Experience growth

[Zajuts149]

When a unit gaines 1 exp, the also gets 1 point added for attack and defense + a morale bonus. This has been the case throughout the TW-series. In M2TW, the units only raise their attack and def value per 3rd exp. Is this intentional or a bug. As it is, it is rarely worth husbanding units to gain 2 or 3 exp, since they only get markedly improved at 1, 4 and 7 exp.

[Bearclaw]

I do believe it's intentional. Justified, I suppose, since in RTW if you had a unit gain +9 to attack and defense they became totally different units...I had one campaign as Germania where I just ravaged everything with hordes of Berserkers. I'd pillage half the world, and then when they get low on units I'd bring them back home (safe in the British Isles) to retrain. Since they did so much fighting, and were in such small units that their experience didn't go down from retraining, I soon ended up with full stacks of +9/+9 Berserkers. Sweet!

But not really. They finally met their match when I let some Julii cities rebel, spawning a full stack of +9/+9 peasants, who I soon faced in the field. They utterly demolished me. And honestly, there's no way a peasant should beat a Berserker, or any other trained, armored unit. Especially when I had been mowing through urban cohorts and everything else any faction could throw at me.

However, I do wish I could get slightly more substantial gains for my units who have been fighting constantly for 100+ years, and have never lost. Those guys are sitting at 2-4 exp right now. If they were at 7-9, or if there was a +1/+1 stat bonus at like 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 exp for a total of +5/+5, that would make me happier.

[Shahed]

Exp gain is too slow, for my taste. 100 years and exp of 3 ? out of 9 ? After 30 battles ?

Anyway I don't know if it is a feature or a bug. Probably a feature (to keep the stats +1 per +3 exp).

[magnum]

It is intentional. As said previously, it was decided by the devs that 9 chevron units wiht +9 attack/defense/morale were to powerful for the type of unit they were. I believe it was said that they went to +1 attack/defense per 3 chevrons and +1 morale per chevron.

[Shahed]

Ohh cool, it's a feature... that I like. Thanks.

But the rate of gain is still too slow, for my taste.

[Bongaroo]

I think the slower experience was a good thought, but could use a little tweaking IMO. Takes countless battles to get at about 4 or 5.

I've been a little confused about the factors in who gets experience and who does not. Seems like my Turkish HA's can slaughter hundreds and not get any experience while my town militia kills 10 and gets an experience point.

[Kobal2fr]

I think the rate at which a given unit gains xp relates to the florin cost of who it kills, in relation to its own cost. Meaning a gothic knight killing a peasant will get very little, but a peasant killing a gothic knight will become "PeasantMan, the fearless hero of peasanthood !".

Also, exp accrued is unit-wide, not individual. So if your unit has fewer men, it'll gain exp faster, proportionately. So wear you units down to stubs, have them accrue exp, then merge the stubs and voila ! exped full unit !

[magnum]

I've done no testing in M2TW, so can not promise that RTW exp holds. As with the change in bonuses for chevrons, it is possible that the devs changed experience also. However, for RTW...

1)1 kill equaled 1 exp point. Level of kill didn't matter. Peasant or 10 star general with 10 hit points, all are worth 1 point.

2)Routing troops are worth 1/5 point. Actually every routing person killed had a 20% chance of giving 1 point.

3)Exp tracked per man, but unit display is the average of all the men. (i.e. bonus is actually calculated per man, so you might have some that are getting a bonus and some that aren't.) And yes, if you use a hex editor on a save game in RTW, you can see that every individual is tracked.

4)Refitted units have new personnel added at the experience level of the unit average. As such it is (imho) better to never combine a unit out of existence. Sure, combine two units so only 1 needs retraining, but never combine two units that will give you only 1. If a full unit is 80 men, and you have two units, A with 47 men and B with 52 men, then combine them. A now has 80 men and B has 19 men, retrain B. If A has 37 men and B has 42 men, don't combine them into one unit with 79 men, instead retrain both units.

5)In even battles, the victor gets bonus exp that is split among all surviving troops. Thus it is possible that a unit that never fought but was present to gain a level of exp.

6)Chevrons are increasingly harder to get. No one knows for sure exactly how many kills are needed to gain the next level.

All I can think of off the top of my head. If others think of something I missed please say. Hope that helps some.

