How to XP up units?

I'm a long time Total War veteran, and given a coupla weeks i can whoop the hell out of the AI, but man, on VH battle difficulty i feel like i'm fighting Spartans straight out of 300, even lowly firelock citizens are taking it to my grenadiers. Every victory is phyrric with horrific losses on my side. Hell ideally to play VH/VH campaign i'm vastly better off just autoresolveing every battle cuz its sad, but the AI does better than me in teh loss department when it was ALWAYS the opposite in earlier titles. Spam troops like crazy with my crazy economy and auto resolve to victory :shame:

Cant outshoot them (plain jane militia outshooting my fire by rank line infantry), melee they just straight up own me (i can outnumber their light cav with my heavies and hitting them from all sides but they still inflict equivalent casualties), and their cav just ROLLS right over my troops even when i'm in square proceeding to sabre down everyone in sight (my cav even when charging them from behind stalls after impact and start dropping like flies in the melee). So if anyone has any fool proof tips to consistently win on VH battles plz feel free to educate me. And yes, i tried using mass artillery tactics, but the comp just straight up charges and weathers the canister shots without batting an eye. Hell and even with a single arty unit they tag my ass with higher frequency even when i have 4 or 6 units shooting back. :help:

So in interests of having fun, rather than using every single gamey tactic i know to win, i just play on hard where i can fight them using standard tactics. Sure they're still juiced up pretty good, but at least i can beat em without gruesome casualties.

Now comes my topic question. How does one XP up their units in a reasonable manner? Without the retrain bug, raw recruit replacements will destroy whatever collected experience you have in a unit, so now i never replenish except by merging battered same xp units. Also i notice the AI has the tendency to gun after my "elites" or higher xp units, so while i savage them with my newbs, my veterans get torn to shreds destroying whatever hope i have in fielding a battle hardened army. I roleplay since blitz games are boring, i like fighting big battles, however these big fights tend to kill alot of the guys i'm trying to xp up. Small fights are good where i can overwhelm a coupla units with little loss, but the AI is acting too chicken to raid my territories anymore.

I hear folks having 5 xp units and frankly i'm jealous as hell. Highest i've ever gotten so far is 3 xp, and in EVERY battle the AI starts gunning after em even to the detriment of winning the battle forcing me to howl in anger even as i win while losing half of those precious high xp soldiers. They raelly need to patch it where it isn't too hard to get 1-2 xp and after that making it a helluva lot harder. I mean whats teh point of having 9 xp levels if its damn near impossible to get to 6 xp without anal retentive gameplay.

Geeze i miss being able to recruit 7 chevron Knight Hospitallers :beam:

Well, you make sure they take losses, but acceptable losses. 20-50 men should be good to at least not lose some experience.

Also, the AI gets stat bonuses on VH, and maybe on H.

I don't think there are any stat bonuses on hard, but i know for sure they get them on very hard. I know on VH a unit of light infantry will decimate a unit of militia, but playing on H i just used a unit of militia and defeated a unit of light infantry with around 30% casualties, which is fair, because all 80 men in a light infantry unit fire at once, whereas only the first rank of my militia fire and then have to reload.

One thing the AI do get on hard is accuracy bonuses to artillery though, this i am positive on.

Also does anyone know how a unit places it individual soldiers? Like do the most experienced go in the frotn rank and teh newbs in teh backrow? Cuz if the vets are in the front that means they're the ones to die when a unit gets into a firefight. Also if you replenish while losing only 20-50 men per unit they wont lose xp? I mean raw recruits will bring down xp quite a bit otherwise.

The AI definitely gets bonus on H in battle. A militia can still shoot up a line inf unit with fire by rank, sure militia willl lose, by for all practical purposes getting into a firefight is still gonna cause some hurt.

I'm guessing the mechanic that attributes xp is still based on a kills per casualty ratio for each unit?

In that case, the best way to XP line inf (for example) is to kill as many enemies without losing men. This is hard to do 1 on 1 unless you are using (buggy) "garden wall" cover or better: the defense "trenches".

