Getting Experience

[Blxz]

I have been reading these forums for a while and notice lots of people talking about their army experience levels (chevrons). I am lucky if I can ever get a unit into the silver chevrons and most (90% or more) don't go above 2 bronze chevrons. How do you guys get those amounts? Especially with close combat units who tend to die in....combat.

Any pointers for getting more experience and things to avoid maybe?

[satalexton]

win battles with as little casualties as possible, then replace the casualties asap... hopefully the new guys don't dilute the unit's overall exp.

[HunGeneral]

Well units get exp from killing enemy units (killing routing troopers only gives about 1/4 of the value for killing troopers still fighting). As said before you should avoid loses aswell - reatraining ads raw recruits to your forces who take down the average expereicen of the unit.

In my experience the best units to get exp are horse archers since they sometimes manage to kill an entire unit whitout routing them so they get the max out of every soldier.

For melee units: keep the safe or use Phalanxes (although most of the time they tire and pin down the enemy rather then kill them. I suspect hard dying units like Gaesatae should be able to get some exp in melee, but I'm not sure...

[Zim]

Does anyone know how much xp soldiers "fighting to the death" are worth? I notice they don't fight as well as troops that haven't hit the routing mark... Wasn't sure if they counted as fighting or routing troops for experience.

[Darius]

They're still counted as routed, they just don't have anywhere to rout to.

[Apázlinemjó]

With Romans, it's quite easy to get chevrons against barbarians. Manipular formation and guard mode will help here. After a few battles your Hastatis and Principes will gain silver chevrons.

[Darius]

Oddly enough, auto-resolving battles seems to get you chevrons far faster than you would if you commanded the battle yourself. Don't know why, and it may just be my imagination, but I doubt it.

[Xurr]

Oddly enough, auto-resolving battles seems to get you chevrons far faster than you would if you commanded the battle yourself. Don't know why, and it may just be my imagination, but I doubt it.

This is true, I've seen this behavior quite often. Unfortunately if your faction is not a phalanx faction you will have a difficult time winning auto resolve vs phalanx using factions. The ai places way too much value on a phalanx when you auto resolve.

[Chris1959]

Auto-calc distributes experience to all units in a stack, a battle will give most to those units who kill the most, hence missle units often rack up lots of experiance.
Number of battles fought also counts even if a unit may not get to involved.
An exploit you can use is if you choose to retrain only do one unit at a time, and an even worse one is to use an experienced unit to bring others up to strength and then retrain it

[Fluvius Camillus]

Missile units who evade melee usually get 1 silver chev fast. Other units should kill loads of enemies, while losing as less men as possible.

@Fighting to the death, they die at every hit they get, the damage they deal is the same or little less.

~Fluvius

[Gunzak]

My general fluctuates between 1 and 2 gold chevrons depending upon how crazy I attack with him. I figure with 8 command stars and the warmonger trait I should run down and kill all who dare turn their backs on me. Typically I never get infantry above 2-3 red chevrons because I prefer to retrain them or after taking a city I just leave them there as a garrison. I do have some with good experience in North Africa because I have used the same men to take 4 cities and win several open battles with them. That isn't typical though.

[Cute Wolf]

favourite unit:
9 chevroned Sphendonetai from hell and 9 chevroned Hippakontistai of Death!!!

[Xurr]

favourite unit:
9 chevroned Sphendonetai from hell and 9 chevroned Hippakontistai of Death!!!

I have an 8 chevron pedites extraordinarii. It seriously chews through other elite heavy armor units like butter. I've seen it destroy gold chevon Somatophylakes Strategou and take few casualties while doing so.

[Aemilius Paulus]

My sligners, especially the Rhodian ones, get about one experience every relatively large battle while suffering no casualties. It is quite common for me to win battles with less than 5 casualties due to the slingers and pikes I employ. Unless I am heavily outnumbered and outclassed, I will not suffer more than 30 casualties per battle. I am very careful and cautious in all the wargames I play. Unlike in RL, that actually pays off.

By now, my slingers have two-three silver chevrons and fought only about less than fifteen battles of varying size. My generals all have at least two silver chevrons, but going beyond that is quite difficult.

[Conradus]

My cavalry always manages to get into the silver chevrons fairly quickly. The hammer and anvil tactic and the running down of routers gives them enough xp. The rest of my army is quite lacking that xp however :s

[Celtic_Punk]

same here. I use my general as my main killing force. Most of the rest pin. Once I push an advantage I envelope with infantry and gut any routers with cavalry.

[A Very Super Market]

In my Casse campaign, my slingers reign over the battle with 6 chevrons. None of my melee troops come close, except for one unit of naked spearmen that has been badly mauled since the beginning of my campaign.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

My Casse campaign, I never built any cavalry units for the first 40 years or so and my main army consisted of all silver chevroned Kluddabro, Gaeroas, and the southern gallic swordsmen whatever their name is... A few skirmishers out front makes the enemy infantry charge, losing stamina, my infantry defeat them after a scrum, often after a flanking attack from my skirmishers, and then have better stamina to chase them down. If I return to that campaign, my original army is in northern Italy campaigning against the Romani who love throwing EXP, I mean Illyroi Pantatopoi against me.

[TruePraetorian]

The best way to level up your units IMO is to manually merge them. Drag and drop one unit onto the other and vice-versa to get the best results.

Depending on the casulaties you can get your units surpirsingly good. It is also good to note that when you remove men from a unit the overall average experience of the unit goes up, meaning the less men in the unit the higher chevron. What I do is keep a unit like this so when I do merge it with another unit, both units chevrons go up (provided there is still men left in the unit).

One of these days I am going to try to figure out the formula to experience i.e. how many battles = a chevron, how many kills = a chevron etc.

EDIT: Also, autoresolving a battle increases experince faster.

[antisocialmunky]

6-9 chevron General's BG is pretty friggin epic and easy. Its especially great on the FM since he regens them like crazy so you get a 100 strong cavalry unit that plows through anything :-p.

[mountaingoat]

you guys keep saying silver chevrons , in EB i only see standard then gold ?

[Reality=Chaos]

you guys keep saying silver chevrons , in EB i only see standard then gold ?

First three "bronze" (more like orange ones) then three silver ones and then the three Gold ones.... That's how it progresses in my EB

[Alsatia]

First three "bronze" (more like orange ones) then three silver ones and then the three Gold ones.... That's how it progresses in my EB

Isn't it like that in any mod (and vanilla) in RTW?

[Valion]

I do love the gold chevrons., in my current Romani Campaign my double golden chevron triarii's are like brick walls with pointy sticks that can't be broken xD

[mountaingoat]

First three "bronze" (more like orange ones) then three silver ones and then the three Gold ones.... That's how it progresses in my EB

eh .. yes i know this is how RTW works .. i'm just saying that when i play EB it goes from bronze to gold.



edit: ok after looking very closely at the units(and comparing) i can see that some of them are silver , my monitor is brighter on the bottom half and it makes the silver chevrons look a pale white / golden colour...

hah well there you go.

[Alsatia]

Indeed, Although none of my camillians get silner chevrons.