gaining chevrons

[traveller2]

This has been bothering me a while now (not the annoying way but the wondering why/how way) what are the requirements to gain a chevron because I can´t see a real pattern sometimes an unit killed a lot more men than they lost but nothing gained and sometimes most of the unit gets wiped out and they gain one. Is there even a pattern between kills and men lost of the unit?

This is not a new thing, I have been wondering about it since rtw came out and I think it is probably hardcoded in the game or have you guys modded that also?

[Bootsiuv]

I always assumed it was a set number of experience points, like any other game where units gain levels.

[overweightninja]

This has been bothering me a while now (not the annoying way but the wondering why/how way) what are the requirements to gain a chevron because I can´t see a real pattern sometimes an unit killed a lot more men than they lost but nothing gained and sometimes most of the unit gets wiped out and they gain one. Is there even a pattern between kills and men lost of the unit?

Best way to get Chevrons? Fight....lots...
IIRC the rate at which chevrons are gained depends on how many enemies a unit kills, and how "good" the enemy are (tougher enemies=more experience).
Make the most of rebel stacks in your lands to gain an easy chevron or two, and try to keep your armies going through the course of the game (upgrade, retrain and replace as better units become available rather than disbanding and creating whole new armies).
I'm not sure if units gain experience by losing men, but I suppose it figures that if they're losing men, they're in a fairly difficult fight, and are killing tough enemies, ergo experience is gained. However the experience gained from this could possibly be rendered irrelevant by the fact that if you retrain say a 80 man unit with 2 chevrons from 20 men, it'll probably lost 1 if not both of those chevrons because of the new recruits.

This is not a new thing, I have been wondering about it since rtw came out and I think it is probably hardcoded in the game or have you guys modded that also?

As with most niggling things still left in EB, I would imagine its probably hard coded, and probably contains an element of luck/randomness.

Perhaps an EB member can tell you more :)

Cheers

[Bootsiuv]

I rarely lose chevrons from retraining, no matter how small the unit.

Like I said though, there must be some kind of point system....depending on how many men are in the unit.

IIRC smaller units gain experience faster than larger ones.

[Tarkus]

Good question, Traveller2...I've had similar questions so I'm glad you asked it out loud!

In my relatively modest experience, it almost seems to be also correlated with the "toughness" of the fight a unit experiences...not just the experience level of the opponent, as overweightninja suggests, but the intensity of that encounter. So a unit on guard mode that slugs it out tooth and nail with a couple of enemy units (even if they have the same or lower experience) and holds its own throughout the fight seems to be much more likely to gain that elusive chevron. But I may be over-interpreting here...developers?

[BigTex]

IIRC the chevron icon on the unit card is just the units average chevron. Not every soldier in a 2 chevron unit has 2 chevrons, some will have more some will have less.

The chevrons are gained through kills. I can't remember the exact number but it's near 8-12 kills per person for a chevron. Which means getting a high average chevron phalanx unit will be difficult since only the first few ranks get the kills.

This is why old unit's can have a catastrophic drop in chevrons during a battle. Lose all those highly expierenced troops in a fight and say bye bye to some chevrons on the unit card.

[overweightninja]

I rarely lose chevrons from retraining, no matter how small the unit.

Like I said though, there must be some kind of point system....depending on how many men are in the unit.

IIRC smaller units gain experience faster than larger ones.

Really? Lucky you, after a rather harsh fight for Capua I had two units of Heteroi with 2 gold chevrons each, and 5-15 men, both were on 2 silvers after retraining :(

And I agree with the experience points part, sounds about right, especially when you see your units gain experience in game while fighting.

Good question, Traveller2...I've had similar questions so I'm glad you asked it out loud!

In my relatively modest experience, it almost seems to be also correlated with the "toughness" of the fight a unit experiences...not just the experience level of the opponent, as overweightninja suggests, but the intensity of that encounter. So a unit on guard mode that slugs it out tooth and nail with a couple of enemy units (even if they have the same or lower experience) and holds its own throughout the fight seems to be much more likely to gain that elusive chevron. But I may be over-interpreting here...developers?

