*Three* gold chevrons? Really?

[Gunodd]

How do you do it? Is it even possible for infantry, or just cavalry and archers? I assume you never auto-resolve? I want an experienced army. All my units die eventually. Any tips? Other than the brrrrilliant "Don't die."

[DeMolay]

If you are using SS6.3 , it's pretty easy to get it after some time , you just have to make sure that you never lose one precious unit , always retrain them .

for instance , recently in my England campaign , i used the same 6 units of longbowmen for nearly 100 turns , and they had gold chevrons (every battle when they have height and protected , they have like minimum 150 kills , maximum around 330-350 kills , just fight about 20 big battles with them and you get the chevrons pretty easily ) .


It's even easier with heavy or light cavalry , basically always retrain them , because they make a lot of kills per battles if you use them well by always flanking when you can , and they capture a lot of soldiers when the AI is routing , so you get the chevrons very easily , after something like 10 battles , i think you are already in gold chevrons more or less (always good to use them against small rebellions of peasants )

For heavy infantry , it's more or less the same although longer to get chevrons as they are slow so they rarely capture many soldiers . For other type of units , they are "expandable" (light infantry , spears etc) , i never get gold chevrons with them , in any case it is more difficult because these units do not kill much , they hold the line so it takes a really long time to get gold chevrons with them , but ok , they are light , so fast moving ,thus after many battles it's still possible to get silver-gold chevrons by taking prisoners when the ennemy routs

[Ishan]

Console seems to work for some people.
Anyways catching routers is the best way to do it.

[Tears of Destiny]

My artillery (Mangonels) usually reach that, but for anything else that is infantry that can not shoot, they never hit gold in my games unless they are heavy infantry.

[roy34543]

Its supposed to be very hard, but its definatly possible. The easiest way is to have one army composed of mostly one type of unit , and merge the most experience units together.

[philipjd]

Auto-resolve is the best way to get your infantry experienced, not sure how the ai works it out, but always seems to get more xp (and much greater losses also though) than actualy fighting a battle.

[k/t]

Get the Swordsmiths' Guild Headquarters and then join lots of Crusades.

[teks]

k/t said it.
Dont forget the most important part. Don't merge your vets!!!
I try to keep a fresh backup army. When any unit with some experience gets hurt I send him back to the nearest castle, and replace him.
Rebels are the #1 source of great experience
Also You might as well just get 1 gold chevron. I don't think there is a difference...is there?

[Gunodd]

One of my good generals managed to get a gold chevron today after defeating a lot of small HRE stacks they decided to walk past my city on their way to the front. I'm getting the hang of "crashing down" on my enemy and causing mass routing, but I really need to learn some way to counter enemy cav. When enemy cav is charging, should I stand still / charge / schiltrom / run the opposite direction / what? It seems more than a little strange that they wouldn't point the pointy end of their metallic-wooden alloy thingamabobs at the enemy.

As for getting any guilds, I haven't managed (other than theologians / merchants and stuff like that, which in contrast to being offered a knights chapter is like getting a sweater for Christmas when you were hoping for that new gaming console all your friends got and didn't even require a special occasion for) anything else than what I included in the parenthesis which begs the question if I even really need it, but whatever.

Also, doesn't chasing down routers (along with a whole slew of other strategically sound and warranted decisions) make me evil and reflect badly upon my whole entire nation?

[Hadrian I]

When enemy cav is charging, should I stand still / charge / schiltrom / run the opposite direction / what?

Form schiltrom, but not during the charge ! Otherwise you will suffer heavy losses. Or you could try and order them to run quickly to the left or right, hoping that it is just out of range of the enemy cavalry charge, so the enemy cavalry will have to make a hard swing and engage in melee, instead of charging. Works very well, with cavalry vesus cavalry.

[Paladin94610]

Form schiltrom, but not during the charge ! Otherwise you will suffer heavy losses. Or you could try and order them to run quickly to the left or right, hoping that it is just out of range of the enemy cavalry charge, so the enemy cavalry will have to make a hard swing and engage in melee, instead of charging. Works very well, with cavalry vesus cavalry.

When I play as Hungary, in the early game, I have no [Spearmen] unit type. Croat Axemen, Slav Levies are doubtlessly light infantry. The only abundant spear wielding unit, the Spear Militia is also [Light Infantry]. Since they are light infantry they will make no significant opposition against cavalry charges. So I form stagger formation. It reduced +40% casualties. I used Slav levies for this cannon folding role. I once trapped and killed whole unit of Scholarii using a unit of Slav levies and 3 units of Croat Axemen in staggered formation with light casualties. Croat Axemen are the only who can rise up against the might of Scholarii and Athanati.

[teks]

you choose what you do to the routers after combat. I did not think capturing counted towards experience. My units lose their chevrons gained this way after battle.

Against horses
spearmen, and pikes take it, and hold the line
two-handers, and swordmen charge (anticipate dissapointment)
archers run!!!! if you time it right (the AI always does) the retreat will negate the charge, and reduce casualties.

[Ichon]

Merging units is the easiest by far but not always necessary I don't usually try to get 9 chevrons but I've done it with Holy Canons and some other units defending Jihad or Crusade.

With weaker units like Pavise spearmen or something you might get 9 xp without merging but its easy to get 7 xp relatively early in the game with a few units by merging and once you get a core of high xp units you can then use those to promote up the rest to 3-4 xp quite fast which can make a large difference in how easy battles go.

[SirRobin]

Um, three gold chevrons is the highest possible experience level, it's not supposed that you train up all your units to that standard. If you absolutely must, then it means lots of grinding.. it's not difficult, just tedious.

[sbroadbent]

How do you do it? Is it even possible for infantry, or just cavalry and archers? I assume you never auto-resolve? I want an experienced army. All my units die eventually. Any tips? Other than the brrrrilliant "Don't die."

