Gaining unit experience

[menawati]

Any tips on building up experience on melee units ? Comes easy for archers but it always seems really slow for melee.....I put my melee troops in the fray and they fight for ages then maybe 1 bronze chevron if I'm lucky.
Even a troop half dead fighting on a wall for ages...no experience.
If I autoresolve I get MUCH better experience for my troops.

[Muffer Nl]

That is true. I believe you need to kill two for every unit in the battalion.

[old_dude]

That is true. I believe you need to kill two for every unit in the battalion.

No, that's not right. Watch the statistic screen. Sometimes a unit will gain experience without engaging in any combat and sometimes they get none with a 10:1 kill:death ratio. Experience seems to be gained by a hidden accumulative point system much like how guilds are offered. I imagine it goes like this: points for being deployed + points for prisoners caught + points for kills - points for casualties. Once a units points pass a certain threshold you get a shiny chevron. As for fostering a highly veteran unit either just keep it alive and used the entire campaign or auto resolve vs rebels and merge like Maltacus said.

Have a nice weekend.

[muller227]

No, that's not right. Watch the statistic screen. Sometimes a unit will gain experience without engaging in any combat and sometimes they get none with a 10:1 kill:death ratio. Experience seems to be gained by a hidden accumulative point system much like how guilds are offered. I imagine it goes like this: points for being deployed + points for prisoners caught + points for kills - points for casualties. Once a units points pass a certain threshold you get a shiny chevron. As for fostering a highly veteran unit either just keep it alive and used the entire campaign or auto resolve vs rebels and merge like Maltacus said.

Have a nice weekend.

I believe it is an average per surviving soldier in the battalion, and I think they put the best in the front line. So your best continually get killed when you fight the battles yourself. autoresolve is probably random. What I do is build two combine them when they get low enough and then retrain after I have fought that unit down. I can usually reach 3 silver chevrons retrain gold is easy after that. Pick one or two units and continually use them to hit flanks or rear you will be surprised at how much more quickly they advance. Also pushing your troops into the fray by clicking behind your target brings more into the fight at once it really helps though you lose a few while marching. or very long lines given mass by stacking units on top of one another works ok as well. The trick seems to be to get as many of your men swinging away at once rather than patiently waiting their turn as possible. I'm an xp junkie don't know why.

[HolyDevil]

250x2= 500, so yea....good luck xD, anyway evil faction horde units re cannon fodder most of the time, so don't worry, as for good guys, it should be "easier" if they don't get 4 horde units against them...

still, its indeed hard

[Maltacus]

If you combine two decimated units after a battle so you get one full company and one with very few soldiers, those few sometimes gain a chevron - I guess it is the games way of depicting how all the veteran soldiers gather together. Then you can retrain the small unit which should keep most of the experience. I almost always find that no melee units gain chevrons from the battle but when I start to reorganise the army the "real" experience shows.

[dannyalex]

i had some days before an army of eriador faceing an army from isengard i use only my 12 battalions of archers and after the battle my cavalry earn 2-3 experience without get them involved,how is that?

[SinerAthin]

How to raise veterancy of an unit:

- Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. Just let them butcher like it was the judgement day.
- Retrain the unit in a friendly settlement. That way, you refill their number, AND you preserve their veterancy. One single three gold star infantryman can be trained up to full, threee gold star unit strenght as long as the unit just survives.

Unfortunately, due to the horrible reinforcement system in Total War: Medieval, it means that if you want a proffessional melee army, you'll need to be sitting in a city, or else you can simply not afford to turn back to your settlement with the necessary buildings to retrain your troops, as it'll be 5 turns away.

In Empire, they solved the problem by allowing you to reinforce units in one turn anywhere on the campaign map supplied you had the buildings and technology in exchange for enough gold. HOWEVER, that's in Empire, and the problem is, and will remain unsolved in Medieval and its mods/expansions.

[W1Z21]

well easiest way is auto-resolving battles... sure you are gonna loose some men.. but you can gain alotta experience... like if its an easy battle (say a full or half stack vrs 1 or 2 units) just auto resolve and BAM lots of XP

also trolls earn XP VERY fast.. killing a single group with a group of trolls give about 3 ranks

[Rane]

Well the best way I have found to gain experiance is once you rout and enemy .. charge your forces out and if you capture - 1000+ the units involved get a HUGE chunk of experiance *note this is epic for your generals and calvary* I know this can be hard for meele units.. but if you watch the battle long enough and have flanked your enemy already before the run for there lives you can really stock up on the experiance - works wonders against horde armies.

[Watcher in the Water]

The three things you need to know about unit experience:

1. Experience is kept track of on an individual soldier level. The displayed unit experience is an average of all the soldiers in the unit.

It is possible, though not probable, to have one or more soldiers with max experience in a unit that displays no experience.

2. When combining units, it is the soldiers with the least amount of experience that move.

By using your most experienced unit to replace the losses in your other units, it will rid itself of its least experienced troops, thus quickly attaining silver and gold chevrons. In this process, you may see the experience of the other units rise as well, as the least experienced of your elite may still be better than the average of the unit they move to. Rinse and repeat.

3. When retraining, a unit retains its experience level.

Presumably, the fresh recruits reap the benefits of training alongside your veterans. Thus a ragged handful of battle-hardened survivors can become a full unit of veteran warriors in one turn.

By sending you finest away from the front lines to act as trainers, you sacrifice some short-term battle strength, but the return on that investment will be tremendous. With a bit of micromanaging, you can have units with 3 gold chevrons in all your retraining centres, greatly increasing your armies' fighting capabilities.


