Are you experienced?

[Long lost Caesar]

Back in Rome Total War an army was respected by its experience: if an enemy came down on you with silver or gold chevrons then you simply watched in awe as the battle-hardened veterans killed faster, defended better and even stood up to harsher punishment better than the average 'greenhorn.' so what i want to know is what does experience effect in M2TW? Even though I play Stainless Steel now, even back in vanilla I can't ever remember experience increasing attack or defense skill. Anyone know the point? Cheers

[Rhyfelwyr]

You get +1 attack/defense skill if the unit has any amount of Bronze Chevrons, +2 for silver, and +3 for gold. So the max is +3 of each, as the number of chevrons does not matter, only the colour.

[FactionHeir]

Pretty much.
You also get +1 morale for each chevron.

[Long lost Caesar]

ah well cool, thanks for the responses.

[Rhyfelwyr]

ahh never knew about the extra morale, explains why its worth getting 3 gold chevrons rather than just 1.

[Alpedar]

Does it affect accuracy?
Somewhere i read that yes, somewhere that no.
I did not found it mentioned anywhere in game files, but it can be hardcoded.

My in gane experience is that it improves accy, but I'm not sure (Either it do, or I see what I want to see).

[Guru]

Does it affect accuracy?

I'd say yes. Especially artillery units seem to benefit from experience. Could be my imagination though, but a gold chevron cannon seems to hit much more than a recently recruited novice gun.

[Galain_Ironhide]

from what I have seen, I would have to say that artillery is more accurate with the more experience it has. Well, at least the AI's anyway.

When the 2nd mongol wave came through in my Turkish campaign, two of the Mongolian stacks had 2 trebs and 2 rocket launchers each (3 silver chevrons as is standard for our Mongolian friends),and man did they pack a punch! They couldn't miss me. When I was returning fire with my unexperienced units (until they picked each one off), my guys were nowhere near as brutal as they were.

It would be interesting to see what factors are involved, for a unit of any description, to acquire experience chevrons. Some times you think a particular unit has had an excellent battle, with many kills,but somehow does not end up with any additional experience.

[TinCow]

A full army of triple gold units is damn well deadly. If you want to see just how much of a difference the experience makes, fight a custom battle against the AI with a normal, non-experienced army and then fight it again with the exact same army, but promoted to triple gold chevrons. Not only do high experience units kill faster and die slower, but they break slower too. Triple golds will essentially fight to the death, no matter what you do to them.

We have been using triple gold and triple silver AI stacks in KOTR to increase the challenge and it makes a massive difference. Players are actually afraid to face the triple golds, something that I have never seen before in a PBM.

[khaos83_2000]

Talking about Rome Total War and chevrons, the AI cheats with no shame at all !!!
A full stack of 3gold chevrons peasants or something else will appear from nowhere when they are down to a few cities.

I was mopping up a faction and suffered heavy losses with my expedition army. When total victory is in sight, suddenly I saw a full stack of 3 gold chevron units dropped down from the sky. I immediately turned back to regroup and to finished them off another day ....

[Old Geezer]

I've never noticed any increased accuracy for artillery with chevrons. Bombards still have trouble hitting the gate. I had several gold chevroned culverins in the Americas campaign and never noticed any increased accuracy. The best test would probably to shoot at the gate at maximum range with a variety of artillery with a variety of chevron colors, but I'm too old and life is too short for me to undertake the task. (P.S. I am also very lazy.)

[Monsieur Alphonse]

In my New Spain campaign I had a culverin with one or two gold chevrons supported by a fresh basilisk. Although the culverin was firing at its maximum range almost every shot was a hit while the fresh basilisk missed a lot of times.

I think experience does matter.

[Procrustes]

My experienced arty misses walls and gates less often, and experienced archers/xbows always rack up more kills than inexperienced units in the same battle.

(So... do you folks think it is "gamey" to retrain depleted but experienced units in order to obtain full experienced units? I was surprised to see that when I retrain units in this game the new soldiers aren't green.)

[ReiseReise]

(So... do you folks think it is "gamey" to retrain depleted but experienced units in order to obtain full experienced units? I was surprised to see that when I retrain units in this game the new soldiers aren't green.)

It is a slight exploit in my opinion, but I have a justification: green recruits who join a new unit would be undergoing drills and such with the hardcore veterans, and would be able to learn from them as mentors, and would benefit from the confidence and example set by the veterans in combat. The vets would tell the greens (as a somewhat ridiculous example) "Hold your shield 1 inch higher or you will get you killed", and the greens will hold their shield 1 inches higher instead of many of them dying trying to figure it out. Even though they technically are not experienced, they can act as though they are. This makes sense when the recruits are only a portion of the unit, but retraining a 4exp unit with only 1 man left to add 59 4exp recruits is perhaps more of an exploit. Of course you can control how much you exploit it by recombining depleted units until the 'leftovers' to be retrained are as high or low experience as you like.

[Alpedar]

I agree. As long as you don't intentionaly take advantage of remixing them, its totaly OK, and even remixing them is not something realy bad.
I look at it that 687th peasant batalion which has 100 year history and run from many battles will run with much higher confidence (even though only banner carier survived last battle) than 688th peasant batalion which is fresh. (Don't take me serious, but you know what I mean)

PS: this is not irony

[Yaropolk]

It increases both defense skill and attack

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

I tried it out on custom, i forgot to upgrade my units and found that the enemy managed to cut right through my lines even with lowly spearmen, and my heavy infantry had a hard to butchering their sorry asses

[ataribaby]

Does it affect accuracy?
Somewhere i read that yes, somewhere that no.
I did not found it mentioned anywhere in game files, but it can be hardcoded.