It's clearly not as easy to xp up units in ETW as it was in MTW2. To my mind for 2 reasons:

1. The lack of campaign/battle map strategy (i.e. no river crossing or mountain side defenses to exploit) and the debatable uselessness of forts. I've found it very hard to put my troops in a very advantageous situation, from which they can maximise enemy casualties whilst remaining more or less unhurt.

2. There's also the uniformity of troops in ETW -gone are the days of faction specific tactics i.e high xp genoese militia decimating the enemy from behind a protective screen of spear militia. ETW just doesn't seem to have as many advantageous troops (units with an edge over the enemy's) -or even opportunities to exploit them!

In my games, this means the success of an even battle (numbers wise) hangs on how adaptable my troops are in deployment on the (apparently random) battle map and tactics.

As for battle situations, i had some success defending a bridge in a repeatable manner, while play the ottomans. There is this bridge south of Bagdhad i was defending with 2 Kurdish Skirmisher units and a Camel unit (the one with 90 range). And was attacked by 3 units of Persian troops (desert warriors i believe, and a melée camel unit).

The bridge was there and the troops were in the expected places, so it all went as in other TW bridge battles, only this one was a shoot out, not a melée (sp?) blood fest. The AI behaved properly bad too, sending one unit at a time and standing in the middle of the bridge shooting... (if only i had grenadiers there....)

On the other hand i remember defending a river crossing, somewhere in Europe, not at a road bridge but at one of those "land bridges" and when the battle started i was on top of a hill with no river in sight...

In grossly uneven fights (in your favour) auto-calc is your friend. Unlike in previous titles, the auto-calc result will in all likelihood be better then what you will manage. More kills for significantly fewer casualties. And for some reason the XP given seems much better too.
So auto-calc to save yourself the boring one sided fights and get bonus XP to boot!


As for tactical advice: If attacking, have your most treasured units on the flanks. They'll flank and fight already engaged opponents and should get kills at little cost while your fresh recruits take most of the heat by fixing the enemy in place by frontal attack.
On the defence it's the opposite, especially when outnumbered. Your recruits will be left on the vulnerable flanks while your treasured units should be given the centre position. With better then average XP they should do well enough in a stand up fight. Add to that having the advantage of shooting first on any approaching enemy and they'll more then likely give out more then they receive, thus giving you yummy XP.

Yea, i've noticed that auto calc does tend to be generous with the xp (at least it seems that way). My fleets tend to xp up pretty high using solely autocalc (i have a few 4 xp brigs!), cuz i'm just absolutely putrid at naval battles. However alot of times during land battles i find my treasured vet units taking more losses than they should in the lopsided battles in my favor auto calc so i tend not to use it.

Elmar i generally use the tactics you just said, but alot of times the computer will just start pivoting to shoot my veteran flankers even while my newbs were engaging them from the front. Its annyoing as hell since it defeats the whole purpose of me wanting my vets to not get hurt and get some free kills.

Also i've noticed a coupla things that are pretty significant bugs. While my trooops take cover behind a wall, i've noticed a bunch of times that they wont fire at an enemy even with fire at will on. Half are crouched and another half is just standing there and they're eating fire without responding. Another massive bug is that when the AI brings in reinforcements that have fixed artillery in them they wont spawn on the battlemap (since they cant move i guess). However since i cant kill them and despite not being on the map at all i cant win the battle since i didnt "defeat" everyone. Dude this a massive bug, i mean in M2:TW fixed arty wont spawn and wont count for victory conditions, i've lost a bunch of early battles this way. The only workaround to this is to retreat everyone and lose the battle but at least killing everyone that i could get my hands on. However i've noticed that whenever my arty glitches and refuses to limber and i cant withdraw them and i quit the battle the casualty resolution screen acts as if i didnt withdraw ANYONE (even though i did withdraw 95% of my army) and kills the majority of my army when techinically they werent even on the field except teh for the glitched arty.

These are some pretty damning bugs that are pissing me off to no end right now. They better patch stuff like this up soon otherwise i might just pass on the expansion.

