drag Unit 1 onto Unit 2 and see what values you get. According to the XP-by-unit theory, the XP should either be averaged and both units should have exactly the same XP, or the units should keep their original XP (so Unit 1 will still have 1 and 2 will still have 4). This isn't the case. The two units often have different XP values, both from each other and from their starting values. This is true, I propose, because soldiers from Unit 1 go over to Unit 2 either on the basis of experience (highest first or lowest first), or on a random basis, and so the averages will end up different.

    Furthermore, I believe that soldiers in battle quite possibly have stats according to their own experience, and not according to the group's experience. Many people have mentioned (unscientifically, but coming from multiple independent subjective analyses) that units seem more likely to gain experience when they suffer casualties. I propose that this is because the green soldiers are more likely to die off, thus raising the average XP of the unit.

    Finally, it's worth mentioning that official MTW materials apparently said that XP in that game was stored on a per-soldier basis.[/aside]

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    Magister Vitae Senior Member Kraxis's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    I can't believe that CA would have left the individual tracking.
    That means every single soldier gets tracked as per his experience (and other factors of course). Thus in battle a unit will advance in XP when more than half the unit has XP1 and the rest XP0. So obviously it will take a considerable time before the unit reaches XP2 as they only get to XP at 69 kills (which in turn is about half the men). And if CA has kept the double system as previously (for every level up they need to kill double over as many as they did before), then getting to XP2 in a battle is night impossible.

    And it was XP1 for one kill in STW and MTW. Then 2 for 2, then 4 for 3, then 8 for 4 and so on. That is why knights could rake up very high XP. But remember that some units only counted half or a quarter of normal ones, such as Peasants.
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  11. #11

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    unfortunetaly i have no awnsers, but just another point to think about... if you retrain units, the whole retrained unit has the same xp-level than the remaining soldiers before retraining (no matter how few they were!). isn't that a point against the assumption that xp is tracked for each individual soldier?

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    Magister Vitae Senior Member Kraxis's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by Leodegar
    unfortunetaly i have no awnsers, but just another point to think about... if you retrain units, the whole retrained unit has the same xp-level than the remaining soldiers before retraining (no matter how few they were!). isn't that a point against the assumption that xp is tracked for each individual soldier?
    No not directly. It just means that the reinforcements are faulty. I mean what are the chances that a green recruit is as experienced as a grizzled veteran?
    Ther are many odd instances in RTW that is hard to explain from an older TW point of view. I think that in this case the devs madea small oversight and gave the recruits the unit experience (it too has to be tracked).
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  13. #13

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by Kraxis
    I can't believe that CA would have left the individual tracking.
    That means every single soldier gets tracked as per his experience (and other factors of course). Thus in battle a unit will advance in XP when more than half the unit has XP1 and the rest XP0. So obviously it will take a considerable time before the unit reaches XP2 as they only get to XP at 69 kills (which in turn is about half the men). And if CA has kept the double system as previously (for every level up they need to kill double over as many as they did before), then getting to XP2 in a battle is night impossible.

    And it was XP1 for one kill in STW and MTW. Then 2 for 2, then 4 for 3, then 8 for 4 and so on. That is why knights could rake up very high XP. But remember that some units only counted half or a quarter of normal ones, such as Peasants.
    Thanks for the info and correction Kraxis.
    I've not been playing S:TW and M:TW for ages and have gotten slipshod over details.
    I will try to recontinue testing some time later as I am pretty tied up at the moment. Would very much appreciate it if someone could pick up testing and continue to post data. I was wondering if switching over to arcade mode might enable easier testing as we then get unlimited ammo (which would make it easier to get really high kills for archer units). Of course we need to make sure that leveling/XP follows the same general scheme, when in arcade mode.

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    Research Fiend Technical Administrator Tetris Champion, Summer Games Champion, Snakeman Champion, Ms Pacman Champion therother's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    It occurs to me that it might be best to do at least some of the testing against a human opponent in multiplayer. That way, you can better control the situation.

    Also, instead of using arcade mode, which might introduce unwanted side effects, would it not be better to mod the number of arrows?

