XP Farming

Right now I'm surrounding Pacal's last city, beating it up while I wait for the Germans to actually take it, so I can liberate it. In the meantime, I'm collecting XPs for my units. This is taking an insanely long amount of time between promotions, so I suspect I'm missing something. Can someone answer a few questions?
- I know range units get XPs for shooting at something, but do they still get XPs if the city is down to 0 survival?
- How many XPs does a unit get for shooting at a city? In this case, the city has a population of 12 and a defense of 23.
- What is the cost in XPs for successive levels of promotions? I got a promotion for crossbowman with no promotions, but am I just wasting my time by having my 4-promotion units shoot?
- And does anyone have any general suggestions regarding XP farming?

Thanks,
Marigwen

Marigwen said:

Right now I'm surrounding Pacal's last city, beating it up while I wait for the Germans to actually take it, so I can liberate it. In the meantime, I'm collecting XPs for my units. This is taking an insanely long amount of time between promotions, so I suspect I'm missing something. Can someone answer a few questions?
- I know range units get XPs for shooting at something, but do they still get XPs if the city is down to 0 survival?

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No

Marigwen said:

- How many XPs does a unit get for shooting at a city? In this case, the city has a population of 12 and a defense of 23.

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Same as shooting a unit, doesn't depend on city size.

Marigwen said:

- What is the cost in XPs for successive levels of promotions? I got a promotion for crossbowman with no promotions, but am I just wasting my time by having my 4-promotion units shoot?

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XP costs increase by 10 per level from the previous level. So a lvl 5 unit costs 10 + 20 + 30 + 40 + 50 = 150 xp, which will take 50 xp to get to from lvl 4. Usually it's best to let all your units get to lvl 4 if you have the choice, so you get range or logistics. Getting the second one (lvl 5 for 3 attack + range + logistics) is usually easier because the unit will be in less danger.

Barracks + Armory give 30 xp, enough for a lvl 2 unit right away. Add a military academy and the Brandenburg Gate for lvl 3 units right out of production.

Marigwen said:

- And does anyone have any general suggestions regarding XP farming?

Thanks,
Marigwen

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Barbs can only get you 30 xp, or 2 promotions. Other than that, just make sure your valuable units are never in danger of dying. Also, if you want to fight someone, if you can lure their units away from their cities using workers or something, it can be much easier if you kill their army before taking the cities. Worker baiting takes a fair amount of practice though.

GerrardCapashen said:

Same as shooting a unit, doesn't depend on city size.

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it depends on the unit type as well, but I thought units get more experience from shooting cities than units. If I remember, ranged units get 2XP for shooting units and 3XP for shooting a city.

Does a melee unit with Military Tradition get something like 7XP for attacking a city?

And if I remember air units get the same XP for attacking units or cities?

You get more xp for shooting cities, 3 per shot instead of 2 for shooting moveable units. The honour policy Military Tradition which gives +50% xp, annoyingly rounded down not up, really helps, but honour will stunt your growth/happiness.
Melee units get 5xp (7 with Military Tradition) when they attack something and all units gain 2xp per enemy attack on them.

If you want to try out some of the later promotions sooner, pick the Zulus for their less-experience-per-promotion UA.

For xp farming a nice strategy is to steal a worker from a nearby CS and stay at war, then later run a melee unit (with cover if possible) around it to soak damage and pillage improvements while you hit the CS with ranged units.

Bimblecrumbs said:

For xp farming a nice strategy is to steal a worker from a nearby CS and stay at war, then later run a melee unit (with cover if possible) around it to soak damage and pillage improvements while you hit the CS with ranged units.

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This works especially well if you manage to get a city 2 tiles from the CS to heal 20hp per turn. Getting a cover melee unit that heals 20 and takes 25 damage can sit and take for quite some time while ranged units build up experience.

GerrardCapashen said:

I know range units get XPs for shooting at something, but do they still get XPs if the city is down to 0 survival?

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No

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This is actually a reason why it might be better to not upgrade your archers to CB's if you are farming XP on a CS or forward AI city: with CB's, especially if you have >4, the city will quickly drop down to zero. Even if archers are a bit squishy so need to retreat for R&R more often, the bottleneck when training against a single city quickly becomes city heal rate rather than archer damage/heal rate.

(and yes, shooting a city gives 3XP while shooting units gives 2XP, which means that to get from 15XP (barracks) to 100XP (range or logistics) will take almost 30 city shots...IIRC, with the honor policy you get 4XP per shot, meaning you still need 22 shots... )

Marigwen said:

Right now I'm surrounding Pacal's last city, beating it up while I wait for the Germans to actually take it, so I can liberate it. ..

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I don't think this 'liberate' thing will work.

You need to be careful with not upgrading the archers. If the AI can kill a unit in a single turn it will, even if it is at full health. If a CS will spawn a CB and shoot with it in the same turn, it might be able to kill an archer in a single turn, so you lose all that 20-30 turn worth of xp. The bad part is that you can't really anticipate this.