Dramatic loss of FM experience following victory...???!!!

**bobbin** · 04-28-2009, 08:39

There's a bug that causes generals to get 9 chevrons if they have 0 chevrons and get the starving trait, it gives them a -1 bodyguard valour which for some reason makes the experience level go past 0 and end up at level 9.
This might be what happened, never seen it change in the post battle screen before though.

**Megas Methuselah** · 04-28-2009, 08:45

Originally Posted by bobbin

There's a bug that causes generals to get 9 chevrons if they have 0 chevrons and get the starving trait, it gives them a -1 bodyguard valour which for some reason makes the experience level go past 0 and end up at level 9.
This might be what happened, never seen it change in the post battle screen before though.

Starving trait?

EDIT: Oh, nvm.

**Tarkus** · 04-28-2009, 20:02

Originally Posted by bobbin

There's a bug that causes generals to get 9 chevrons if they have 0 chevrons and get the starving trait, it gives them a -1 bodyguard valour which for some reason makes the experience level go past 0 and end up at level 9.
This might be what happened, never seen it change in the post battle screen before though.

Interesting, bobbin...I do remember that he was in fact starving, so it looks like you may have nailed the explanation -- on the other hand, I'm pretty confident he had more than 0 chevrons as he already had 3 command stars by the time of the battle in question and had fought in more than a few previous engagements against the Saka.

An odd bug to be sure -- I assume it's been reported to the community at large?

**polehammer** · 04-28-2009, 20:14

I also experienced such a sudden loss of 8 or 9 exp several times - in all of these cases a very young general was involved. I just assumed that this is a bug (9 chevrons not due to several positive traits but just one negative trait which shifts experience below zero).

I think that command stars are not at all related to bodyguard valour (I am not sure, though).

As for the "unit experience", it is in fact an average experience of individual soldiers in a particular unit.

**Tarkus** · 04-28-2009, 20:49

Originally Posted by polehammer

As for the "unit experience", it is in fact an average experience of individual soldiers in a particular unit.

Interesting info...do you have a "source" for this statement?

**soup_alex** · 04-29-2009, 15:27

Originally Posted by Tarkus

Interesting info...do you have a "source" for this statement?

AFAIK, it's always been this way with unit experience in TW. The game calculates accumulated experience for each member of a unit, but presents this information as a mean average of all constituents. In a unit that apparently has exp 1, for example, this might just mean that most of the unit has exp 1, and the remainder (potentially as much as 49.9r%) has 0; although it's also fairly likely that a few soldiers will have exp 2 or better.

Units don't lose experience as a penalty for faring poorly in battle, they lose experience because so many of the veterans that were keeping the average up were lost relative to the greener troops. Similarly when reinforcing an experinced unit with fresh troops, you may see the rated exp decrease as you dilute the summed experience among more soldiers.

**polehammer** · 04-29-2009, 18:43

As for the experience - please see the thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=115098 where some examples of unit experience gains or losses are discussed in more detail.