A quick question how come when the AI cav charges over a wall to engage my crouched infantry they cream my boys, but whenever i charge over a wall i slow down get stuck and my heavies get bayoneted down like pansies.

I just hate having massive armies, i like to use the same army group and fight a massive number of battles building up high battle xp forming an elite army. The battles in this game are just too sparse and bloody to allow it though :embarassed:

I found that, ironically, the more advanced my troops get, the more meleeing they do. My platoon firing guard units take considerable casualties against even AI militia in a shootout, yet with the Black Watch I routed 6 French line infantry units, all meleeing at the same time, in a epic fort siege. You'd still take a good number of casualties, but I think in melee the AI's stat bonus advantages are not as potent as they are shooting, so it might be best just to charge in after a volley or 2 if you're facing militia type units, it might help in keeping the xp you already gained. Otherwise autocalc till you're 5 chevrons :laugh4:

As for naval battles, I guess I'm one of the few that does better at sea than on land. After I lost 1 3rd rate in a autocalc battle with 18 frigates and brigs (rated as a "decisive victory"), I never autocalc again for naval battle. The last ship I lost in a battle I played myself was 2 sloops, against that insane pirate stack in the caribbean, way back in 1701 or 1702. Now it is the 1750's and even with not being able to use 2 stacks of ships of the line due to CTD, all my admirals are turning alcoholic because there are no more enemy fleets left to fight :smash:

Would be nice if i could fight worth a damn in a naval battle. I usually end up losing 3rd raters to fluyts somehow and lord help me if a galley is nearby, talk about one shot central on my expensive fleet ships. I only wish the damn pirates would hit the AI fleets half as much as mine.

So on H and VH, dont bother firing my muskets and just bayonet charge to reduce casualties? Geeze, if thats the case why the hell did i bother to buy this game, i would be having more fun with my late era pike and shot armies in M2:TW if i'm forced to do that in ETW.

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Originally Posted by Warhammer3025

So on H and VH, dont bother firing my muskets and just bayonet charge to reduce casualties? Geeze, if thats the case why the hell did i bother to buy this game, i would be having more fun with my late era pike and shot armies in M2:TW if i'm forced to do that in ETW.

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Yea that blows. Definitely need to increase damage by musketry, and also make a bigger difference between a ragged volley and a well-timed volley. Militia volleys should be ragged and not cause as many casualties as they do. line infantry does have everyone firing at the same time, this needs to cause more damage.

Way things are now, there is no way for infantry in line formation to stop a column marching at it and then charging from short distance. Your guard types are pretty much melee infantry that happens to have a limited ranged attack; some battles its almost like i'm playing the Roman civil war in RTW all over again :smash:

I think I'm gonna just go ahead and play on medium, where there is no stat bonuses. As long as the AI is the same, I really don't see the point of playing the AI with stat bonuses anymore. I can still win on hard, but having to treat the AI militia as elite light/line infantry against my guard units and line infantry, that is depressing the hell out of me :wall:

On the other hand, the AI needs as much help as it can get on campaign mode, so that stays at VH :yes:

I wouldn't blame anyone at using the 'volley' and charge strategy especially if your melee tech is better.

I think muskets need to do LESS damage. It's crazy seeing so many guys drop per volley that forcing a melee is the best way to minimize damage.

Its so hard to xp units without using exploits (unlimited town citizen spawn) that it kills a large part of the game for me :embarassed:

Would somebody tell me what XP even does?

I noticed today that i have a unit of line infantry with 2 chevrons of XP, and they have exactly the same stats as one with no chevrons at all. Not even better morale...

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Would somebody tell me what XP even does?

I noticed today that i have a unit of line infantry with 2 chevrons of XP, and they have exactly the same stats as one with no chevrons at all. Not even better morale...

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At full XP (it goes up to 9) units are much, much tougher than the standard version. As far as I have been able to tell every experience chevron gives stat boosts to accuracy and reloading and morale, and possibly to melee and defense as well. Maybe the fact there is no difference is a bug? I'm sure my units all got better with more chevrons.