    See this thread for GodsPetMonkey's excellent editors, which should help if you don't feel comfortable modding the files by hand.
    Last edited by therother; 12-16-2004 at 01:04.
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    If you want to give your archers unlimited arrows, you can just do a simple toggle. Open up preferences.txt, in your base RTW folder (usually named "Rome - Total War"), look for UNLIMITED_AMMO, and set it to TRUE.

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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny
    I have, on more than one occaision, had a unit with no kills gain exp.
    I had the same thing happen just now. Medium-sized siege, a few hundred kills, the one unit of mine that did get experience was the unit of barbarian horsemen that didn't move from their original starting location: XP1 0 casualties 0 kills!
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    Tired Old Geek Member mfberg's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    On a medium level game I have had Hastati gain 1 experience while only breaking a wall down.

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    War Story Recorder Senior Member Maltz's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Recently in my Carthagian campaign I purposely build up my starting slinger's EXP. After countless battles now they are experience 8 soldiers. With some blacksmith upgrade - man they shoot bullets. In just one volley they can kill 30-40 militia hoplites at town center.

    Besides that here are a few of my observations of this exp. issue:

    == Sometimes experience shrink one level after I hit "start the battle", but get back to original level after the battle is over. I heard this is because the way battle handles exp. is a little different, so the number flips & flops.

    == Experiences are stored with invidividual soldier's. There are 2 examples:

    1. When I merge a few soldiers of "no weapon upgrade" unit with an almost full "silver weapon" unit, they brcome bronze weapon. If experience is counted as a unit, then everybody should have silver weapon.

    2. Sometimes part of my general's bodyguard die, and the entire bodyguard unit actually lost experience. If experience is counted as a unit, then there is no way for them to lose experience from killing enemies.

    == Common sense: experiences are harder to get in higher levels.

    ***

    I wonder the information of exp. is actually stored as "kill number" of each soldier. Then, the program will covert this kill number into proper exp. This means that you can be very close to a threshold for the next level, and not worrying about losing all "partial experiences" after this battle is done. This makes achieving very high experience possible.

    ***

    Let's assume experiences do write on individual soldiers' forehead. Then it will explain the weird thing mentioned in Zhuge's experiment. To simplify the case I now assume it is purely 100 "exp1" archers vs. 300 peasants.

    Let's also make up a promotion rule:
    Exp Total number of kills required
    1: 1 (kill)
    2: 1+2
    3: 1+2+4
    4: 1+2+4+8
    5: 1+2+4+8+16

    Case One:

    When arrows run out, every archer gets 2 kill. From the rule we know they already start with experience 1, so 2 kill is just enough for them to gain 1 more experience, from 1 to 2.

    Total number killed = 200.

    Case Two:

    When arrow runs out, 21 archers had a better line of sight and each of them killed 6, and the rest 79 got poor sight and each of them killed 1.

    (Total number killed = 205, higher than case one).

    That 21 good archers, from the chart, you can see they were great and they just had enough kills to gain... wow 2 experience each, from 1 to 3. But the rest 79 didn't qualify for lv 2 yet.

    So, when it comes to calculating the average experience, you get (3*21 + 1*79) /100 = 1.42.

    If the program rounds up the experience point, then they still show an "experience 1" despite some of the guys were experience 3 already.

    Hopefully this explaination helps.


  19. #19

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Maltz's hypothesis makes a lot of sense and would indeed explain the discrepancies in the data without inclusion of a random factor. However, to really confirm this, we'll still need to know where the data for kills is stored in the saved file. I agree that it is most probably stored in a kills for each soldier format, so we might be looking for a series of 40 integers for a regular unit.

    I'm no good at hex editing/deciphering saves though and will have to leave that stuff to more talented people. Anyone?

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    Spends his time on TWC Member Simetrical's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    I don't think it'll be a simple kill number. My guess is that it will be just a number, and straight kills will add to it—as will other things, such as merely being in battles. You have to account for units gaining XP without scoring kills.

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    Magister Vitae Senior Member Kraxis's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by Maltz
    == Sometimes experience shrink one level after I hit "start the battle", but get back to original level after the battle is over. I heard this is because the way battle handles exp. is a little different, so the number flips & flops.
    If your general is an expert attacker and is on the defensive, the troops will indeed not be as good in the battle as they might seem on the strategic map) or perhaps the other way around depending on how you move about with your general.

