Getting Great Generals up to 4.5 times faster than normal?

[axident]

Basic thought: build Great Wall, then instigate wars with civs that hate you anyway but have to sail to get to you, then ambush them with siege engines and some decent mop-up crews and reap the double-great-general points from Great Wall.

What started my thinking about the secondary ability of the Great Wall a lot more:

I've all but wrapped up a Monarch game in which I randomly got assigned Asoka (spiritual/organized). My game plan was to found a religion early, spread it around, and while I waited for it to spread, kill at least one neighbor to expand. I'd then get my religious allies to DoW on the infidels and lead the charge for a Domination win. What actually happened was a bit different.

I beat up my Egyptian neighbor early and expanded as fast as I could to block off my rexing neighbor Tokugawa of Japan. I have had bad experiences with Toku before, so I decide to kill him sooner rather than later. I built the GW to seal myself from barbs. The GW would thus allow me to use just warriors in city garrisons and throw the entire weight of my axeman army against Toku. Okay, I admit that another reason why I wanted that GW was because I overexpanded and couldn't afford to simply build a lot more axemen.

Suddenly Toku converts to my faith and actually warms up enough where he'll tech trade, so I decide to let him live and act as a human shield against Napolean, who keeps demanding tribute and getting turned down. I know that France will eventually DoW on me for that, and Spain.. well, I think we all know that if you don't share Spain's religion, it's only a matter of time before Spain declares war on you.

Now this is the weird part: I played Fractal map, and I apparently wound up on a long, snake-like continent where Russia is at the extreme western end, then France a little east of there, then Japan east of there, then India (and the former Egypt) smack in the middle, then a wall of four mountain peaks cutting me off from Spain to my east, and farthest east is Rome. There is one large island to my northeast, but Spain colonized it before I could get there.

Toku is a jerk to everyone except me, so nobody has open borders with him. So when Napolean DoW's me, I shrug it off and expect Nappy to send a couple of galleys of crap my way, and he does, but I am waiting for him with a couple of catapults and axemen. He tries a few more times before I get bored and ask for peace, and he gives me some gold to boot. I should have just kept warring with him and reaping those experience points. Later Spain DoW's on me and runs into the same problem as France: I am waiting for them with a siege and mop up crew.

Later in the game Catherine of Russia DoW on France TWICE; both times she asked me to help, and I agreed both times since Catherine was my strongest competitor (so I don't want to tick her off) and Japan STILL had no open borders with anyone other than me (so France can't do much against my declaring war on them). Japan shamelessly dogpiles on France until France is forced to sue for peace with both of its adjacent enemies. Again, I sue for peace but should have just let France attempt to land something on my shores.

Now, I want to kill Russia as it is my biggest competitor, but I can't directly invade them because that would require my marching through Japan (no problem) and France (major problem because Napolean hates me). So I sigh and decide to wait for tanks and airports so I can ship a big squad of tanks and infantry followed by a trickle of reinforcements via airlifts.

Japan asks for a defensive pact, and I agree, figuring that I needed SOMEONE to be an ally this game. In hindsight I shouldn't have agreed; I should have made myself more of a target. I missed out on lots of potential experience points there, bah.

But then Russia abruptly issues a DoW on me, and Japan takes the brunt of the attack for me. I give Japan some pretty lopsided trades in their favor just to make sure that they won't lose cities to Russia. France surprisingly asks for Open Borders not long after--how convenient; I wonder if the AI is smart enough to realize that it's in the way between 2 superpowers and thus better give open borders or risk getting caught in a crossfire. Or maybe it was the tribute that I gave Napolean out of pity since he was in dead last place? Anyway, I sack 2 Russian cities that were, judging by their names, former barbarian cities that happened to be deep in French territory that Russia captured before France could. France then abruptly retracts its Open Borders, trapping the bulk of my army. Naturally I DoW on France and capture all but one of its cities--Japan dogpiles and takes a holy city before I can get to it, ugh.

Spain and Rome DoW on me soon after right as I am poised to invade the heart of Russia. You can guess what happened. I'm of course dying of laughter by this point at all these failed invasions-by-sea.

Now of course, I have the Great Wall, so all throughout this weird game in which nobody can attack me with land forces directly except my best buddy Toku (and he sure isn't going to attack me, not when we're the only Buddhists in a world full of heathens), I am spawning great generals since you get them double-speed if the combat takes place within your cultural borders. It's just getting ludicrous at this point; I have a dedicated Modern Armor factory that spits out a 17-xp Modern Armor almost every turn (military academy, heroic epic, theocracy, vassalage, barracks, 2 military instructors, West point, Pentagon, and a TON of waterwheels, workshops, farms, and mined hills), for instance. I also have 3 almost-invincible Modern Armor warlords by now, one of which is Combat VI, Drill IV, Morale, and Leadership enabled, with the others lagging a little bit in the Combat promotions department. I have another great general attached to Mech Inf, though that Mech Inf used to be an axeman back in my Egypt-pounding days.