[magnum]

I've done no testing in M2TW, so can not promise that RTW exp holds. As with the change in bonuses for chevrons, it is possible that the devs changed experience also. However, for RTW...

1)1 kill equaled 1 exp point. Level of kill didn't matter. Peasant or 10 star general with 10 hit points, all are worth 1 point.

2)Routing troops are worth 1/5 point. Actually every routing person killed had a 20% chance of giving 1 point.

3)Exp tracked per man, but unit display is the average of all the men. (i.e. bonus is actually calculated per man, so you might have some that are getting a bonus and some that aren't.) And yes, if you use a hex editor on a save game in RTW, you can see that every individual is tracked.

4)Refitted units have new personnel added at the experience level of the unit average. As such it is (imho) better to never combine a unit out of existence. Sure, combine two units so only 1 needs retraining, but never combine two units that will give you only 1. If a full unit is 80 men, and you have two units, A with 47 men and B with 52 men, then combine them. A now has 80 men and B has 19 men, retrain B. If A has 37 men and B has 42 men, don't combine them into one unit with 79 men, instead retrain both units.

5)In even battles, the victor gets bonus exp that is split among all surviving troops. Thus it is possible that a unit that never fought but was present to gain a level of exp.

6)Chevrons are increasingly harder to get. No one knows for sure exactly how many kills are needed to gain the next level.

All I can think of off the top of my head. If others think of something I missed please say. Hope that helps some.

[Kraxis]

4)Refitted units have new personnel added at the experience level of the unit average.

It is still like this... In fact some have speculated that that is the reason why the experience has been nerfed. Quite simply it was too easy to get undefeatable units by retraining them.

However something does not add up as the manual states on page 30 that "under-strength units that are retrained may have any battle experience 'diluted' by the raw recruits that enter their ranks."
But even if you retrain a single man the entire unit will have his experience. There is no dilution of experience.

Btw, routers seem to count for a whole kill. When chasing down routers you don't really need to capture that many to level up. This is decidedly a step backwards from the 1/5th in RTW and the 1/4th in MTW (where princes counted for a whopping 25 kills).

[Foz]

I notice frequently that my units that have suffered heavy casualties (usually without routing) in a battle are usually the ones that level well. They've usually had substantial contact with the enemy, but have killed no more enemies than my archers in the same battle, nor other identical units involved in the battle that didn't suffer as heavy loses, yet the archers and similar units that haven't taken heavy loses don't seem to level as much ever. So what I'm thinking is perhaps the unit earns experience for all of its kills in the battle, but that amount is then distributed evenly to each man in the unit. This would mean a half-strength unit would have men with double the XP per man in it versus one that survived the same battle completely unscathed. For example, I'm speculating that maybe an armoured swordsmen unit earns XP for all kills made by its members in the battle regardless of whether the particular swordsman responsible for each kill lives or dies. But then if the unit is left at 1/10 strength, the effective XP of each man still alive in the unit may be divided by one-tenth... which means multiplied ten-fold. In other words, each man remaining may be counted as having the experience that was accrued by 10 men in the last battle, due to the depleted nature of the unit. I'm not saying that it should be this way, or that it is or is not a bug, just noting what the trend seems to be in my experience. Has anyone else noticed similar or contrary results? Comments and observations wanted and welcome.

[Kraxis]

No, it is just that the surviving men are the ones who actually killed a lot.

If you happen to get a heavily depleted cavalry unit, use it to chase down routers and you are bound to get 2-3-4-5 upgrades in experience in a single battle. It is terribly easy to do. Then you just retrain it, and voila, you have an instant gold chevron unit.

I don't like that, but what am I to do? I use my units to the fullest. Am I to let the enemy escape or disband a unit so as not to get hugely experienced units that I didn't earn? Bah!

[katank]

What's wrong with that? I don't see a big problem with the system to be honest. I like the retrofit idea. It adds to my desire to see veteran units survive battles and strategize about unit merging.

[Kraxis]

It makes it far too easy... And you have not earned it at all.

It is counterproductive to have feature where it pays to use undermanned units. Don't you agree?
100 men = bad, 15 men = great...

[Foz]

It makes it far too easy... And you have not earned it at all.

It is counterproductive to have feature where it pays to use undermanned units. Don't you agree?
100 men = bad, 15 men = great...

