Experience?

**Knight of Ne** · 07-29-2009, 14:39

Ive been playing M2TW for a small while now but one thing has always puzzled me. How does experience work and what does it do? I often have highly experienced forces but they seem to be no different to unexperienced forces. What does it do?

Thanks,
Ne

**Flavius Merobaudes** · 07-29-2009, 14:54

In MTW2, experience is much less effective than it was in RTW.

Stat-wise, it only affects the units melee attack, +1 for one bronze, +2 for one silver and +3 for one gold chevron.
Be aware that with missile troops, it is also only their melee attack, that gets the bonus.

There seems to be increased accuracy of missiles and morale boni with more experience, but I'm not too sure about that.

Defence is not affected by experience...

Edit: Welcome to the Org. Grab a drink and make yourself comfortable...

**Knight of Ne** · 07-29-2009, 15:05

Thanks, its a bit of a shame that the experience isn't as good as romes but it does seem a bit better balanced.

Thanks

Ne

**Petor** · 07-30-2009, 12:53

Flavius, I also have the impression that missile troops get more accurate with more experience.

(Well actually, a culverin might not be considered a missile unit; I've a culverin with two gold chevrons in an america campaign which strongly seemed to shoot more accurate when its experience increased.)

**Flavius Merobaudes** · 07-30-2009, 14:28

Currently playing as New Spain in the Americas campaign as well. I'm on turn 8 and have taken 5 settlements with the army of Cortez alone. This culverin has one gold chevron at the moment and is quite accurate.

Seeing half the enemy army being shot to pieces in the plaza, it is totally unfair. But well, it adds to the "conquistador feeling".

**Petor** · 07-30-2009, 14:45

lol Flavius. My culverin seems to have eliminated half of the Mayas forces as well. Playing Spain is too easy. I wanted to take it slowly, but the Mayas attacked me. In a few turns their faction was destroyed and the empire fell apart. The culverin takes out the enemy inside the city and the mounted conquistadores easily run over them outside. The Aztecs have difficulty enough dealing with their native neighbours so the campaign is now pretty much.

Sieges are dull but blowing up half of the army inside time after time is kind of relaxing :)

**Petor** · 07-30-2009, 14:49

...is now pretty much OVER. I meant.

Can't one edit postings?

**Ibn-Khaldun** · 07-30-2009, 18:08

Junior Members can't edit their posts. Once you become full member you can edit them. If you want to become a full member then you can always go to Entrance Hall and introduce yourself. There is a higher chance that some moderator will see you there and you'll be full member very soon.

**Aemilius Paulus** · 07-30-2009, 20:14

Originally Posted by Petor

Flavius, I also have the impression that missile troops get more accurate with more experience.

I know for sure, in RTW the experience increases the accuracy...

**econ21** · 07-31-2009, 10:51

Originally Posted by Knight of Ne

How does experience work and what does it do? I often have highly experienced forces but they seem to be no different to unexperienced forces. What does it do?

The following is what I wrote in the stickied FAQ in this forum. It contradicts what Flavius said about defence and the bit about experience 1 looks odd, but it's the best answer I have at the moment:

Originally Posted by FAQ

A: From inspecting the unit cards in my VH/VH campaign:

experience 1: no effect
experience 2-3: +1 attack, +1 defence
experience 4-6: +2 attack, +2 defence
experience 7+: +3 attack, +3 defence

There may be morale effects, but these are not visible. Experience effects seem somewhat smaller than those in earlier TW games.

Curiously, after a crusade, all my units were rewarded with going from zero to one experience and this single point did raise their attack and defence.

Unlike RTW, missile attack is not raised by experience, but experienced archers do get more kills. Tests by CaptainSolo reveal that three gold chevrons of experience roughly doubles the kills from longbowmen and Genovese crossbows against Scottish noble pikemen.

I think +3 attack roughly corresponds to a 30% increased kill probability (and +3 defence is a 30% reduced probability to be killed), so triple gold chevron units will have a noticeable edge over newbies but will not be supermen.

**Flavius Merobaudes** · 07-31-2009, 14:58

Sorry Econ, but I don't think that what you wrote is correct. Where did you get these data from? It says it's from inspecting the unit cards. But my unit cards tell me exactly what I wrote above.

That means: melee attack is increased with each new colour, no effects on defence whatsoever. It also means, that the last two gold chevrons are almost useless (apart from possible effects on moral).
At least that's what I get from unit cards in my campaigns.

Could it be, that it depends on one's patches? I've got gold edition + kingdoms patch.

**Rahwana** · 08-01-2009, 18:12

Vanilla M2TW got +1 attack and +1 def skill

Kingdoms only got +1 attack

**Old Geezer** · 10-26-2009, 19:37

In Kingdoms, Retrofit, and LTC I see the same effects that
Flavius mentions.

Petor is right about the Culverins' accuracy. The stats show them to have the highest base accuracy for cannons and chevrons definitely increase the accuracy of missile units. (I ran a series of hundreds of battles to verify this and reported on it a couple of years ago.) This is why the Mongols are so effective. I purposefully start immediately to train units to face the Mongols by sending some off to lose badly to rebels and then merge them with units with the highest number of chevrons possible. Border Horse with 9 chevrons are able to catch and hurt some Mongol archers.