    Otherwise a great post. It basically says what I consider the engines does, averages out the total experience level.
    But I think that some units are worth more experience than others. For instance I would expect a Spartans to be worth more than a Peasant, and an elephant to be worth more than an Eastern Infantryman.
    I remember that one of the devs mentioned that killing (not capturing) a king in MTW was equal to killing about 50 normal enemies. That was pretty accurate as most units that killed a king often rose one level right away. I can't beleive they have changed that.
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    Squirrel Watcher Member Sinner's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    From what I recall of editing savegame files for both STW & MTW, the game did indeed record the number of kills per soldier.

    I also vaguely remember a comment somewhere that in RTW less experience was gained for killing routers, for example, than in close combat. If the combat stats at the end of a battle displayed the number of kills with no distinction between types, but the internal record keeping did differentiate for experience purposes, then that would explain the apparent randomness factor when examining the combat stats compared to experience changes.

    eg. trooper A got 5 kills, of which 3 were in close combat and 2 routers, while trooper B killed 6, all routers. It might appear that B would earn more experience from the kill totals, but if routers were worth only .5 'kill points' each, then A would have 4 kills as far as experience was calculated and B only 3 kills. Extend that to unit level and we have units gaining the same experience level with differing numbers of kills listed in the stats.

    I have a similar nagging recollection that missile kills were also worth less than melee kills. Unfortunately I can't recall on which board I read this, let alone what thread or the reliability of the poster.

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    Magister Vitae Senior Member Kraxis's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Now I'm certain that men are considered as individuals.
    I had three units of Militia Hoplites who after a hard fight had been depleted quite a bit. One of them had 1 XP, the others 0. When I reinforced the 1 XP unit suddenly the one I had taken the men from had 1 XP as well, so I took the last one and reinforced that one. Now the second unit lost its XP but the third gained one... So obviously some men in each unit had leveled up, but not all, and not enough in two of them to get an average of 1 XP.
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    History Teacher Member Lord Hammerschmidt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Assuming that experience is done on a man by man basis, here is a potential way to test how many kills each man needs to gain a level of experience. This would require some modding, which is beyond my current knowledge, but perhaps someone would be interested in trying this.

    What you need is a 1 man archer unit, and some easy to kill fodder. Tell him to shoot at the unit in question, and you can keep a tally of how many men he kills, and watch to see if he has gained experience (as it seems to be added to the unit card in real-time during battles). This should at least allow you to get a rough idea of where the cut-offs are.

    For melee, it's the same concept, except that you would have to mod the target unit to have an attack of 0, so that your poor one man unit wasn't wiped out. Not sure if all of this was possible, but it's a way to answer some of the puzzle.

    EDIT: Just realized that this wouldn't account for the experience that seems to be gained just from being at a battle, but it's still something.
    Last edited by Lord Hammerschmidt; 01-22-2005 at 17:01.
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  25. #25

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Hammerschmidt
    What you need is a 1 man archer unit, and some easy to kill fodder.
    Very interesting idea. However everytime I tried modding the unit number to 1, I got kicked back to desktop immediately. Tried with a 5 men unit and still couldn't play. 10 men is fine though and so is 9 and 6.
    So basically I had to resort to testing with the minimum: a 6-man archer unit.

    The battle is the same one for Julii as detailed above with the same specs. So the Archers here start at XP1.

    A few results:
    Code:
    Kills	XP
    51	3
    30	2
    18	2
    13	2
    Doesn't seem to take many kills to levelup units with fewer men. Killing 13 gives you a level which supports the idea that there is a kill requirement/man to progress to the next level and the unit XP is averaged as a whole.

    Is there any good hex editor that allows comparison of 2 files side by side?
    We could perhaps take a normal game with 40 men units, make a save then make another saved game with only roman archers units at 6 men. Comparing the 2 saved files should then bring us closer to identifying where the XP info is kept.

  26. #26
    History Teacher Member Lord Hammerschmidt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Well, I'm not the hex editor sort of guy, but glad to see the idea helped.