Two final notes:

- There seems to be a threshold below which units start losing experience for no apparent reason. Personally, I try to avoid letting a unit drop below 1/3 of its original strength. Your mileage may vary.

- The order with which you combine your units has a small effect on the distribution of experience within your army. If you start by refilling your 2nd best from your best, your 3rd from your 2nd etc etc, there is a chance for a "poor" soldier to move through all the units and end up at the bottom of the pile. If you go the other way, refilling 10th from 9th, 9th from 8th etc etc, each soldier can move once at the most. Which method you prefer is largely a matter of taste, and you can do it randomly with no ill effects as long as you remember to always use the superior units to reinforce the inferior, and send your best back for retraining.
Also, once the unit(s) in your retraining centre reach 3 gold chevrons, it no longer matters which unit you send back for replenishment, so if you prefer an army where all units have similar experience levels you should send back your least experienced units.

[zax]

By sending you finest away from the front lines to act as trainers, you sacrifice some short-term battle strength, but the return on that investment will be tremendous. With a bit of micromanaging, you can have units with 3 gold chevrons in all your retraining centres, greatly increasing your armies' fighting capabilities.

I would like to ask what that exactly means? Can i use my high experience unit for creation of new units or what?
Otherwise, thank for info

[Harabec]

I would like to ask what that exactly means? Can i use my high experience unit for creation of new units or what?
Otherwise, thank for info

What Watcher in the Water is saying is to send your low-strength but high-experience units back to your cities and castles capable of recruiting them to be retrained. By retraining the unit, they maintain their level of experience after being brought back to full-strength. This will provide you with a greater number of experienced units than merging the depleted unit with another depleted unit because every soldier gained through being retrained has the experience of the veterans in the unit.

Hope I was clear enough.

[Mikail Mengsk]

good post, +rep

[Rane]

Nice one mate!

[odyseusz79]

@zax, Harabec

I think that Watcher's idea is more powerful than simply sending units back to be retrained. He advocates first using a high level unit to reinforce a low-level unit (even if only the lowest-level soldiers move, that could still improve the level of the low-level unit) and THEN retraining the high-level unit. The net result is two full-strength units with higher experience levels (hopefully) than you would get if you simply retrained both.

This could be a very good strategy. If you have, say, a 0 xp unit with 20 soldiers and a 6 xp unit with 140 soldiers (full unit size is 150, for example), then if you simply retrain both, you will get 150 0 xp soldiers and 150 6 xp soldiers. BUT, if you first merge the 140 into the 20, you will get 150 (hopefully) 2-3 xp soldiers plus 10 soldiers with at least 6 xp (maybe MORE, since the lowest-level soldiers have been removed). If you then retrain the 10-man unit, you end up with 150 soldiers at 2-3 xp (hopefully) and 150 soldiers with at least 6 xp (7-8 hopefully) - a much better result.

[Watcher in the Water]

@zax, Harabec

I think that Watcher's idea is more powerful than simply sending units back to be retrained. He advocates first using a high level unit to reinforce a low-level unit (even if only the lowest-level soldiers move, that could still improve the level of the low-level unit) and THEN retraining the high-level unit. The net result is two full-strength units with higher experience levels (hopefully) than you would get if you simply retrained both.

This could be a very good strategy. If you have, say, a 0 xp unit with 20 soldiers and a 6 xp unit with 140 soldiers (full unit size is 150, for example), then if you simply retrain both, you will get 150 0 xp soldiers and 150 6 xp soldiers. BUT, if you first merge the 140 into the 20, you will get 150 (hopefully) 2-3 xp soldiers plus 10 soldiers with at least 6 xp (maybe MORE, since the lowest-level soldiers have been removed). If you then retrain the 10-man unit, you end up with 150 soldiers at 2-3 xp (hopefully) and 150 soldiers with at least 6 xp (7-8 hopefully) - a much better result.

This is the point exactly. A half-strength unit with 3 xp will retrain into a full-strength unit with 3 xp. If you instead use a 9 xp unit to replenish the 3 xp one, you should get a full-strength unit with 6 xp. The remaining half-strength 9 xp unit can then be retrained, retaining its full 9 xp.


Along the same lines, it is as a rule best to avoid a total merger of units, ie combining two units who have less than 100% strength put together. This will waste the experience of one of the units, as it will have to be replaced by a totally fresh one.
(Unless, of course, you're actually trying to reduce the number of that unit type.)

As with all basic guidelines, strategic and economic considerations will at times make it necessary to use your units differently.

[zax]

This is the point exactly. A half-strength unit with 3 xp will retrain into a full-strength unit with 3 xp. If you instead use a 9 xp unit to replenish the 3 xp one, you should get a full-strength unit with 6 xp. The remaining half-strength 9 xp unit can then be retrained, retaining its full 9 xp.


Along the same lines, it is as a rule best to avoid a total merger of units, ie combining two units who have less than 100% strength put together. This will waste the experience of one of the units, as it will have to be replaced by a totally fresh one.
(Unless, of course, you're actually trying to reduce the number of that unit type.)

As with all basic guidelines, strategic and economic considerations will at times make it necessary to use your units differently.

Oh me Gawd, i have a batch of 4-6 lvl veterans of particulary hard and bloody battle of Minas Morgul, (2k of Gondorian finest militia against 7k orcs, Boromir gained The Infanryman epiteth) now, i can has more cheesburgers in me basket.

[Harabec]

Yea, I forgot about that part.
Watcher provides a very good description of how the merge and retrain works and how to get the most out of the system.