Unit experience, myths and facts

[boxleitnerb]

After reading in several forums, I am confused.

What is definitely true:

1. Units get experience by killing and not being killed (not true, if the inexperienced soldiers are dying and the experienced remain - see 2.)
2. Every soldier in a unit has his own experience. The majority determines the experience of the unit.
3. Killing routing/"fighting to the death" soldiers gives only 20% XP points.

However, in some areas opinions differ:

Retraining:
4.a. New recruits are inexperienced.
4.b. New recruits have the same level as the unit in retraining.

Merging units:

5.a. Experience level can drop/rise depending on the units involved.
5.b. There is an exploit where you merge a higher ranked unit into a lower ranked one (I think this is the only possible direction?) and both units ALWAYS get/keep the high experience level, regardless of the number of men transferred and their individual experience level. Exploit would only be usable if 4.b. were true.

What are your opinions/experiences on this topic? What is the best way to gain experience?
Retraining or merging? Situation dependent (strength, experience of the units involved - close together or far apart)?
Retraining often, even if the unit only sustained minimal losses, or more rarely?
Do other factors influence experience gaining? :

Number of battles
Type of victory
Opponent strength (outnumbered or not)
Not only killing single soldiers but routing a whole unit
Presence of a general (possibly with specific traits) on the battlefield

There was one particular case when I laid siege to a city with only 42 cav as garrison. I went in with hoplites, killed them all with minimal losses. The hoplites did not gain experience...but the archers, that stood idly in front of the walls and picking their noses went up one chevron...WTF? They had not a single loss, kill - not any involvement at all.

[Chris Death]

4c is true - new recruits have the experience they are getting from the settlement where they are being retrained and as each soldier has his own
experience the unit will get the experience level like you described in point 2.

5b no and no - lower ranked units can be merged to higher ranked and vice versa - everything else depends on which soldier (since they have all their
separate experience like you said in 2) has been moved to where. You can merge and remerge and sometimes you get it that way that you at the and
have 2 units of the same higher exp but it can also go the other way around. However you can correct that by remerging again a few times.

Due to that merging or retraining is no help at all to gain experience unless you are retraining in a settlement where you get higher exp anyway.
To check this you can go in the recruitement section of the settlement and right-click that unit card for recruiting - on your left should pop up
a scroll where you can see wich experience level is given there.

Battles is the only other factor that gives you more experience.

About the formula how experience gaining during battles is managed i don't know enough to speak about it so others might follow to do that.
As far as i know - the presence of a general will not take influence on that.

~S~ CD

[Genius of the Restoration]

Here's a good link that answers some of your questions. I'll write back when I've got some time a bit later

edit: changed my mind, just read the link