Veterancy

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Does anyone know how to maintain veterans? I've fought 45 battles in 41 turns and have no units over 3 bronze chevrons. Most of the units with bronze chevrons where in an army with a champion. One of my armies is rank 4 and has probably fought 5+ full scale battles. I find this kind if ridiculous that my veteran armies are only slightly better than the green troops that are being sent at me. In quieter campaigns I can often build veterans through buildings and champions but in this wild campaign with a ton of battles my troops are less veteran than some of my newly raised armies in other campaigns. Does anyone else think that either chevrons should give more bonus or combat should give more veterancy?

[Sealhuntah123]

Not playing the game until 1.0 so cant talk from own experiences but I agree that actual combat experience should give way more bonuses than fancy training

[Disarray]

Your lack of veterans could be due to unit replenishment. If a unit takes a thrashing in battle it will be veteran for sure, but as replacements come trickling in the unit in aggregate will be less experienced, even if there are veterans of several campaigns among the ranks. If you want to maintain a veteran unit you will find it more effective to fold depleted units of veterans together. Select one and shift click the other (or others if you have several battered units) and then hit ctrl+m and the units will merge. The experience of the units will be shared out among the unit and diluted less as any holes are filled with green men.

As for the balance of experience, I'm not sure. A man that has seen 20 battles isn't going to be much better at killing than one just out of training; there are only so many ways to kill a man and fighting in battles isn't like to teach a man how any better than a drillmaster. More willing to kill perhaps, although there is some psychology work that indicates that that willingness reaches a point of diminishing returns rather more quickly than most would expect. The biggest factor would likely be how quickly a unit will break, though I expect even that isn't as absolute as some would expect.

[Sealhuntah123]

Hm i disagree with you Disarray, I think you would learn a lot of things in battle that can't really be taught in training, and i think theres plenty of examples throughout history where the more experienced troops perform better than raw recruits :p

Also for the morale, true that the part about how willing a soldier is to kill others is debatable but I think his own fear of dying and thus unwillingness to enter battle has to be diminished with each battle, like how pretty much all things are scarier the first time you try it, parajumping for example.

Peace

[Disarray]

Hm i disagree with you Disarray, I think you would learn a lot of things in battle that can't really be taught in training, and i think theres plenty of examples throughout history where the more experienced troops perform better than raw recruits :p

Also for the morale, true that the part about how willing a soldier is to kill others is debatable but I think his own fear of dying and thus unwillingness to enter battle has to be diminished with each battle, like how pretty much all things are scarier the first time you try it, parajumping for example.

Peace

I'm not saying that vets wouldn't be more effective against enemies from the theater they fought in, just that the difference is more subtle. They would learn things that they don't go over in training, where the enemies' shields leave their holders blind or vulnerable for example, or how best to angle their shield to deal with sling shot as opposed to arrows. But these things alone wont make much of a difference in fighting effectiveness; yes they will be better but not that much better. And if they are moved to a new theater all that knowledge may not carry over, fighting in Gaul would no doubt be much different than fighting the Greeks. The real difference in fighting effectiveness is in the willingness to fight and kill, and that is largely only cultivated by fighting and killing.

When you get right down to it most people, roughly 80% is the figure that is commonly accepted in modern science, don't have it in them to kill other people, even them that were trained for front line combat until recently. Of that remaining 20% only around 5% will actively seek out a fight or try to kill another person. Veterans of fights from the old days typically ended up coming to terms with it or it broke them, as it can today; supposing of course that we haven't changed all that much since then and I suspect that we haven't. But all of this is rather academic if the game is better played, in terms of balance, with these factors mitigated or removed I suppose. If you want to find out more on this you could check out a book called On Killing. It covers the psychology of this better than I can, being written by a US Army psychiatrist and all. An intresting read if you are into the subject, though it gets a little preachy, near the end, on the topic of violence in media.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Your lack of veterans could be due to unit replenishment. If a unit takes a thrashing in battle it will be veteran for sure, but as replacements come trickling in the unit in aggregate will be less experienced, even if there are veterans of several campaigns among the ranks. If you want to maintain a veteran unit you will find it more effective to fold depleted units of veterans together. Select one and shift click the other (or others if you have several battered units) and then hit ctrl+m and the units will merge. The experience of the units will be shared out among the unit and diluted less as any holes are filled with green men.