I wasn't referring to the experience level of the enemy unit, I was referring to as you put it the "toughness" (perhaps upkeep costs/recruitment costs, or a combination of the attack/defense stats have something to do with it?), although now you mention it, it may have something to do with experience, assuming this is worked out on stats, as experience boosts stats, surely experienced units are therefore "tougher" than their less experienced counterparts?

Hmmm....*ponders*




EDIT

Damn replies coming to fast for me to keep up with! :D

IIRC the chevron icon on the unit card is just the units average chevron. Not every soldier in a 2 chevron unit has 2 chevrons, some will have more some will have less.

The chevrons are gained through kills. I can't remember the exact number but it's near 8-12 kills per person for a chevron. Which means getting a high average chevron phalanx unit will be difficult since only the first few ranks get the kills.

This is why old unit's can have a catastrophic drop in chevrons during a battle. Lose all those highly expierenced troops in a fight and say bye bye to some chevrons on the unit card.

Interesting, any idea if the individual units always take the same place in the formation, or any info at all about how that works?
Thanks!

[Bootsiuv]

Well, attack/defense does have something to do with the toughness of the fight...

As units gain experience, they gain +1 attack/+1 defense for each experience point, making them tougher fighters.

A gold chevron unit of hoplitai haploi is going to put up a much tougher fight than a unit of fresh recruits (which goes without saying, but...).

[BigTex]

Interesting, any idea if the individual units always take the same place in the formation, or any info at all about how that works?
Thanks!

No I don't believe they take the same place in the formation as before. If i remember correctly the computer doesnt remember the individual soldiers expierence just the %'s of the different expierence levels in the unit. The computer assigns which expierence group goes were in the formation.

There should be a couple of topics about this in the Ludus Magna. Maybe one with the official word. I'm not really sure if its the most expierenced forward or back. Same goes for the officers and standard bearers.

[Sdragon]

As far as I can tell retraining one unit at a time while not building new units seems to maintain the level of experience More than one seems to dilute the unit with fresh recruits. On huge scale I've had a cavalry unit knocked down to 20 men or so with 1 gold chevron After retraining the chevron remained intact.

[EdwardL]

It has nothing to with the type of men you kill, its just a flat kill per men basis.

general flow of experience gains:

It's easiest to gain exp with ranged units as a good infanty / archer commander will obtain most of his kills with with those ranged units while sustaining miminal if not zero losses to the archer unit itself, thereby preserving the gained experience as there are few troops requiring retraining.

second in this list is heavy cavalry. as i mentioned prior, total exp gain is based on kills per men basis so cavalry has 2 things going for it here:

1) They are most often involved in flank charging operations so their decisive impact in battle usually means the rout of units therefore decreasing the chance that they will have to melee and lose men.

2) They also have a speed advantage over infantry which means that they can aquire a ton of exp just from chasing routed units, or use the speed to cut their own losses.

Medium-light cavalry come next on the list. they enjoy the same system of exp as heavy cavalry but often fall sub par to heavy cavalry, specifically when the charge fails to break units and they are forced to skirmish thereby inducing potentially heavy losses. they also can be susceptible to range fire. A good cavalry commander can make the best use of light and some medium cavalry's bonus to speed by preserving those ponies until the enemy army breaks as which point the fast moving speed mounts clean up. Its not uncommon to have fast speed mounts rack up 1000+ kills for a single unit just from routs if you know how to time chain routs.

also as a general rule, cavalry will gain exp faster just on the simple basis that they tend to have less men per unit than infantry.


last on the list comes your infantry -heavy infantry, then phalanxes then other infantry; medium, and light.. usually in that order. the problem here is that these are the units that form your lines, so naturally most of the time they are going to be the units that sustain the highest casualties. casualties mean retraining which means loss of gained exp. higher quality long pike phalanx units can offset that to a good degree as they can keep units off of them by repulsing them with their thrusts, but as with almost all phalanx units, their exp gain comes slower since they tend to be the largest units in the game (240 on huge). Phalanx can excel at exp gains in some situations such as being the sole unit to block up and entire enemy army on a bridge or narrow street (pending enemy composition).