Do some tests on a custom battle to really see the full effect of the experience bonus.

Also experienced units seems to fire a more well-timed volley, and they also perform certain firing drills more professionally than raw recruits.

As far as navy chevrons go i did not see any diffrence between my 2 second rates one with 6 chevrons and one with 1, they had identical stats.

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Originally Posted by Warhammer3025

I think muskets need to do LESS damage. It's crazy seeing so many guys drop per volley that forcing a melee is the best way to minimize damage.

Its so hard to xp units without using exploits (unlimited town citizen spawn) that it kills a large part of the game for me :embarassed:

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I meant there should be a bigger difference in accuracy and damage between militia volleys and line infantry volleys, because militia were causing too many casualties to my line infantry. I am all for line infantry outgunning militia lol. I was going to drop the difficulty down to medium to see if it helps, which i haven't done yet :yes:

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

I wouldn't blame anyone at using the 'volley' and charge strategy especially if your melee tech is better.

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That indeed is what you are supposed to do, if you follow the French doctrine towards the end of the era. Column up slightly, find a weak point and charge!

Warning - may be even better to use a mixed line...have your recruits take the hits in a line fending off a flanking whilst your finest melee units ploughs in. Usually try and aim them at the "join" between 2 eney units, with enough momentum you can split the line and push outwards.

I'm still having a helluva hard time exping my troops. I seem to be able to get to 2 chevrons without too much hassle but the hump to get to 3 is just maddening. I'm carefully husbanding my high xp troops and letting my green recruits do the majority of the dying for the most part using melee tactics stated above (units tend to suffer less damage in melee oddly enough). For the most part the AI fights me smart, rarely doing the retarded lone cavalry unit suicide charge and their infantry advance in formation hold their ground to trade volleys with me not mill about and get shot in the flanks as people usually complain about. I'm playing on VH/H, since on VH battles it just gets ridiculous how hard the AI is to kill and their hitting power. Despite 90 turns of hard fighting the best i can do is 2 chevrons for my line inf, lancers, and cuirassiers... and now with the newly built Arc De Triumph i can now train 2 chevron inf... *sighs*

I'm starting to wonder whether its the unit sizes that might be why folks are able to xp up faster. I'm using normal unit sizes so that my comp wont lag too much (especially for the full stack on full stack battles), but if i have huge units that means waaay more potential kills and xp, but i'm sure my losses will also go up accordingly to negate the xp gain via replenishment. Are the faster xp gainers using huge unit sizes then? I prefer huge units and played that way in M2:TW and xped up pretty quickly, so that may be the case. Also does the AI fight differently with larger unit sizes or something?

Nothing ticks me off more than having a 30 man cav unit with 150 kill and not gain xp (at 2 chevrons) :inquisitive:

I do most of my battles with autocalc (the battles usually take too much time, I have a finite time to play!), and have several 3 chevron line infantry which got there after 4-5 major battles. Autocalc does seem to give more XP to units than manual battle.

I'm still puzzled about this reinforcement bug that you are talking about though. I replenish my units, and they keep their chevrons just fine. Heck, they better do that, replenishing a 3 chevron unit is 2x or 3x more expensive than replenishing a similarly depleted no-chevron unit!

Try Darth's mod (once he gets it working again with the new patch)...

It is designed to be played on N/N (M/M) as he is looking to get the best out of the AI without it cheating.

He has made some excellent tweaks so far, tweaks that even appear to make the AI make better decisions on occasion.

In my first battle using his Mod I attacked a Native American settlement. The kept their main force back in the trees (with their general) while probing with some units on the flanks. I dealt with the flank attacks and thought that the AI General was now all by himself behind a hill. Some while walking the infantry up and massed my cavalry (2 Provincial and 3 Generals) and charged the AI's general. Well I didn;t see all the native units hiding around the general location until I was on top of them. I was lucky not to loose a General, there body guards where decimated and I lost a whole Provincial cavalry unit. As the I charge my remaining cavalry behind my rapiding reforming infantry line the mass of Native troops charged into melee with my infantry line.