Any unit that can consistently get a lot of kills is very easy to develop up into gold chevrons. With that said, the game gives the same stat boost to units whether they have 1 chevron or 3 chevrons.

It's important to note though that the chevrons the unit has is an average experience level of the individual soldiers. That is, some soldiers may have more experience, while others may have less. When merging units, the game gives or takes away chevrons based on the new average experience level.

One strategy to improving the experience of units is what I call 'smart merging'. Whenever I merge units, I always merge them so that there is always an excess of soldiers. If you merge two units into one, they will be averaged, so if you had a 4xp unit and a 2xp unit, you may end up with a 3xp unit, effectively losing the benefit of the 4xp unit which is an increase in attack.

That is, if the unit size is normally 60, I would merge a 30 soldier unit with a unit that has no fewer than 31 soldiers remaining, resulting in a full unit and a second unit with 1 (or more) soldiers. These smaller units I then send off to get retrained. If you merge them correctly, these smaller units will have high experience and when retrained, the unit will be at that level of experience. The key to correctly merging is to drag the higher experience unit into the lower experience unit. Never drag the lower experience unit into the higher. Also NEVER use the auto-merge 'M' key.

Depending on how many soldiers get transfered from one to the other, the lower experience unit may actually gain a chevron or two as more experienced veterans bump up the new unit's average experience level. The higher experience unit may also gain a chevron or two because the game may count the remaining soldiers as having an even higher experience level than previous.


If you merge a lower level unit into the higher level unit, the higher level unit will take on less experienced soldiers which may often result in the unit losing average experience.

In RTW when you retrained a unit, the game recalculated the unit's average experience as though you were recruiting fresh unexperienced soldiers. In M2TW the game doesn't recalculate this, therefore it will treat all new recruits to retrain the unit as being equivalent to the experience of the unit that is being retrained.

Also, doesn't chasing down routers (along with a whole slew of other strategically sound and warranted decisions) make me evil and reflect badly upon my whole entire nation?

Chasing down routers after the game gives you the option of ending the battle doesn't impact your factions reputation. What may happen is that your generals may start getting dread related traits (Winning First as I understand it), so this might not be an option if you want your generals to have high chivalry.

Once the battle is over, you can release prisoners to bump up your reputation, or even counter the dread a general may gain from continuing the battle to capture prisoners.

you choose what you do to the routers after combat. I did not think capturing counted towards experience. My units lose their chevrons gained this way after battle.

The game determines experience based on the survivors to enemies killed ratio. If a unit has killed or captured a lot of enemies and has lost most of it's unit, the game will reward that unit with a significant amount of experience. If at the end of the battle, the unit heals some of it's lost soldiers, the game recalculates the survivor to enemies killed ratio which may result in some of that experience being taken away. Also, sometimes the game will merge weakened units on it's own which may also impact the survivors to enemies killed ratio, and so the unit may appear to lose experience.

This is primarily why cavalry can get significant experience. Combined with it's low unit numbers, and it's potential to kill large numbers of enemies. Infantry on the other hand typically have the highest unit numbers, and not always a similar ratio of kills. Heavy Infantry which can survive and kill many enemies are also more likely to get experience.

[Disregard]

Skirmishers like javelin units can obtain experience rather quickly in defensive battles, park them right behind the spears at the gate and watch the terrible destruction. Cavalry by far is the easiest, ridiculous charge multiplier + capturing routers = easy experience. Its been 100 turns and I still have 2 out of the 4 starter Mailed Knights in my offensive stacks.

Ive gotten many spear militia units to 3 silver chevrons but most of them dont survive long enough or I tend to keep them in front-line cities for defensive purposes instead of bringing them on the offensive.

[Gunodd]

Big thanks for the answers, this thread has cleared up a lot.

[Gromovnik]

BTW. about routers, how are they calculated? I think that in Rome 5 routers would equal 1 battle kill (so you need 5 times more routers for the same experience effect), is it the same in M2?

[Black_ice_Spain]

retrain, ull keep the same exp but with full stacks.

Altho i never have gold chevrons. Only cavlary. Infantry some strange time... but i usually have an army with 7cav units gold with a good general which usually route enemy armies before the infantry fight. OR that plus elite infantry altho non-experienced which rapes everything anyways.

[Paladin94610]

I am currently playing as Hungary and my army of the East had several Spear Militia [Light Infantry] and most of them had 2 xp or 3 xp. If you want some xp for infantry, the best way is to lose much men and did the job done perfectly. You can retrain the depleted units while retaining their xp value frequently. Another tiring way is to take prisoners. Trap the prisoners with several units and grab them. Use reserved "fresh inf units" to take down tired enemy routing units. Use your cavalry to block their way and force them back to turn back only to meet your infantry hungry for xp. For archers, let them rout a unit or inflict very very high casualties completely using missiles. I used all these ways and my 3rd chevroned spear militia had more than 9 battle experience.
1) Counter sally of Belgrade
2) Counter sally of Scopia
3) Sally of Scopia
4) Battle of Thessalonica
5) Battle of Athens
6) Battle of Corithian Joint
7) Siege of Corinth
8) Battle of Crete
9) Battle of Rhodes
10) Sally of Scopia against Bulgar Uprising (quite long a list,)
It is obvious that Infantry are very hard to gain XP, but after they grab a chevron they hardly lose it unless they lost more than 95% of men. While the cavalry are fast to gain and lose XPs.
I hardly get XP for "spearmen" type though. (Eastern European Spear Militia is a Light Infatry type unlike the Northern European and Southern European counterparts.) The game seems to be hardcoded for light infantry to gain XP easier than Spearmen unit type.