My in gane experience is that it improves accy, but I'm not sure (Either it do, or I see what I want to see).

I was intrigued to find this out once and for all because I've had a tendency to hold on to costly-upkeep, experienced arty because of a superstitious belief that the hard-earned chevrons make them indispensible sniper units.

The test: England vs Mongols in a castle siege battle.

England are attacking with 4 units of ballistae - 2 triple-gold and the other 2 raw recruits; and a unit of town millitia as a general's unit.

Mongolia is defending with a unit of elephants. Because they are defending with one unit the AI will not move from the castle square unless physically provoked, leaving my arty to their dirty business.

Each arty unit is set the same distance away from a tower and given the order to fire. As ballistae only cause a couple of percent damage per hit to buildings it is easy to see the hit rate for each unit.

The result: each unit destroyed its target tower at very much the same rate as the others. Sometimes one unit would be in the lead by a couple of percent but there really was no difference in hit rate between experienced and non-experienced units.

The corollary: arty units don't gain accuracy with experience and can be disbanded when not needed without worrying. After all, they are expensive to maintain.


Postscript: The above battle ended when I had the ballistae fire their remaining bolts at the elephants, and when the elephants stampeded I sent the ballista crews chasing them with their butter knives in a bizarre, Benny-Hill style chase. Needless to say, the greenhorns would rout after one stomp, but the triple-gold guys were very persistent indeed.

[PBI]

I was intrigued to find this out once and for all because I've had a tendency to hold on to costly-upkeep, experienced arty because of a superstitious belief that the hard-earned chevrons make them indispensible sniper units.

The test: England vs Mongols in a castle siege battle.

England are attacking with 4 units of ballistae - 2 triple-gold and the other 2 raw recruits; and a unit of town millitia as a general's unit.

You do realise that the accuracy vs. towers is different to the accuracy vs. units? Don't know if that would make a difference.

Also, ballistas are pretty accurate to start with, so a small increase might not be very noticeable.

It is depressing if that really is the case, though. Like you I hang onto high-experience artillery as long as possible, especially as it's so hard to get them promoted in the first place.

Postscript: The above battle ended when I had the ballistae fire their remaining bolts at the elephants, and when the elephants stampeded I sent the ballista crews chasing them with their butter knives in a bizarre, Benny-Hill style chase. Needless to say, the greenhorns would rout after one stomp, but the triple-gold guys were very persistent indeed.

Now that's how proper men do it! None of your wrapping up in sheets of steel armour or hiding behind 20 foot pikes, troops who will take on a rampaging elephant with only a butter knife are my kind of soldiers!

[ataribaby]

You do realise that the accuracy vs. towers is different to the accuracy vs. units? Don't know if that would make a difference.

I didn't know that. I've just tried to contrive a Custom Battle with ballistae vs infantry where the infantry just stand there and get shot to bits (as can happen in some campaign battles), but it's proving to be more difficult than I thought.

I tried a couple of river crossings. One against all slow moving halberdiers - they simply advanced inexorably at snails pace across the river and knacked all my ballista crews. Another against all peasant archers with a big wad of my own armoured swordsmen stuck in the middle of the bridge for them to shoot at while my ballistae picked them off from a distance. They too bum-rushed across the bridge in a mass butter knife charge.

Perhaps in a siege defence sally the enemy might comply and stay put. Does anyone have any ideas on testing arty accuracy vs units?

Also, ballistas are pretty accurate to start with, so a small increase might not be very noticeable.

Honestly, there really was very little variation in the hit rate of the ballista units. Sometimes the greenhorns even crept ahead. All towers were destroyed at about the same time though, so any variation was averaged out. I tried the battle again a couple of times to make sure, with similar results.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

I suppose it might not make that much difference, but it would on VH where you are in a battle and hopelessly outnumbered, these could play a key role in winning the battle or making time for you to withdraw

[Ramses II CP]

For a test I'd do a sally against an all infantry opponent with no missiles. They should just stand there and take it.

Accuracy isn't improved by chevrons though, it's increasingly obvious after you've played for awhile. I find it's still worth keeping the veteran men, they rout much less easily.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

Ive always believed that experience = improved accuracy for missle units.
Although it does not appear that there is literal proof of the fact, it is what appears to me during battles that I use chevron /vs non chevron units. It may appear to be the case tho because of the other known bonuses from exp.. such as attack/defense and morale or even the location of said unit on the field at that time.. like on a hill is better than not etc..

W/e the case is Ill usually decomm the siege units after they take the target except for my 1 cannon per gunpowder stack (culverin or basilisk only )..whose purpose is primarily aesthetic ..just no use here for a bunch of bombards except to take out the towers/gates etc

I use trebs for defense tho... gotta love the stanky cow option,and you can take out the towers and such sometimes. Usually have 1 in each front line city. Not good in the field becuz of the cow effects on your own troops. also when the AI breaks thru the gate take the treb and send it far left or right...thus requiring them to chase it either left or right instead of towards your center.