The experience system

[Shaggy1973]

Playing as France I begin with a unit of Old Guard with no experience (I know you guys don't change the startpos). As Napoleon, I keep my trusted Old Guard with me through the first 20 battles, but the rate at which infantry gain experience seems really slow (compared to artillery and cavalry). By the time i can recruit young guard on 3 chevrons, my old guard only have 2 chevrons. Later in the game i can recruit old guard at 7 chevrons, i am almost there and i know that my trusty unit i have had from the start will be inferior to my newly recruited unit, despite being veterans of 50 battles.

1) I think infantry needs to gain experience faster.
2) With regards to the old guard, I would like to see a system whereby France cannot recruit these units at all and just start with a core of 4 of these units. The player would then have to keep this core of units alive through the whole campaign and vet them. If you lose this core of old guard it will really hurt the invincibility of Napoleon.
3) With a quicker rate of experience, it would make adding experience to newly recruited troops more logical. They would be better trained, but still not as good and your veteran troops.
4) The loss of an experienced army would be more of a disaster. At the moment there is a period mid-game where it is almost advantageous (experience wise) to disband and recruit again.

I think some of the bonuses experience gives could do with some tweaks. Some of the reload and accuracy rates on experienced units seem a little too much. Would accuracy change that much on what were fairly inaccurate weapons? Reload would increase, but would we ever see more than 4 or perhaps 5 shots per minute? Do the morale bonuses stack with the experience and the general - or are they capped (although morale wise - even the old guard break at 50% dead).

In summary, I know it may possibly hurt the AI, but as the player I would like to feel more attached to my troops.

[Daergar]

Another solution would be to lower the exp on recruited late-tier units and thus avoid having them eclipse the truly experienced regiments? To be honest, I've never much cared for "freebie" chevrons, definately makes me care a whole lot less about my starting units; especially if they become obsolete, instead of elite, by mid-game.

[DaVinci]

I know you guys don't change the startpos

We will some day in future.

[JaM]

Shaggy1973: if i could remove that 0exp Old Guard unit form game i would do it immediately. They should start with 6 chevrons at the start. French starting forces should be highly experienced troops - large number of Grande Armee soldiers were veterans of republican wars, they had 10-15 years of battle experience... Old guard was just reformed Consular Guard, they were selected soldiers, there was just not a chance a rookie would be accepted into such unit...

Personally i always disband that Old Guard unit at the start of campaign...


when we finally start with startpos, initial french force will be highly experienced troops. initial battles will be easier, but you will be not able to fully replace lost men. so if you loose your veteran core, you will be stuck with few elite units at high experience, and rest of low experienced troops taht will be just not enough against huge allied army...

[Shaggy1973]

this problem also exists for the common fusilier. i can tech just as fast as i can gain experience at present rates.

i am glad to see you plan to mod the starting armies. i think having access to all troops types at the start will feel much more realistic. i know it breaks to CA game mechanic of teching up and getting better troop types, but this isn't very realistic. I look forward to seeing the grande armee recreated.

hopefully somehing clever can be done to the teching and building upgrade system so it doesnt become redundant.

perhaps higher level barracks could be what governs the number of recruitment slots, or units could be recruited slightly faster. and teching could give unit/movement bonuses.

[busboy999]

Shaggy hit the nail on the head. I'm very much looking forward to a realisting starting condition for NTW.

[Bisonbob]

I feel there are too many elite units available, that all you need to do with a faction at the moment is, sit quiet for multiple turns and tech rush to staff college, then build a stack of elites. Then just use that one elite stack of elites to fight every battle from then on. The AI can't cope fighting against that level of quality.

Being able buy the experienced troops from the "veterans shop" isn't balanced with the ability to make your own fighting multiple battles. I havn't manged to get ordinary line above 2 / 3 chevrons and this takes a lot of battles! However, artillery, especially the horse 24 man crew, get to 9 chevrons relatively quickly. Unit size it seems to have some influence on gaining experience.

I notice that if a large unit gives enemy a lot of casualties but suffers none it will not gain much experience, but if the same large unit also suffers a lot of casualties it will gain more experience. Perhaps the formulae is a ratio of men left to casulaties inflicted. If this is the formulae then it doesn't make sense to me as it implies that the soldiers left standing did all the damage. In real life war, often the survivors are the blokes who hid behind the hay stack and it's the brave that die.

I like the plans of NER to change the start experience of French faction. I hope how the units earn experience can be also be tweeked?

[Shaggy1973]

units are lumped into land and naval for experience. unfortunately the line infantry are fairly toothless when it comes to kills. i feel they tire a bit too quickly through reloading/shooting and become very prone to breaking due to fatigue. you therefore have very large units breaking when charged by even light cavalry, and cavalry pick up huge kill rates and level quickly. Artillery too level quite fast. it is possible to deploy artillery quite close to the AI and decimate them, as the ai musket fire is quite ineffective.

we therefore have artillery and cavalry becoming effective very early due to the experience system (large early bonuses) and the initial line units are still one chevron after 20 battles...

i feel we need to rebalance the units. granted you need line infantry, mainly as a defense against cavalry charges - but they should be more.

i have done some experiments based on the NER packs, and found that slowing down reload rates but increasing lethality works well. I upped lethality at closer range and increased the scatter value so long range is still fairly ineffective. also reduced the fatigue drain for firing and reloading so a unit loses morale less quickly without unit losses or artillery fire. also increased morale bonuses for protected flanks etc.

If a unit fires less often but kills more, they have a chance to earn some experience more. you also bring in more tactics around the hold fire ability.

to me battles seemed more realistic with slower musket fire.

we should also consider slowing cannon fire down too, but increase lethality. i hate seeing men get back up after being hit by a cannon ball. with slower cannon fire, AI line infantry may be able to storm my cannon firing grape shot without routing more often. i sometimes win battles i should have lost just with three cannons firing grape against approaching line units.

[JaM]

it will be easier to gain experience points by combat in next version.

[Davius]

If a unit fires less often but kills more, they have a chance to earn some experience more. you also bring in more tactics around the hold fire ability.

to me battles seemed more realistic with slower musket fire.

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For what it's worth I concur with this.