Question about EXP:
Is there some kind of 10 EXP cap in the early game or from fighting barbs or something? I have played for a long time and I am surprised I only just noticed this but in a recent game I got a warrior to woodsman 3 and continued to crack barb skulls like crazy but with no increase in EXP. Whats the deal here?

It should be capped at 5 on animals and 10 on barbs.

It should be capped at 5 on animals and 10 on barbs.

Gotcha. So I can get to level 3 killing barbs but I have to actually fight the AI to get higher. How do people get woodsman 3/medic 3 units? Attaching the GG won't get me high enough once its already level 3 right? I guess you could bring him along on fights and try to mop up wounded units with him. Is it possible to attach a second GG? I guess Ive never tried it.

Gotcha. So I can get to level 3 killing barbs but I have to actually fight the AI to get higher. How do people get woodsman 3/medic 3 units? Attaching the GG won't get me high enough once its already level 3 right? I guess you could bring him along on fights and try to mop up wounded units with him. Is it possible to attach a second GG? I guess Ive never tried it.

People will either use him to mop up fights (not too hard with a 2x first strike unit vs damaged stuff) or use a 2nd GG.

Keep in mind that you can't attach 2 GG's to one unit. However, you CAN attach a GG to a 2nd unit with your gg medic being the other unit in the stack, bleeding 10 XP into your medic.

What I sometimes do is "share" a GG between an existing supermedic and a CR3 unit.
That can be enough to get the medic 3 to woods 3 as well, and I give leadership to the CR3 unit to get xp faster.

Usually medic or woodsman is good enough early in the game. I usually take woodsman becuase its safer to attack with and you can get woodsman 3 without the general. So you can get a few woodsman going and the highest exp survivor can eventually get the general.




Level Normal Char Promotion
2 2 2 Woods I
3 5 4 Woods II
4 10 8 Woods III
5 17 13 Combat I
6 26 20 Medic I
7 37 28 Medic II
8 50 38 Medic III
9 65 49 ?

I forget what triggers it, but you can also reset a unit's experience back to 10. I think it was upgrading the unit? Which is free for the general.

I can see attaching a GG for unlocking west point.

However, what is the marginal use of a super medic in most games? If you heal in a city in revolt (very typical), a medic I unit will heal any unit with > 1/4 of its health fully in 3 turns. A godly supermedic with WIII MIII will heal 55 hp/turn in such a city, so it would need 1-2 turns.

Unless you're stopping constantly to heal (only an option on marathon IMO), you're looking at minimal benefit and settling or even an offensive attachment might be more appealing.

I can see attaching a GG for unlocking west point.

However, what is the marginal use of a super medic in most games? If you heal in a city in revolt (very typical), a medic I unit will heal any unit with > 1/4 of its health fully in 3 turns. A godly supermedic with WIII MIII will heal 55 hp/turn in such a city, so it would need 1-2 turns.

Unless you're stopping constantly to heal (only an option on marathon IMO), you're looking at minimal benefit and settling or even an offensive attachment might be more appealing.

Not sure if I understand your point exactly. Are you saying the 1-2 turns saved healing is not worthwhile? If so, I would definitely disagree on that point. Also, what about healing in enemy territory during sieges? This can often keep things moving along by giving your offensive units a turn or two to heal while defenses are bombarded or let siege units heal while others do that work. I don't know the exact numbers but it seems to me like the supermedic helps a lot when in enemy territory.

Not sure if I understand your point exactly. Are you saying the 1-2 turns saved healing is not worthwhile? If so, I would definitely disagree on that point. Also, what about healing in enemy territory during sieges? This can often keep things moving along by giving your offensive units a turn or two to heal while defenses are bombarded or let siege units heal while others do that work. I don't know the exact numbers but it seems to me like the supermedic helps a lot when in enemy territory.

The variance between medic III and medic I is 15 hp/turn. Medic III only has 10 hp/turn on woods III by itself.

