Unit experience - so what?

[Jacek]

How do I maintain or boost unit experience? Since battles in AACW are bloody those experienced soldiers seem to die too fast to earn chevrons of silver or gold. Sholud I seek a general like Hardee with Train Unit trait? Should I merge depleted experience units with other depleted experience units? I know AACW is strategic-level game but individual units with high experience could make a difference in the West.

[rickd79]

This is a problem....I've been meaning to post about this myself.

Currently, I'm pretty sure the only way for a unit to gain experience is if it fully eliminates another unit during a battle (of course all of this is calculated behind the scenes during the battle resolution)

I'm pretty sure the "Training Officers" only advance regiments from "conscript" to "regular infantry" status...which is good, but this has nothing to do with the experience "star" rating.

It would be good if some sort of adjustment could be made so that regiments gain experience based on the number of battles that they have taken part in. Even better would be if the unit's performance during the battle could be taken into account (# of casualties inflicted, whether it routed or not, etc.)

[PhilThib]

This is a major improvement in our engine, but we are thinking about it

[Jacek]

Well, I would just like some chance of survival for these units. So far the Virginia theater has been a meat-grinder. I thought about moving those experienced units to the West to save them from utter destruction in the East.

BTW, how many stars have your most experienced unit earned?

[gbs]

Two stars. Havn't seen three yet.

[veji1]

I have seen one and two stars often, and I have had quite many divisions with silver symbols and a few with golden ones, so I guess it works fine...

[Pocus]

we can add a small experience bonus if an element hits another element rather fast though.

[Adam the VIth]

we can add a small experience bonus if an element hits another element rather fast though.

What if you make the bonus really, really small? That way it will still take time to gain experience, but it will in fact be taking place in each battle?

Will likely take some testing to see the appropriate benefits, but could be the most doable answer, rather than making major changes to game engine.

[Jacek]

Do you lose experience when your veteran units recieve new replacements?So far I haven't noticed that but I add replacements as soon as I vet units suffer any losses. Maybe when such units are really depleted i.e 25 % of original manpower, then adding replacements dilutes experience. Can anyone confirm that?

[Pocus]

yes you lose experience

[Jacek]

I thought so. Thx anyway!

[Jacek]

One more thing. My unit has now all silver ribbons instead of bronze ones since it got some experience while destroying enemy elements. Yet when I examine each element of the unit it seems that i.e one element has 3 stars and the second has none. Does that mean that experience stars are added and then divided by the number of elements in this unit? How many experience stars does a 5-element unit have to earn to get silver ribbons? Is it 5? How does it work?

Thx

[Pocus]

the unit is an agregation of elements. The ribbons you see are shown on the unit, so are an average of the experience level of the elements. Silver = on average 1 exp level I believe.

[Jacek]

That would fit. Say you achieve gold ribbons and still get more experience stars. I guess then it only augmets a unit'soverall efficiency in combat and maximum cohesion level. Is that right?

[Jagger]

If you look at the combat statistics of each element, you will notice that experienced units have stronger stats than non-experienced units. Those experienced units can become very powerful in combat.