So this is got me thinking that I should try to instigate some early wars with civs that hate my guts anyway, like crazy-religious Izzy. Obviously my situation was pretty sweet in that I was best buds with my buffer zone pal Japan and had a wall of mountain peaks to keep Spain at bay, but man, I can see the Great Wall being very useful on archipelago maps for builder types. With all of the generals I got, I could have just made them into military instructors and cranked out units that all START with 27 xp.

Also, Parthenon and Pacifism might work in conjunction with GG-making, but I'm not sure--anyone know? And an Imperialistic player would have another doubling. So I suppose in theory you could get a +100 GW bonus, +100 Imperialistic, +100 Pacifism, +50 Parthenon = +350% rate of GG making, or in other words, getting them 4.5 times more often than normal. I can imagine a city cranking out units that START with 37 xp.. now that's a scary thought.

(Edited to correct my unfortunate typo of "seige". Also because I wanted to be clear, in case it isn't obvious to any civ veteran, why you want only NAVAL invasions: if you declare war against someone who can invade you via land routes, you stand the risk of them pillaging stuff around your frontier cities. With naval invasion stacks, you can pound away on their one big stack with as much siege as you want followed by a mop-up crew. No pillaging, as the enemy soldiers just step step off the boat and immediately die.)

 

[ori]

Parthenon and Pacifism don't give the bonus for Great Generals - Great wall and Imperialistic is all you get

 

[Yeekim]

It would be a little bit absurd, if turning towards Pacifism would increase your GG points :

 

[Ecofarm]

Good point

That was worth a chuckle.

 

[UncleJJ]

Interesting axident I've been playing a rather different type of game from how I normally play recently, and I've come up with a another strategy based on GGs. The two strategies could be combined to some extent, my strategy would benefit greatly from the Great Wall or the Imperialist trait. I think you are over emphasising the value of highly experienced elite troops... let me explain what I mean.

Previously, I had always tried to be sure my troops had the best chance of winning combats. So I emphasised building them with the best exp from Vassalage, Theocracy and military advisers and so on. I used my GGs after the first, who usually starts as a super medic chariot, as military advisers apart from one used a military academy. These highly promoted troops won all their combats at 99% or 95% odds and so only gained a few exp points from the combat. I always healed them fully before commiting them to combat again. One important reason to minimise losses is the effect of war weariness where lost combats increase it much faster than victories.

In my latest game I have noticed something very interesting. Attacking at lower odds gives a lot more exp points and although you obviously lose hammers from increased unit losses this can be very worthwhile for getting GGs. I can't remember all the details exactly (I am still experimenting) but some of my combats were getting me 3 exp for an 85% chance and 4 or 5 for a 60%. I suddenly found that attacking with drafted riflemen was getting me a lot more exp than using elite troops to spearhead attacks. I also found that attacking across a river at say 90% odds gave better results that crossing the river for 98% (or whatever). Now the crazy attacks the AI keeps doing made more sense, they were wracking up exp for GGs

Obviously you could take this approach too far and attack at too low odds and waste a lot of hammers. Another limitation occurs if you attack an enemy and your unit loses; the defender is often severely weakened and attacking again with the same type of troop will get a 99% odds and only 1 exp. The net effect of attacking at say 60% odds is then a 60% chance of 5 exp (win first attack) and a 40% chance of only 1 exp (win second attack) so you are averaging about 3.4 exp for killing the enemy unit. But that is still a good way to get GGs. One way around the low exp is to include some second rate troops in your stack say Macemen in the age of Rifles. Or attack with a unit wounded in a previous round. Both of these allow you to get lower attack odds for the second attack and get more than 1 exp.

The main problem with this high cost approach is the high war weariness if you are attacking. Note you do not get war weariness for attacking or being attacked in a tile where you have the dominant culture. This is another reason why enticing the enemy onto your own territory is a good tactic besides the Great Wall effect the OP is advocating.

Later in the game running Police State, Mt Rushmore and Jails can control the WW effect completely and you can make war continously without restriction.

In earlier ages you need to fight short offensive wars and try to get the enemy to pillage your mines or whatever tempting target you can afford to use as bait. The AI is stupid and will send a succession of weak pillage stacks into your territory for tens of turns. You just need to be aware and milk this for the maximum exp points. Alternatively fight a short offensive war against one AI opponent and then make peace. WW recovers much quicker when at peace. Then make war with a different AI. By shifting opponents you can be at war most of the time and not be limited by WW as each opponent has its own WW account and they are alternately ramping up and then recovering.

Another important way to lower WW in the early ages is to build up your own culture so you are fighting more on home territory. This has other benefits like winning AI resources without fighting by cultural pressure.

To use this approach to the maximum extent I would now suggest a different strategy for building and using your troops. Drafting is a powerful way to generate lots of cannon fodder. After Education is researched GGs can be used to make a military academy and that (after the patch) gives a 50% hammer bonus for troop production, and this strategy needs lots of troops and they are considered expendable and having low experience is viewed as an opportunity rather than a limitation. So building military academies helps to get more GGs for more academies, a sort of self reinforcing effect, just be careful to not take it too far.