If you're healing while bombarding (I rarely do this, since bombarding seems to let the AI funnel another 3-4 units into the city if it takes more than a turn), then super medic can help, but if your units aren't damaged below 85 or 80 hp (medic I / woods III respectively), it won't help a whole lot.

Another problem is that units that attack or move are not eligible for healing, and once you take a city you probably don't want to sit just outside the city to heal (going in is worth 10 hp/turn and is often on the way anyhow). Medic III doesn't do anything until your damaged units don't move. But, for most of my wars, I want to be moving, so I'll tow damaged units along unless they're hurt badly. Often if I am stationary during bombardment or after cutting through the AIs hammer cities, medic I seems to cover enough hp, or at least enough that going medic III over having more XP or faster troop production doesn't seem like a good tradeoff...especially very early when a GG means stock CR II classical troops.

If you're running low on troop #'s, you'll heal before reinforcements usually. I find this the more relevant bottleneck in early game wars actually. Attacking even a small 6 city immortal AI with axes, you'd need >30 axes to not need reinforcements at some point, and it can be hard to do that before they get longbows without hitting them...but now it's not healing that's stopping you any more.

However if you're near west point it does make some sense since you can essentially unlock a 4 xp national wonder and create the medic at the same time. It also does guarantee heroic epic so it's not all bad...just not a gimme obvious choice IMO.

But, for most of my wars, I want to be moving, so I'll tow damaged units along unless they're hurt badly. Often if I am stationary during bombardment or after cutting through the AIs hammer cities, medic I seems to cover enough hp, or at least enough that going medic III over having more XP or faster troop production doesn't seem like a good tradeoff...especially very early when a GG means stock CR II classical troops.
Lets not also forget the contributions of promotions to the health of your stack during an invasion. Each time a unit reaches the next level it gets to repair half of its damage on the following turn. While rushing to wipe an opponent off the map before he gets the next defensive unit this health-via-promotion is not insignifigant.

Paradoxically, if you use Great Generals for medics instead of instructors then you will have lower experience troops who gain promotions faster, thus less need for a medic. Or if you use the Great Generals for instructors, your promotions will come more slowly, thus a medic would be a larger contributor to the health of the stack.

Or if you use the Great Generals for instructors, your promotions will come more slowly, thus a medic would be a larger contributor to the health of the stack.

This is only true if you immediately assign the promotions after you complete the unit. If you build a unit with instructors it may come with the exp for promotions, but just attack first and then assign them.

This is only true if you immediately assign the promotions after you complete the unit. If you build a unit with instructors it may come with the exp for promotions, but just attack first and then assign them.

He beat me to it. If you want you can even take 1 promo, attack, then take the other. If you cross another xp threshold, it's actually possible to attain a level and take the promo on the same turn this way. This is a powerful tactic for your foot soldiers if siege is the bulk of your damaging ability anyway.

I always turn this feature off,
anything that has a chance to kill a unit completely should ALWAYS give XP, remember, I could attack a barb with 99% chance to win, then get ganked by a horseman nearby because i became weak. This was a very bad decision by the designer, luckily its easily mod able.

I forget what triggers it, but you can also reset a unit's experience back to 10. I think it was upgrading the unit? Which is free for the general.

This happens to me when I upgrade cats/trebs to cannon, and cannon to artillery, but not other unit classes. I still play Warlords (mac :mad:) so i don't know if it changed in BTS, but I find it annoying. I'll have a treb 4 or 5 xp away from the next level or whatever and upgrade it only for it to then have 10/26 xp. annoying.

Is that just a weird game feature?

I forget what triggers it, but you can also reset a unit's experience back to 10. I think it was upgrading the unit? Which is free for the general.

Generals that upgrade do not get the XP reset, they keep all XP earned.

This is a good thing though, because when XP earned for a unit resets back to 10 (well, it is capped to 10 if it is over that amount), the amount needed for the next promotion increases. For example if you have 35/37 XP Knights with no general, and upgrade them to Cavalry they change to 10/37 XP, and so you go from needing 2XP for the next promotion, to needing 27XP. With a GG attached they would stay at 35/37 XP.