I out numbered the enemy and was always going to win, but I took higher casualties than expected and actually had an "OMG, it's all going wrong" moment during battle (which was a nice surprize)...

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=240571

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Originally Posted by Bob the Insane

Some while walking the infantry up and massed my cavalry (2 Provincial and 3 Generals) and charged the AI's general. Well I didn;t see all the native units hiding around the general location until I was on top of them. I was lucky not to loose a General, there body guards where decimated and I lost a whole Provincial cavalry unit. As the I charge my remaining cavalry behind my rapiding reforming infantry line the mass of Native troops charged into melee with my infantry line.

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Why were you charging your cavalry before engaging the enemy with your infantry? Where were your skirmishers, with their tactical recon of the enemy's position?

You deserved to have your head handed to you! :laugh4:

using huge units seem to make the xp flow faster since there aer more folks to kill despite having to spread the xp out to more men. Ugh, pisses me off they still havent fixed phantom casualties yet, i wonder when they'll get around to it, losing 3 chevron troops that way really really bites.

i think some of us are expecting our vetrans to behave like previous TW games were high exp meant thay had high defense values and consequently took very little casualties against green opponents. but in this edition they wear very little armour and you cant dodge a bullet no matter how much exp u have. so in a shoot out even against militia they wiill only suffer less casualties because they will be inflicting casulaties faster than before (with better accuracy). the only area where you will seea big difference is in melee.

one strategy that i try to use to get kills with less casualties is shooting them while they are moving. i'm sure everyones noticed that units cannot shoot while they are moving. of course only good skimishers can do this line infantry is there basically to slug it out unitl onge group routs thats what the warfare was like in this time and i think it was one of the main agumenats in the past of making a TW game in this time period.

This is sort of an exploit of the AI but that's how i got 3 prussian Line Infantry Units with 4 chevrons, and one with 5, (well, one chevron and a star). Just used a couple of them on a fort to hold the Coureland (sp?) border. The AI will send several small stacks, some single units even, across your border and you just intercept and defend the fort. Your units will grow fast enough in experience that way.

I did this while handling Poland and Austria, and finally picked those units and had them join the main army and serve as it's hardened core.

As mentioned, shoot outs will deplete your veteran units almost as much and you green ones, so either use them in the flanks, or charge them ASAP into melee. They wont disappoint.

Yea, its rather funny how your units suffer ALOT less casualties in melee rather than a shootout. I'm so desperate to get the feel for the age of muskets that i'm about to use the darthmod, cuz i'm basically playing M2:Lite with all the bullrushing.

I swear i think the AI fights smarter with smaller units, cuz on huge, i'm racking up kill ratios that i couldnt on beforee. Right now they're milling about in place, not forming up for a proper infantry charge, constantly facing change letting me get free shots, etc etc. Also it feels that huge size units ROUT faster than normal size units, most of the time a normal size unit fights to the death (on H), but on huge they're routing pretty (sometimes only losing 25%) early netting me ALOT of easy kills for free xp. I'm using the EXACT same tactics so it has to be the AI sucking.

Think crpcarrot and others nailed it. In past TWs the higher exp units were tougher to kill so you were able to keep advancing their exp. It was all simply a matter of fighting in enough battles. But in ETW, with no defensive value in shootouts, you get to a point were your tactics set the max exp your troops are going to get. Basically the number of enemy killed equals the amount of exp lost by your guys who died. You can improve it by meleeing more as that still uses a defensive value, but over time everyone will come to a point where they just can't seem to get more exp. That point is their tactics level. Unfortunately for me it seems to be 3 chevrons on Hard. =(

I have started to use the cavalry trick to draw off part of the enemy armies but feel kinda cheesy doing it. I'm also trying different army configurations in both makeup and deployment. Of course always trying to find a better defense/attack strategy. Hopefully I'll find something.