    On a related note, when you retrain a partial strength unit, the unit retains its previous experience. I.E., a unit with two chevrons will still have those two chevrons, even if you retrain it from a single soldier. If we assume that unit experience works as Maltz suggested (average of each man's experience), it would seem to follow that the men being added during retraining would be assigned the unit's average experience value. Right now, I cannot think of a way to test this through in game data gathering, but if we could find where the experience values are stored, this theory should be confirmable.
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    Research Fiend Technical Administrator Tetris Champion, Summer Games Champion, Snakeman Champion, Ms Pacman Champion therother's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Yeah, there certainly seems to be a minimum number of men per unit. AFAICT, a 1-man unit, unlike previous TW games, is not possible.

    If you are thinking of exploring saved games, I'd suggest modding as basic a campaign as you can. The best template I've see is Duke John's modding_campaign_template, which is available here, with instructions for use. Mod in the units you want, and then start it up as a provincial campaign. Hopefully that will make it easier to find any changes. Plus it'll help you set a structured, repeatable set of tests.

    There are various good free hex editors/file comparison tools. For various reasons, I've always liked XVI32, but you should be able to find quite a few scattered around the web. Download.com would be as good a place as any to start.

    PS A warm welcome to the Org, and especially the Ludus Magna forum, Lord Hammerschmidt! I hope you enjoy your time here.
    Last edited by therother; 01-23-2005 at 05:01.
    Nullius addictus iurare in uerba magistri -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus

    History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there -- George Santayana

  28. #28

    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Noticed a post dealing with the same topic and thought I'd link it:
    http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...ID=19572.topic

    The message turnover rate at the official forums is pretty high though so it might no longer be available after a few weeks.
    Not sure if what Dutch (.com moderator) says is official info from the devs or based on his own views/tests but here it is:

    "Experience and kills are both tracked on a per-soldier basis and kept across campaigns, while the experience shown for the unit is the soldier average. This accounts for most of the apparent random-ness - for example when a unit fights a battle more than once different soldiers may do the killing, so that sometimes they level up and affect the unit average, and other times not. It also accounts for any exp changes you may see when merging or partially merging units on the campaign map - there is often a bias towards having more experienced soldiers at the front of a melee unit (first in the unit's soldier list), which can cause some substantial changes in unit exp when they are transferred out.

    The number of kills required to gain exp is not a linear progression, and it is possible for units to gain a global one-kills-worth bonus if it has been involved in a battle where the sides are fairly evenly matched (according to the strength calculation). Also, kills on soldiers which are routing have a much smaller chance of counting as a 'kill' for experience purposes."


    The figures quoted by erk55555 appear to be quite different from mine though... (80-man Hastati unit needs 400? kills to advance to XP1)... perhaps there are other factors involved which we haven't included.

  29. #29
    Spends his time on TWC Member Simetrical's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    A minute's Googling got me Hex Workshop as a free download for comparing hex files. I would take any campaign, save the very start, mod any one 0-XP starting unit in the campaign to have 1 XP, start up and save, and repeat for 2 XP and maybe 3 XP. Then compare all the files and post the results. You should hopefully see one difference between all the files, and we can work from there. The problem is, of course, all sorts of random factors—I can just imagine three hundred provinces' random annual farming quality wrecking the whole thing. But someone should try it and see.

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  30. #30
    History Teacher Member Lord Hammerschmidt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Investigation of Experience Points (chevrons)

    Seems that we were on the right track here. Here's a quote from the official CA Q&A thread at the top of the page.

    What exactly makes a unit gain experience? Killing peasants gives less than killing elite units, but what exactly determines this?

    Actually, a kill is always considered a kill for xp bonusses, except when the unit is routing (in which case it drops to a 20% chance of counting as a kill). Kills and xp are tracked on a per-soldier basis, and what is displayed is the unit average rounded to the nearest integer. There is a non-linear relationship between kills and xp which resembles a Fibonacci series. Then units which have been engaged in combat in a battle which started with a close to even strength balance may be awarded an extra kill per soldier at the end of combat.

    Seems that all that's left unanswered is the actual sequence of numbers of kills that is required to gain a level.
    Let me go back and face the peril!

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