As for the balance of experience, I'm not sure. A man that has seen 20 battles isn't going to be much better at killing than one just out of training; there are only so many ways to kill a man and fighting in battles isn't like to teach a man how any better than a drillmaster. More willing to kill perhaps, although there is some psychology work that indicates that that willingness reaches a point of diminishing returns rather more quickly than most would expect. The biggest factor would likely be how quickly a unit will break, though I expect even that isn't as absolute as some would expect.

So far my units haven't taken too much of a thrashing, but that is probably why they aren't gaining a ton of experience. However, new recruits may dilute the unit, but the vets can teach them a thing or too and lead them by example. Also, casualties aren't always deaths. Realistically, men could be injured in a battle, but return to their unit at a later date, depending on their wounds. Perhaps offensively veterancy does not play much of a role, but troops who had seen battle could probably maintain a better formation in the heat of battle than a unit who has never seen battle. It would also probably be harder to route an experienced unit. I'm not sure what the system should be, but perhaps stats could effect defense and morale more than offense. I feel like veterans should be worth a bit more. Hannibal's successes were probably in part due to his troops greater experience. However, at Zama his first lines of troops were less experienced than his opponents and were eventually cut down. His final force being equally experienced provided a hard fight for the Romans.

[KAM 2150]

As much as I would like to have better veterans, this one is bad gameplay wise, since AI is not able to maintain the same level of veteran units like the player. This leads to the point in which player can beat elite enemy units with his medium units, because they have much bigger stats thanks to exp. Although it sounds realistic, it makes mid and late game even easier. AI tends to lose battles all the time and player not.

[Sealhuntah123]

As much as I would like to have better veterans, this one is bad gameplay wise, since AI is not able to maintain the same level of veteran units like the player. This leads to the point in which player can beat elite enemy units with his medium units, because they have much bigger stats thanks to exp. Although it sounds realistic, it makes mid and late game even easier. AI tends to lose battles all the time and player not.

Fair enough, love how you always stand up for the poor AI !

Off topic do anyone in the DEI team have contact with Mitch ? I assume hes taking the holidays of modding but would be great to know when Populous is released since he said it would be about same time as dei 1.0

[KAM 2150]

Well, DeI 1.0 is going to be released propably tomorrow, so I doubt Mitch will finish his work in 24h; P

[KAM 2150]

As a person who makes money from fighting others in the ring and rescently aslo training other people, I can tell you that REAL experience is very important and real training starts when you need to fight other person. Typical training can only prepare you for what will come and what to do, but actual fighting techeas you how to do it. Plus training can teach you only to some extent, while becoming a true master at something demands actual fighting experience.

[Dresden]

Unit replenishment is the cause of losing chevrons.

There are a few ways outside of battle to gain xp for troops. They are slow but they are there. These include champions, the military academy, the drillmaster skill and garrisoning an army.

[Grizwald714]

I personally don't build buildings like the temple of Mars, training buildings ect... Because I don't think it's realistic for units to be recruited with such high experiece. So only way my troops get experience for the most part is through battles or if I use a champion which I only allow to train an army for a set number of turns and only in friendly territory.

I think it would be cool if units like veteran legionaries would be unrecruitable to the player at least instead after a unit of regular legionaries for example earns so much experience they are either automatically upgraded or you have to pay a small amount to upgrade them into veteran legionaries.

[Dresden]

Yes I would like to implement something like you are describing. It would probably have to require a technology though and I would have to look into if its possible to tie to xp.

[Disarray]

Could it be done via a unit upgrade? Like better horses or equipment upgrades? I'm not familiar with the limits of the programming in the game but something like having enough unit xp and the right building in the province seems to be a good idea to me.

[Sealhuntah123]

Have to say i find the physcology behind killing a really interesting subject ^^<--- This sentence came out a bit wrong xd

While we have not changed biologically much since then i think the mindset of people have changed a lot. People back then had often not travelled the world and could not find information on internet, so when a roman officer tells a soldier that the gauls are barely human and eat children the soldier would be more likely to believe it and be more willing to kill gauls, i would think that back then way more than 20% of people would be able to kill if they were told so by officers and they believed that the enemy was the devil :p

You could also argue that natural selection will over time make an army mostly consist of people who are willing to kill since the ones who are not will be more likely to be killed as they stand and preach peace :p

Gameplaywise would be cool if the AI had some way of gaining and maintaining veterancy so that the player could do it without being overpowered, maybe some script that makes AI troops gain experience passively or get it easier from battles.

