Unit Experience

**MonkeyMan** · 10-13-2004, 10:50

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** · 10-13-2004, 11:08

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** · 10-13-2004, 11:21

Originally Posted by Arakasi

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** · 10-13-2004, 11:35

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** · 10-13-2004, 12:47

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** · 10-13-2004, 13:28

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).

**metatron** · 10-16-2004, 05:37

Originally Posted by 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.

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** · 10-17-2004, 23:50

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.