Well yes... and no. On the one hand, I very much dislike that the retrained unit comes out at the exp level of what few men were remaining that had exp. Clearly the men you recruit into a veteran unit are as green as the men when the unit was first created, and should not fight as well as the few vets that remain from the old group.

On the other hand, I would also suggest that the effect of having several experienced men in a unit of otherwise green troops should not only afford the unit the fighting experience of those few men. What I'm getting at is that the presence of veteran troops in a combat unit actually helps the combat effectiveness of the unit as a whole, not just those few hardened men. Green troops pick up tips and strategies from more experienced troops, benefit from the increased competence and military prowess of those vet troops who would fill unit-level command roles, and fight more confidently when they have experienced troops nearby to look up to and validate what they're doing (by example).

So for the sake of balance, but to still allow for some effect of having experienced troops commanding and fighting beside the green ones, the best I've got is the following: each unit with a soldier with 1-3 exp (any number of bronze chevrons) affords each man in it a base 1-exp level. They can have more than that if they've earned it, but would default to 1 exp instead of 0. Each unit with a soldier of 4-6 exp (any number of silver chevrons) instead affords his entire unit a 2-exp level of fighting. Similarly, a unit which has any 7-9 exp soldiers (any number of gold chevrons) would get a base 3-chevron level. This puts a mostly-green unit with some experienced soldiers always in the 1-3 exp range, between 1/3 and 1/2 of the original unit's exp typically (since the few remaining higher-exp men won't influence the average exp enough to make the unit exp any higher than the base levels I assigned). I think this would be an elegant solution to the balance troubles, giving us appropriate but not broken benefits to retraining those experienced troops.

[katank]

That solution is pretty good. If you stuff simply raw recruits in, then it negates the effect of retraining etc.

BTW, the numbers system is fairly broken. Since morale penalties apply to %casualties taken counting from the start of the battle, then it would be better to have equal numbers of smaller units. This is also next to the maneuver advantages.

I.e. compared to 1 unit of 20 men, 20 units of 1 man each is strictly better (assuming exact same troops) as you'd never see any units rout in the 1 man/unit case.

[Foz]

BTW, the numbers system is fairly broken. Since morale penalties apply to %casualties taken counting from the start of the battle, then it would be better to have equal numbers of smaller units. This is also next to the maneuver advantages.

I.e. compared to 1 unit of 20 men, 20 units of 1 man each is strictly better (assuming exact same troops) as you'd never see any units rout in the 1 man/unit case.

Strictly better... hmm. From the standpoint of routing, yes, but not on the whole. Attempting to control an entire army 1 man at a time using the interface would be the most pointless undertaking of my life, and I've done some really pointless things. That, plus your army would be 20 or 30 men, since that's a full stack of one-man units! I don't mind a few troops here and there routing, and if it's the only price I pay for being able to group and push around 100s of men at a time and keep 1000-man armies marching around the globe, you can sign me up anytime.

Besides, they're supposed to be able to rout - it's what people do when it becomes hopeless. If I just watched 19 of my buddies get gutted on a wall of pikes and am the only one left standing, whether or not we're flying the same unit colors I'm turning tail and trying to get the heck out of there. I'd get cut down anyway, but at least I'd die fleeing valiantly

[antisocialmunky]

Hehehe, harkons back to the STW days where I would run around with full stacks of Kensei for fun.

[katank]

Which reminds me. I really want kensais in this game. I dunno, maybe Renaissance Swashbucklers or something. Or maybe faction specific 1 man hero units like Robin Hood for the English (heck, we already have his men in tights).

[Quillan]

However something does not add up as the manual states on page 30 that "under-strength units that are retrained may have any battle experience 'diluted' by the raw recruits that enter their ranks."
But even if you retrain a single man the entire unit will have his experience. There is no dilution of experience.

It has to do with round-offs. I'm pretty sure a unit with an average of 4.9 experience displays as 4 xp. If you retrain that unit, all the new men will have 4 xp each. That could bring the average xp down. It won't display any lower, since it will still show as 4 xp, but you'd no longer be on the cusp of getting that second silver chevron.

[antisocialmunky]

Which reminds me. I really want kensais in this game. I dunno, maybe Renaissance Swashbucklers or something. Or maybe faction specific 1 man hero units like Robin Hood for the English (heck, we already have his men in tights).

It would be kinda cool to have each side's 'champions' or something fight before a battle - though, not very practical.