It has nothing to with the type of men you kill, its just a flat kill per men basis.
general flow of experience gains:
It's easiest to gain exp with ranged units as a good infanty / archer commander will obtain most of his kills with with those ranged units while sustaining miminal if not zero losses to the archer unit itself, thereby preserving the gained experience as there are few troops requiring retraining.
second in this list is heavy cavalry. as i mentioned prior, total exp gain is based on kills per men basis so cavalry has 2 things going for it here:
1) They are most often involved in flank charging operations so their decisive impact in battle usually means the rout of units therefore decreasing the chance that they will have to melee and lose men.
2) They also have a speed advantage over infantry which means that they can aquire a ton of exp just from chasing routed units, or use the speed to cut their own losses.
Medium-light cavalry come next on the list. they enjoy the same system of exp as heavy cavalry but often fall sub par to heavy cavalry, specifically when the charge fails to break units and they are forced to skirmish thereby inducing potentially heavy losses. they also can be susceptible to range fire. A good cavalry commander can make the best use of light and some medium cavalry's bonus to speed by preserving those ponies until the enemy army breaks as which point the fast moving speed mounts clean up. Its not uncommon to have fast speed mounts rack up 1000+ kills for a single unit just from routs if you know how to time chain routs.
also as a general rule, cavalry will gain exp faster just on the simple basis that they tend to have less men per unit than infantry.
last on the list comes your infantry -heavy infantry, then phalanxes then other infantry; medium, and light.. usually in that order. the problem here is that these are the units that form your lines, so naturally most of the time they are going to be the units that sustain the highest casualties. casualties mean retraining which means loss of gained exp. higher quality long pike phalanx units can offset that to a good degree as they can keep units off of them by repulsing them with their thrusts, but as with almost all phalanx units, their exp gain comes slower since they tend to be the largest units in the game (240 on huge). Phalanx can excel at exp gains in some situations such as being the sole unit to block up and entire enemy army on a bridge or narrow street (pending enemy composition).
Infantry as a general rule suffer from exp gain due to their speed, which can make them vulnerable to cavalry but most importantly it detracts from their ability to pursue and kill routed units, which is where the potential bulk of exp gain can come from.
If you are wanting to gain exp for melee infantry I recommend two methods but you'll have to baby 1 or 2 units at a time;
1) for open battles, stretch your main infantry line until it is at least as long as your enemies. take the few units you want to level up and place them on either of the wings. now you'll want to have cavalry screen the flanks of those units against other cavalry. once your main line has their main line engaged, start wheeling those units around the rear of the immediate wings of their lines and charge their backside. disengage them and charge again if you have to. if you are charging light or medium infantry against the backside of heavy infantry, you'll want to make sure you kill the enemy general first so you can increase the chance of causing those units to route. what you are aiming to do here is force those units to route so you can pick up the surge of kills when they turn and try and run through your unit. rinse and repeat on down to the center of their line.
2) city trap. place the units you want to level inside of a city that you know the enemy will attack. once the battle commences, allow them to get past the gate without resistance. if you are anticipating them to come with a full stack, and you'll need to make sure you have adequate phalanxes or heavy infantry. Now with those heavy infantry or phalanxes, place them in position to block off the end of a street closest to your town square. you may have to block off more than one street depending on the AI pathing. Once the enemy army is commited, and funneled entirely down one or two streets, start moving the unit(s) you want to level up to the opposite end of that street. Place them in position to collect any routing units. If the bulk of the enemy army is in shaking or wavering condition, and / or their general is dead, then send those units charging into their backside to instantly gain 1-2 chevrons
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Originally Posted by PersianFire
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