Infantry as a general rule suffer from exp gain due to their speed, which can make them vulnerable to cavalry but most importantly it detracts from their ability to pursue and kill routed units, which is where the potential bulk of exp gain can come from.

If you are wanting to gain exp for melee infantry I recommend two methods but you'll have to baby 1 or 2 units at a time;

1) for open battles, stretch your main infantry line until it is at least as long as your enemies. take the few units you want to level up and place them on either of the wings. now you'll want to have cavalry screen the flanks of those units against other cavalry. once your main line has their main line engaged, start wheeling those units around the rear of the immediate wings of their lines and charge their backside. disengage them and charge again if you have to. if you are charging light or medium infantry against the backside of heavy infantry, you'll want to make sure you kill the enemy general first so you can increase the chance of causing those units to route. what you are aiming to do here is force those units to route so you can pick up the surge of kills when they turn and try and run through your unit. rinse and repeat on down to the center of their line.

2) city trap. place the units you want to level inside of a city that you know the enemy will attack. once the battle commences, allow them to get past the gate without resistance. if you are anticipating them to come with a full stack, and you'll need to make sure you have adequate phalanxes or heavy infantry. Now with those heavy infantry or phalanxes, place them in position to block off the end of a street closest to your town square. you may have to block off more than one street depending on the AI pathing. Once the enemy army is commited, and funneled entirely down one or two streets, start moving the unit(s) you want to level up to the opposite end of that street. Place them in position to collect any routing units. If the bulk of the enemy army is in shaking or wavering condition, and / or their general is dead, then send those units charging into their backside to instantly gain 1-2 chevrons

[Megas Methuselah]

whoa...

[overweightninja]

lol now we know! However now I think I do remember seeing a post or something which explains the whole lot in detail...I'll try to find and post the link here.
For now I do remember at least one thing, and that's that killing routing units gains a lot less experience than units that are still fighting (perhaps around 1/5th if IIRC?).
Anyways I'll see what I can find...

[Megas Methuselah]

Aight... I guess we'll all just... kind of... well... wait...?

[Bonny]

As with most niggling things still left in EB, I would imagine its probably hard coded, and probably contains an element of luck/randomness.

yup, hardcoded

2) They also have a speed advantage over infantry which means that they can aquire a ton of exp just from chasing routed units, or use the speed to cut their own losses.

afaik killing fleeing units gives a lot less xp than from killing fighting units.

[overweightninja]

lol you might be waiting a while, no luck so far :D

Found this topic covered already in another thread though, quite relevant stuff in there (or it could just be what I was talking about in my last post, but I guess no "definitive" evidence)...

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=84480

[EdwardL]

yup, hardcoded




afaik killing fleeing units gives a lot less xp than from killing fighting units.

This is the case, and that is another reason why ranged units will gain exp fast as they are bombarding not routed units.

however the science in leveling exp for infantry is not in throwing them in into a fight with a high moral enemy unit and slugging it out. that means losses, and losses means lost exp in retraining and it also means downtime in waiting for those units to retrain. You want to try and collect that "golden harvest" of routing units to preserve that infantry piece or two so you can keep them going and going battle after battle, instead of having to drag and drop them into another like unit or sending them back to town to retrain.

[EdwardL]

oh and fyi that suggestion about RTW engine keeping track of exp for individual men is a myth.

[Megas Methuselah]

*gasp*



Double-Post!!!!! OMG, everyone! A double-post!!!

[Bootsiuv]

Thanks for the info, EdwardL.

[Tarkus]

Ditto...good stuff, Edward! Thanks for the clear explanation. I guess this explains in rather obvious terms why my equites gain experience at a fast pace as they continually run down routing units...

I still wish there were a more...I dunno...elegant method by which experience is gained, aside from this simpler approach. As I said before, those units that fend off a furious assault, even if the number of kills they enjoy is relatively slight, should be able to gain experience more readily than another less steadfast unit. I recently had a few principes and triarii hold off repeated charges from two Qarthadast bodyguard cavalry units...while the casualties were slight, the cav finally beat a retreat...no experienced gained among the infantry...