Alright folks, after some more play i found the best way to xp my units with a little effort. Dont blitz and let a nearby 1 city minor spam units to his hearts content. Then when the little blighter declares war on you and sends small raiding stacks, eat them alive and xp to your hearts content. This only works on ultra size units since it gives you the best bang per fight. Ideally let em camp out behind some cover, march the troops you want to xp behind him (DO NOT use arty to pound them or else they'll shift) and keep a sacrificial unit to their front to keep them pinned (i prefer militia since i dont give a rats ass if they die) and let them be shot at too if you want ot be sure the AI wont shoot the xping units.

Using this cheesy strategy as France on Bavaria i was able to build up 4 line infantry units to 4 chevrons, 3 Cheveux Legers to 3 chevrons, and a Cour de Blois to 4. Sadly the AI is starting to become more clever and will prioritize shooting my elite troopers instead of green line or my throwaway militia (they WILL pivot their line to go after my elites even whiling eating raking fire from my lesser units). Sometimes i'm forced to charge my suicide militia and go Longshanks Braveheart style shooting at the melee mass with my militia stuck in the middle (use up the Irish! heh).

I coulda blitzed Bavaria early and take the place (i usually do) but i realized that Austria sometimes gets sidetracked by wars in the east so i dont get as many gimme fights as i would if i let the Bavarians spam line inf.

Pity the Genoans werent so agreeable with my strategy. Once they're done spamming their capital full they dont build extras for me to pick off. I guess they're ieither spamming Corsica, or they're building up a fleet.

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Originally Posted by Warhammer3025

Using this cheesy strategy as France on Bavaria i was able to build up 4 line infantry units to 4 chevrons, 3 Cheveux Legers to 3 chevrons, and a Cour de Blois to 4. Sadly the AI is starting to become more clever and will prioritize shooting my elite troopers instead of green line or my throwaway militia (they WILL pivot their line to go after my elites even whiling eating raking fire from my lesser units). Sometimes i'm forced to charge my suicide militia and go Longshanks Braveheart style shooting at the melee mass with my militia stuck in the middle (use up the Irish! heh).

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AI going for your elite guys is probably the best thing that can happen, because then you'll know where to make a kill zone that the AI is always going to walk into :2thumbsup:

In my older stacks I have most units with 3 chevrons and 3-4 with 4 chevrons.
I don't do anything specific to xp my units, if I have numerical inferiority, i make them shoot against 3-4 enemy units and then kill the enemy with explosive shells, and a charge from flanks.

where I have superiority I do the volley - charge trick.

and most of the dying is done by my militia, least - light infantry. I place militia in front to begin the shootout, line infantry and cannons behind them to form a battle line and light infantry on elevated slopes so hey shoot from behind at the same guys my line is shooting at.
oh yes, and i do use cavalry as primarily a "router" force, i.e. only after the enemy ranks are somewhat thinned.

all of the above on H (VH is crap; e.g. 10 regiment horses kill 160 people line infantry... don't lose one bugger.... crap)

playing anything above medium gives the A.I. enormous stat bonuses, to the point where a unit of line infantry won't be able to beat an enemy dismounted dragoons.

my advice is ot play with medium for battle dificulty, and campaign VH. that way you have all the same challenges, but battles make some sense.

as for upping xp, heres how i did it with marathas:

i my army was attacked by an anemy army, so i fought. i won, and the enemy was destroyed so i now only had to capture the militia-only guarded city. i for some reason only sent 3 units to fight. these 3 units were bargir musketeers that bore the brunt of the last battle, and now had a chevron each. the enemy sallied forth and attacked them, and i surprisingly own the battle. because the number of militia defending any city is for some strange reason 880 every time, and i had only around 3-400 men, they immediately went straight up to 3 chevrons each. basically, just take enough men that it adds up to about 500, and besiege a city. when the militia sally forth defeat them and you should have a bunch of xp. if you want you can make the city revolt and rinse and repeat until you are as high as you want. note though that you will probably have to merge units and revolve some units in and out of the combat zone to keep the XP.