Investigation of Battle Odds

[Atilius]

I spent some time investigating how unit experience influences battle odds.

I have two armies, each consisting of 20 units of hastati. At first I vary the experience of the attacker ( note exp 1 = 1 bronze chevron, exp 4 = 1 silver
chevron and so on):

Attacker Exp Defender Exp Battle Odds
0...................0 ............. 1:1
1...................0 ............. 6:5
2...................0 ............. 6:5
3...................0 ............. 6:5
4...................0 ............. 7:5
5...................0 ............. 7:5
6...................0 ............. 7:5
7...................0 ............. 8:5
8...................0 ............. 8:5
9...................0 ............. 9:5

Reverse the experience values just to make sure odds reverse also:

0...................9 ............. 5:9

It looks like we are getting some round off, but taking this into account it appears that a unit becomes ~10% more effective for each additional level of experience.

If this is the case then if one army has experience 8 and the other 4, we'd expect the odds to be 1.8:1.4 (9:7). If I try this I find the odds are actually 9:8. Rounding? If I try exp 9 and exp 4 I'd expect 1.9:1.4 (9.5:7), I actually get 9:7.

Anyway, this seems to indicate that the ~10% incease per experience level (perhaps slightly less) is approximately correct.

I did one other check on this: How many exp 9 units does it take to make an even match for 20 exp 0 units? If the above is correct, the answer should be 20/1.9 which is slightly closer to 11 than to 10. If I set up a battle with 11 exp 9 units against 20 exp 0 units, I get battle odds of 1:1.

So a good rule of thumb is that each level of experience increases the unit's effectiveness by 10% of the strength of a 0 experience unit.