How does unit experience work in Medieval 2?

[Sargon_of_Akkad]

It seems totally different to Rome, where the units got a stat increase every level. It seems they just get an attack bonus every three now - are there any other effects??

[Georgy Zhukov]

Their Morale is higher and their more likely t stay in place then retreat if your losing, and their quality is just better.

[Mad Luddite]

In Rome, BI, and Alexander, each level of experience gave +1 to attack, missile attack, and defense. In medieval, every 3 levels gives +1 to attack, but each chevron also adds +1 morale, and some other things like attack speed that you can easily notice when you ask a silver cavalry unit to chase down routing enemies.

[sparty]

I apologize for the ignorance of this question ahead of time.

How critical is it then to conserve units for higher experience over time? If the results come less quickly does that mean there is a much greater difference in unit experience in the end game or does it mean that before you can get your units sufficiently experienced they end up dead?

[Strom]

Using a combination of merging wounded units and retraining them it's fairly rare for a unit to be completely destroyed as long as you're fighting on your terms.

By the end game, though, I don't think that it matters too much. You generally have so much income and so many unit production centers that you can easily throw together armies and those armies can easily beat most enemy armies one on one. So unit experience is a nice to have, but rarely that vital.

Btw, wounded units tend to get experience a lot more quickly than whole units. Grab a wounded cavalry unit (say 8 guys left) and use it to chase down as many routers as possible in one battle and it can gain 4 or 5 experience (I once had a general gain 7 experience in one battle). Do this a couple of times, then retrain the unit to have a 3 gold chevron cavalry unit.

[sparty]

Great tips thanks Strom.

[Old Geezer]

Archers (and presumably all other missile units) get a slight increase in accuracy for every chevron, also.

[sparty]

That's pretty handy to be certain. If a unit is a mix like mounted archers will you get both the mounted troop chevron benefits AND the benefits for archers?