Unit Experience

[MonkeyMan]

I've noticed a few things about unit experince I just wanted to know if other people had notices similar and if they are features, bugs or otherwise.

1. Sometimes in battles all my units on their unit pictures have 1 less unit experience. This seems to sometimes correct itself mid battle and is always resolved back on the capaign map.

2. My units seems to hardly ever gain experience when i command a battle, except for my generals unit and units of cavelry that killed 300+ people. However if i autoresolve battles (which i am now doing regularly) a lot more units gain experience including units that register 0 kills. I'm playing on normal normal at the moment. The thing is i like the autoresolve way of doing things not just because i get hardened vets with less effort but because I genuinuely think that a unit should gain some experience just from being present at a battle regardless of how much fighting they did. Also I don't see why chasing down a fleeing man with a horse should count for anywhere near as much as facing a man head on on foot. Was it really the case in the ancient world where warfare was dominated by footroops that the only hardened vets were cavelry units. Basically I just want the experince gained from player controlled battles to be upped and have better factored into the experience calcualtion how hard a kill was, i.e. was it a peasant or a spatan hoplite and was the man running unarmed for his life or heavily armed and intent on killing you himself.

3. Merging units and retraining units. I'm unsure if this is still done in the same way as MTW i.e. each man had a experience level (and weapons/armour/morale) and this was kept if the unit merged with another and when new members were added in a retrain. I'm unsure if this still works the same, i've noticed that adding members from a 'green' unit with no weapon or armour improvements to a badly damaged but well armed and experinced one doesn't seem to downgrade the damaged units stats by the amount i'd expect. Also retraining a damaged seemingly has the same effect. I wonder if this is me just misreading the situation.

Anyway, similar experinces and comments are welcome.

[Arakasi]

1) Haven't noticed it.

2) I haven't noticed an experience bonus for chasing routers. However often my cav charge people in the back, so that gets them a bunch of kills. I have had infantry and archers get bonuses though. Usually I get between 0-2 bonuses from each decent sized battle.

3) I've definately noticed a downgrade. I've had a unit of 43 out of 54 cav with one chevron and filled it up from another and lost it.

[MonkeyMan]

3) I've definately noticed a downgrade. I've had a unit of 43 out of 54 cav with one chevron and filled it up from another and lost it.

yes i have noticed that too, although it could be as if it works in reverse if you are not careful, i.e. merge an experienced unit into a 'green' one and lose experience, do it the other way around and gain it?

[frogbeastegg]

I don't think experience is lost; I think it works in the same way as MTW, i.e. experience is tracked on a per man basis and the result shown on the unit card is only an average for that entire unit. Without logfiles it is hard to tell if this feature is in RTW. MTW and STW had individual experience tracking; I don't see why it would be taken out of RTW.

[econ21]

Remember that in Total War upgraded weapons and armour are not tracked at the individual level. Suppose you drag a unit A onto a unit B to merge them into a unit C. The weapon and armour of the merged unit C will be the same as that of unit B, not A. Hence always drag non-upgraded units onto upgraded ones (rather than vice versa) where possible.

Dragging an upgraded unit onto an non-upgraded one will make your men lose their upgrades.

PS: This is less important in RTW given that you can now queue up and upgrade multiple units in a turn. A nice new feature!

[MadKow]

I concur that merging units dilutes the experience as in previous TW. The major diference now seems to be in retraining, where that dilution doesnt appear (or appear as evident).

[Paul Peru]

1. I saw this once.

2. Absolutely! When I do the fighting by hand, usually 0, 1 or 2 units gain experience. In my Julii campaign, Gauls and Iberians constantly besiege Narbo Martius, which I had to garrison with town watch due to supply lines etc.
I couldn't be buggered to sally with such a bland army once or twice a year, so I started auto-resolving. This led to evenly distributed losses among the units, and massive gains in experience. Now all my units have several of the white

[Paul Peru]

Hmm... My edit didn't work. I'll try upping my post count instead.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the

[Paul Peru]

Yup, that's it.
Will I get the same effect if I use >>>>>>>>?

[Paul Peru]

All righty, then!
Sorry for spamming.
I tried to denote the experience level of my units, and didn't think of the havoc starting som many html-tags in a row would wreak. ;-)

Anyway... where was I? Ah! Narbo Martius!
Played some more yesterday, and noticed

1. again. pre-battle I had 3 units of TW, each with one gold >. During the battle, 2 of them went down to 4 silver >. After the battle, all were back up to 1 gold.

