Historical rationale for losing leaders not gaining experience?

[DDLAfan]

This has bugged me since ACW1. Why do only winning leaders gain experience? To me one of the major aspects of the war was that both sides (especially the Union) were able to winnow out the fops by trial and error. Losing to Lee in 1862 sucked, but the silver lining was the North was able to recognize and promote officers of merit, even if they fought in a losing battle.

In my PBEM as the rebs, it's late 1863 and I still have Humes, Smith and Forney leading corps. I have not been fortunate in my battles, and have yet to promote anybody.

I can understand if this is WAD for playability's sake, but historically losing generals gained battlefield experience too.

[pgr]

I may have been wrong, but I believe in my play experience I have "lost" battles, but some participating leaders still gained experience (and seniority.) If i remember correctly, the experience gain is defined in the game logic file. Basically every leader gains experience when units under its command score hits and loose experience every time his own units suffer losses. I think it is 2-1 ratio for kills to losses, so in a draw, where both sides suffer roughly the same number of hits, all leaders should gain experience. If you have losses more than 2 to 1 though, then your leaders will probably be treading water.

[Gray Fox]

"Leaders that survive the battle may gain experience based upon their ratio of losses suffered/losses inflicted (even Leaders on the losing side)."

http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Combat_Explained#Hitchances_in_the_Fire_Phase

[Merlin]

I can confirm pgr and GF. I've lost several lopsided victories and gotten increases to leader experience.

[Gray Fox]

It might help to put a good 2-star in command of only a Division in a Corps commanded by a so-so 2-star. Their individual Division may score a better ratio than all the Divisions in a Corps they would command. Perhaps a quicker path to 3-stars?

[pgr]

It might help to put a good 2-star in command of only a Division in a Corps commanded by a so-so 2-star. Their individual Division may score a better ratio than all the Divisions in a Corps they would command. Perhaps a quicker path to 3-stars?

I'm not sure that would help all that much. A big corps with multiple divisions will funnel experience from all divisions to the main commander. And regardless of how the experience bonus gets distributed between division and corps commanders, the base experience gains comes from killing enemy units. In combat, the stack commander is more important in boosting combat stats than the division commanders. So if you want to get a 2 star to three, (or a 1 to two etc), give him the biggest force he can handle and go crush isolated enemy units to run up the number of elements destroyed.