Quick Question

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

So I was playing on my British campaign in M2TW and noticed something in TW that I've never seen before, but probably normally happens.
First, one of my cavalry units was run down to 8 men. They were around silver 1 in chevrons. Through out the mop up I was able to get them to gold 2, I'm assuming that is because there were so few of them, and they had killed so many. After the battle, back on the campaign map I noticed that the unit now had 23 men, which is normal, but had only 2 silver chevrons. Where did my experience go and why? What is the reasoning behind it? Also, it made me really mad... I don't get a whole lot of gold units...

Thanks in advance for answering, and I'm sorry if this is a silly question.

[Vissewalde rex de Gerzika]

The XP was reduced because there are suddenly so many of them again and the xp gets balanced out between them not to make the golden chevrons so easy to acquire.

Its the english not british campaign btw

[tudor93]

After the battle they were 23 (instead of 8) because 15 guys got healed. And now, the gold-silver chevron issue. Only those 8 guys got into the action and gained experience, while their wounded fellows laid hopelessly on the ground (so those guys didn't get any battle experience). The game calculates the unit as a whole, not every men from that unit, so you can't have in the same unit 10 experienced guys and 50 newbies. So, in your case, it calculated the average experience. A few guys with gold experience + a bigger number of guys with 1 silver chevron = 2 or 3 silver chevron unit(it depends on the numbers, I'm not an expert, but I somehow undestand the mechanics).
The same principle applies when retraining a unit. Let's say a spearmen unit has 60 men in it, you go into many battles and the unit is left with 15 gold chevron experienced guys. When you retrain the unit 45 newbies are added to your unit. The game can't make them gold chevron vetrans, but neither ignores the gold chevron guys, so it will make the whole unit 3 bronze chevrons (or 1 silver chevron, it depends on the numbers, as I said before).

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Ok thanks guys. That's kinda annoying, those injured guys did stuff. They should get xp. I hope in Rome 2 theres a way some of the unit can be experienced veterans and some of it noobs.

[poisoned goat]

Actually when retraining, the new units will get the experience of the existing units. Individual men within a unit have their own experience, and this is averaged out and displayed as the number of chevrons. This is why when combining 2 depleted stacks into 1 full and 1 depleted stack, the experience of the 2 resulting units can vary pretty wildly. For example, when combining a unit with 61 and 60 men (max 120) into one full stack and one stack with 1 man, sometimes that 1 man stack gets 0 experience even though both parent stacks have 2/3 gold chevrons. That's why when I combine units, I try to make sure that the severely depleted stack has 3+ men. And when you retrain them, they keep their experience. I'm pretty sure of this, because that's how I keep my super-elite forces at full strength =D

How this applies to healing units, I'm not too sure because I've seen both things happen.

[Dr. Conquest]

I always thought it was a bit strange how you can retrain, say, 5 men with a gold chevron into 75 men with the same experience across the board [i.e. how did the new recruits get to be so good?], yet when you merge units, or a general's bodyguard recovers from losses, the experience gets averaged out instead.

[Dude with the Food]

Think about it. The new guys get retrained by the elite warriors. They join up all eager to fight as best as they can and seeing the gold chevrons of the super-soldiers, ask them in help being the best. Seasoned veterans already on a silver bar will have faith in what they know. IT has got them that far, why should somebody else tell them how to better, they've proved they're better than average anyway.


Edit - Or it's a designing oversight.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Hmmm.... So some of you are saying the individual soldier has experience and others are not? Also when retraining do the troops keep all of their chevrons? And thanks for the replies.

[Dr. Conquest]

Hmmm.... So some of you are saying the individual soldier has experience and others are not? Also when retraining do the troops keep all of their chevrons? And thanks for the replies.

Yes, and that is the benefit of retraining. However, you cannot retrain a general's bodyguard unit. Lost men are replenished automatically over subsequent turns. The side effect is that you may see the unit's experience drop as this happens, because the same value gets averaged out over an increasingly higher number of men.

[Aeratus]

Individual soldiers have their own experience. When retraining a unit, all new recruits have an experience value that is the average of the pre-existing soldiers.