2. Once more, experience was gained from auto resolving, not from the battles I commanded myself.

3. (Which went missing from my original post) In my experience merging works like in MTW, while retraining seems to recruit new blokes with the same experience as the battle-hardened veterans you have left.

Since I found out how to exploit the powerful combination of auto-resolving and retraining, my fleet has been fighting a lot of unnecessary battles against feeble enemies ;-)

[andrewt]

Retraining doesn't seem to reduce the number of chevrons in a unit. It gets more expensive, however.

[MonkeyMan]

Retraining doesn't seem to reduce the number of chevrons in a unit. It gets more expensive, however.

I'm thinking this particular part is a feature rather than something wrong or unintentional, i kind of like the idea that your battle hardened vets would perhaps do the unit training themselves and pass on what they have learned to newer recruits (at a price of course).

1. again. pre-battle I had 3 units of TW, each with one gold >. During the battle, 2 of them went down to 4 silver >. After the battle, all were back up to 1 gold.

Has anyone else noticed this yet? You do have to pay close attention to unit experience to notice it.

[Magraev]

You're actually pointing out a possible bug.

When you autoresolve the units get more experience! This is rather unfair and tends to favor the ai since most of it's battles will be autoresolved.

I've noticed that autoresolves seem to generate more experience too. Has anybody else??

[Paul Peru]

I'm thinking this particular part is a feature rather than something wrong or unintentional, i kind of like the idea that your battle hardened vets would perhaps do the unit training themselves and pass on what they have learned to newer recruits (at a price of course).

I agree. It's not a bad thing to be able to get very experienced units in this way. In MTW retraining is mostly to get equipment upgrades, imo., as the valour gets spread pretty thin when you retrain the 20 guys who survived holding a bridge against overwhelming enemy numbers. (I play disadvantaged eastern factions a lot.)

The advantage of auto-resolving is probably a bug. Anyway it should be fixed.


PS
My inferior vocab has contributed to this thread being polluted. Hereafter I know to use the word "exxon". Sorry - "chevron".

[Spuddicus]

I'm thinking this particular part is a feature rather than something wrong or unintentional, i kind of like the idea that your battle hardened vets would perhaps do the unit training themselves and pass on what they have learned to newer recruits (at a price of course).
.

I look at this as a definite improvement over MTW.
I used to end up with many weakened units with high valor; afraid to retrain and didn't want to disband either (those high valor units, especially chivalric knights, frequently turned the tide of battle).
I find this aspect in RTW to be much easier to manage.

[Ulstan]

All right, it's definitely far too hard to earn experience in non auto resolve battles.

I fight one battle. I am outnumbered badly. I utterly crush the opponents forces, slaying all but 4 men.

Not a single unit of mine gains experience. Not the hastati that lost 4 men and killed hundreds, not the hastati that lost 80% of their strength and killed hundreds.

I reload.

I auto resolve the same battle.

It's a 'CLEAR DEFEAT'.

Oh but wait! THREE QUARTERS of my army gained an experience level.

[Blodrast]

i agree. at some point one of my armies was wandering around, my aim being to "train" the leading family member and to get some xp for the troops...i got to a 10 stars general and 3silver chevrons or better for the troops in around 20 turns...basically each autocalced battle at least 3 or 4 units would gain one chevron. But battles I fought myself, most of the time one unit would gain any experience at all (or none...).
Although most battles, of course, were neither heroic victories nor crushing defeats. They were simply regular clear victories...and yeah, _lots_ of enemies were killed and/or routed...

[Lichgod]

I suspect experience is not gained for killing routers.

[motorhead]

retrained units retaining xp is a new feature in RTW, or at least it's supposed to be. I haven't actually watched it close enough, but i could swear that sometimes a retrained unit actually loses xp (i.e. gets diluted), but other times i know i've seen it retain it xp rating. From a dev over at .com

Dutch
Posts: 141
(10/5/04 1:55 pm)
Reply | Edit | Del Re: What's the go with retraining?
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Retraining can do two things:

1) if the settlement can produce that type of unit, it will replenish the unit with new soldiers *at the units average experience level*; these soldiers are subtracted from the settlement population as normal
2) if the settlement can produce armour or weapon upgrades for which the unit is eligible and which it does not already have, retraining will add these to the unit being retrained

If the settlement can do both, it will do so. Replenishment costs a proportion of the unit's cost in denari, while retraining for upgrades costs a nominal amount per upgrade. You can retrain as many units as will fit into the recruitment queue in one turn, although you end up paying for all of them. Hence it is often better to retrain a lot of old units if you need troops quickly, rather than recruiting new.