Also KAM what is it you do ? MMA, boxing ? Swordfighting ?

[Disarray]

Honestly the "baby eating Gaul" tactic is still prevalent in modern military doctrines, just the words have changed with the target. It is simple dehumanization. If your enemy is less than human, or better yet not human at all, you don't have to feel bad about killing it, no more so than killing a rabid dog. "An oldie but a goody."

As for all that natural selection business, it doesn't really apply. Armies are built from societies and a fundamental part of society is not killing the people that you spend most of your time with. We, and our ancestors, were conditioned not to kill other people, hence the need for dehumanization of the people that needed killing. Combine that with the fact that military tactics of the day put a small minority of the army on the killing lines, the first two or three ranks of the formation in most cases, the bulk of the army didn't have to do any killing. All they had to do was brace for the guys in front of them and not run away. Other than that it was all posturing, trying to convince the enemy that whatever cause put them on the field wasn't really worth ending up dead for. The bulk of the army, then as now, isn't involved in the business of killing. But that doesn't make for compelling game play.

[Sealhuntah123]

Yes, i was actually gonna use an example from todays time, that people are made to think all muslims are suicide bombers, but didnt want to make it into a political debate :p.

It is true that it is the exact same technique used to dehumanize the enemy, but i feel like it must have been even easier to do effectively back then, people didnt travel as much and didnt have a chance to make own observations of other cultures, so people were much more likely to believe the military propaganda.

I kinda agree with all your points, except about combat training, like KAM said theres stuff you cant learn from training and I think soldiers become more efficient with every battle. Even if someone explained the rules of ice hockey to me 30 times i would still be the first game i played, but after 10 games I would learn from past experiences, just like soldiers would learn from past battles :p

[Butan]

It is very hard to level up units in actual DeI (probably will also be that way after next patch).

If as me, you dont like to use champions and other overpowered military buildings bonuses combinations... there is only one way : get them to die the least, but kill the most.
And the only ways to do that is to :

- never use them as main frontline units
- make sure they arent targetable by ranged as much as possible
- use them against rabble/inferior units or in superior situations against similar/stronger units (numerical, strategical, against routed units/armies)
- in case of approaching defeat, make them retreat out of the map first thing; in case of incoming victory place them in a way they will kill the most defenseless enemies possible


That way they wont lose chevrons because of repleneshing a lot of losses (all new guys are at lvl 0, so it balances out negatively with the experienced survivors), and they will max out their experience gain by slaughtering as much peeps as possible.
This tactic is extremely easy to use with fast units (cavalry units/chariots/elephants, very light infantry) that you want to level up : make them all time reserve, only send them to do the last moves before the win and continually ask them to charge closest routing units.
With normal/heavy infantry units its way harder, you will have most of the kills before the actual mass rout, or if you manage to funnel the routers on a way that you will have the time and dedication to place the infantry you want to exp.

I dont know how exactly the xp gain is calculated (if its the same for every kind of units for example, simply divided by the number of men per unit?), but when you manage to make a 100 guys kill a 1000 in one battle, they can instantly win 1 or 2 level. So its doable to focus exp the units you want if you want to and are able to.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

I see your point Kam. Hopefully with the 1.0 battle balance, I assume more expensive cav units and perhaps AI stacks with more cav the AI will provide stronger so that a slightly better veterancy system can be implemented. Recently fought a battle where my cav was hopelessly outgunned. Had I not outnumbered their cav and had better infantry no amount of tactics would have helped me win.

And Butan, yeah it is extremely difficult to level up your core heavy infantry. My cav fairs decently but sometimes gets cut up. My peltasts probably do the best because they do a lot of damage with no losses and then help mop up at the end. Another problem with the kills for xp system is that heavy infantry can not catch routing units for the most part. For the most part only cavalry is good at chasing down routing troops.

[KAM 2150]

Actually I think I might lower a bit first few lvls of experience, maybe not exactly for 1.0, but for one of first patches. I would need to test if first, since we don't want to have player and AI armies running with double, triple silver shevrons around 50th turn