[overweightninja]

I still wish there were a more...I dunno...elegant method by which experience is gained, aside from this simpler approach. As I said before, those units that fend off a furious assault, even if the number of kills they enjoy is relatively slight, should be able to gain experience more readily than another less steadfast unit. I recently had a few principes and triarii hold off repeated charges from two Qarthadast bodyguard cavalry units...while the casualties were slight, the cav finally beat a retreat...no experienced gained among the infantry...

Agreed :(

@ Edward thanks for being so informative...I shall follow with tradition in granting you this classic EB forum gift....


Where did you find all that info out from though? Any links or anything? Or been badgering CA for your mod thing there?

Cheers!

[Aradan]

The exp gained has nothing to do with the type of soldiers killed, their morale, upgrades or whatever. A dead bodyguard gives the same exp as a dead peasant. Only routing units give 1/5 of the normal exp. The formula that calculates how many kills you need to gain the next chevron resembles a Fibonacci series.

Cheers

[overweightninja]

Where is all this information coming from?!? Please back up your replies chaps if you've got something definitive :|

[Aradan]

Jerome from CA. w8, I'll find the quote and edit the post in a bit.

Here you go:

What exactly makes a unit gain experience? Killing peasants gives less than killing elite units, but what exactly determines this?

Actually, a kill is always considered a kill for xp bonusses, except when the unit is routing (in which case it drops to a 20% chance of counting as a kill). Kills and xp are tracked on a per-soldier basis, and what is displayed is the unit average rounded to the nearest integer. There is a non-linear relationship between kills and xp which resembles a Fibonacci series. Then units which have been engaged in combat in a battle which started with a close to even strength balance may be awarded an extra kill per soldier at the end of combat.

I think that answers all questions.

[overweightninja]

lol now we know! However now I think I do remember seeing a post or something which explains the whole lot in detail...I'll try to find and post the link here.
For now I do remember at least one thing, and that's that killing routing units gains a lot less experience than units that are still fighting (perhaps around 1/5th if IIRC?).
Anyways I'll see what I can find...

What you have just quoted is the post I was referring to there, thanks Aradan lol!

*takes Balloon from EdwardL*

sorry it's not brand new, but there you go

Well that's that settled then...next?

[alatar]

Once one of my roman legoins was ambushed, it was in deep forest so I ordered everyone to chearge the right, into a clearing, from there most regrouped, but deep in the forest separated units were still being attacked, well after the main gaulic force had retreeated.
Alsmost every unit got experiance, which was nice.

[madmatg]

i have at least a few times, had an army attack me or be attacked and then when we get to the field they flee without a shot being fired or any blood drawn, AND had units gain experience how do you explain that ?

[overweightninja]

i have at least a few times, had an army attack me or be attacked and then when we get to the field they flee without a shot being fired or any blood drawn, AND had units gain experience how do you explain that ?

Yup, happens to me quite often, its a bloody pain with EB's loading times.
I've noticed sometimes if I fight a battle and I'm in a very secure position, or if I am able to make (sometimes very few, as little as maybe 10) casualties on the enemy from missile fire without losing too much/anything myself the army will sometimes retreat.

Now apart from crap AI, I theorise that there is a point in the balance of the two armies, that if its on or over in the AIs favour, it thinks "yup I'll have this", and obviously if it's below it thinks "Bollocks to this I'm off!". My theory is that when the battle is engaged, the balance is on or above this point, however when you get in the battle itself, those few casualties or possibly simply the formation/position of your army can make that balance drop back below the midpoint (if it was low enough to begin with), so the enemy retreats.

As I said this is just a theory, but seems pretty plausible to me, hopefully someone can confirm this as truth or rubbish :)

Personally if I see the enemy is definitely withdrawing when I'm up for the fight, I just send my cavalry to chase them down. As neighboring units rarely stop to help their colleagues when retreating, you can usually run them down one at a time until they're dead or off the map.

Cheers

[Parkev]

i have at least a few times, had an army attack me or be attacked and then when we get to the field they flee without a shot being fired or any blood drawn, AND had units gain experience how do you explain that ?

I just played a battle where, a re-enforcing army did not show up AT ALL, and three of its units got +1 experience. Go figure. Got a screen shot if anyone won't believe me. Then again most people will believe anything mildly plausible when it comes to RTW mechanics.