I thought i was at least getting charged more for getting back a full unit of retrained gold chevron units, but i have noticed that the cost per retrained man increases when you're also upgrading armor/weapons.

=========================================================

With regards to autocalc, it may be since the game plays the battle straight (i.e. no human wizard behind the controls), it works out battles with more actual combat, which leads to more xp. In MTW, wiping out routers was worth around 1/4 the value of a combat kill. When a person actually plays out a battle, I suspect they're much more likely to outmaneuver the AI and end up with lots of rout kills.

[Oleander Ardens]

It seems to me that Lichgod and Motorhead are right on the issue that killing routing units don't give you any experience..

OA

[Ulstan]

Yesterday, I retrained some men and they gained an exp point. O.o

"I suspect experience is not gained for killing routers."

I swear my cavalry and general have gotten xp simply from killing routers.

[Blodrast]

thank you for the info, motorhead.
re autocalc, then it's a bit silly, ofc, since it encourages you to fight battles just by charging head-on; this way, you lose more units, but the remaining ones gain way more xp, and then you retrain them and you preserver the average xp of the entire unit... imo, that's a great incentive for throwing all the tactics and strategy down the drain, and just

[Lichgod]

This weekend, I will see if I can get a merc cav unit that will ONLY be used to fight routed units. I will try to track his kills vs another cav unit with mixed combat/routed plus retraining but participating in the same number of battles (for any "just being there" experience) to see if you get full/some/no credit for killing routers.

[motorhead]

Here's a dev comment i saved, discussing kills/valour and how it worked in STW and MTW:

I've discussed kills and valour before. Suffice to say that they are bunch of factors that determine how many kills a particular kill actually accounts for. They were put in for Shogun, so have something of an honour based theme. They depend on relative honour levels, social status, and such factors as whether the victim was killed in melee, shot, or hacked down while running away.

I'd be a little surprised if they deviated away from their "honour based theme". Killing a peasant shouldn't be worth as much xp as killing an heir. Same thing with running down a router or hacking a woad warrior in battle.

[metatron]

I don't think experience is lost; I think it works in the same way as MTW, i.e. experience is tracked on a per man basis and the result shown on the unit card is only an average for that entire unit. Without logfiles it is hard to tell if this feature is in RTW. MTW and STW had individual experience tracking; I don't see why it would be taken out of RTW.

Correct. My own experiments have shown this to be true.

Meaning, sometimes, that you can merge the elite men of two units to get one good and one bad, or spread good men between two units.

It doesn't always work right away, and might require shifting men back and forth.

[Belenus]

I've noticed experience seems to be a little random.

In one battle my roman archer unit only killed THREE men and only got 1 cheveron(putting them at one silver, they already had three bronze by then) while my other units who killed ten to twenty men got nothing.

[motorhead]

I've noticed experience seems to be a little random.

In one battle my roman archer unit only killed THREE men and only got 1 cheveron(putting them at one silver, they already had three bronze by then) while my other units who killed ten to twenty men got nothing.

keep in mind kills are tracked per man, over every battle. those three kills may have been enough to push the unit average valor up one point. worked the same way in MTW.

[Sethik]

I have had a velites kill one man in a battle and go up a chevron, so it is probably man-based. I've also merged two units and had them gain a chevron instead of losing it. They were both vanilla that have only been through a battle or two.

On a somewhat related note: I find that generals gain much more experience in R:TW than in M:TW. In Rome it doesn't take much to get a 10 star general, but I remember working for decades to get a 9 star one in M:TW. This probably has more to do with all the new VnV and retianers more than the actual battles fought.

[afrit]

But remember that generals in RTW die of old age and are not replaced (the green_generals option in MTW, which was off by default). That is if the AI doesn;t kill them for you in multi-general battle (which I avoid like the plague).

I like the RTW mechanism better, although it is a bit too easy. Also, the AI somehow never gets high stars (unlike in MTW where the Byz had awesome generals).

[Lichgod]

You do get exper for just being in a battle. Had a Principles unit that just sat out a battle (one of many he had been in) get an exper level with zero kills to his credit. So, being on site and watching the archers/cav do all the work will improve your infantry.