This has caused me to completely re-think my attitude to attritional warfare and I am now much more enclined to the use of quantity over quality. If you are using this strategy you would want to emphasise military academies in more cities and spread military instructors around. Producing many more troops at 5 exp is probably better than a few at 17 exp. It should certainly get more GGs.

 

[Ecofarm]

Use troops with naturally high withdraw chance, and promote to flanking_2. The rare kills are monster xp, and even the failures (which are now only a withdraw, not a death) are worth 1xp (instead of 0 for death).

 

[johnny_rico]

Wow! This is a great thread.

I thought of something else to consider here although it may not be worth mentioning. As UncleJJ points out, winning fights at lower odds yields more XPs for GG's. Yet losing fights on enemy soil (i.e. not your cultural turf) raises WW. Thus, it makes sense to fight with these newly built/whipped/drafted low XP units on your home soil, along with your flanking units as well. Look at it this way. If you've got enemies on your turf and you can get a flanking unit to escape combat (1 xp) and another unit comes along with a 70% chance of victory, you might yield 3-4 xps total between the two battles. Think about that playing cyrus with the great wall built You could even hoard some of your early GG's until education provided that having a military academy will yield more hammers from whipping and drafting.

I often like to declare war and sit back waiting for the first waves from the AI before I launch an offensive because it seems if you take a city in the first couple of turns of war, the AI will turtle or focus their efforts on reclaiming the lost city. You're far better off to battle the bulk of the AI's forces on your turf; the biggest fear being pillaged towns and villages, which is usually fairly easily avoided.

 

[ShredZ]

You dont gain GGs from earned XP, you gain them by kills. Check the military advisor, bottom left, it shows how many more kills you need before getting a GG.

Right?

 

[manu-fan]

You dont gain GGs from earned XP, you gain them by kills. Check the military advisor, bottom left, it shows how many more kills you need before getting a GG.

Right?

Hmm. I can't check right now, but here's something from the Warlords info center:

The Warlords expansion gets its name from the new type of Great Person it introduces: the Great General. As your units gain combat experience during the game, the game will tally up totals, and once you reach a certain amount, you'll spawn one in your capital city, and the meter starts over. Each new Great General will require more experience than the one before.

Cheers.

 

[Hero]

I think it's XP, not kills. I'm pretty sure i never kill 135 units for my 3rd GG.

 

[UncleJJ]

You dont gain GGs from earned XP, you gain them by kills. Check the military advisor, bottom left, it shows how many more kills you need before getting a GG.

Right?

Wrong I'm afraid. The exp points gained by your units in combat are what count towards GG. So if your unit kills an enemy unit at about 50% odds it might get 5 exp and your GG total is increased by 5 as well.

 

[axident]

Interesting axident I've been playing a rather different type of game from how I normally play recently, and I've come up with a another strategy based on GGs. The two strategies could be combined to some extent, my strategy would benefit greatly from the Great Wall or the Imperialist trait. I think you are over emphasising the value of highly experienced elite troops... let me explain what I mean.

Previously, I had always tried to be sure my troops had the best chance of winning combats. So I emphasised building them with the best exp from Vassalage, Theocracy and military advisers and so on. I used my GGs after the first, who usually starts as a super medic chariot, as military advisers apart from one used a military academy. These highly promoted troops won all their combats at 99% or 95% odds and so only gained a few exp points from the combat. I always healed them fully before commiting them to combat again. One important reason to minimise losses is the effect of war weariness where lost combats increase it much faster than victories.

In my latest game I have noticed something very interesting. Attacking at lower odds gives a lot more exp points and although you obviously lose hammers from increased unit losses this can be very worthwhile for getting GGs. I can't remember all the details exactly (I am still experimenting) but some of my combats were getting me 3 exp for an 85% chance and 4 or 5 for a 60%. I suddenly found that attacking with drafted riflemen was getting me a lot more exp than using elite troops to spearhead attacks. I also found that attacking across a river at say 90% odds gave better results that crossing the river for 98% (or whatever). Now the crazy attacks the AI keeps doing made more sense, they were wracking up exp for GGs

Obviously you could take this approach too far and attack at too low odds and waste a lot of hammers. Another limitation occurs if you attack an enemy and your unit loses; the defender is often severely weakened and attacking again with the same type of troop will get a 99% odds and only 1 exp. The net effect of attacking at say 60% odds is then a 60% chance of 5 exp (win first attack) and a 40% chance of only 1 exp (win second attack) so you are averaging about 3.4 exp for killing the enemy unit. But that is still a good way to get GGs. One way around the low exp is to include some second rate troops in your stack say Macemen in the age of Rifles. Or attack with a unit wounded in a previous round. Both of these allow you to get lower attack odds for the second attack and get more than 1 exp.

The main problem with this high cost approach is the high war weariness if you are attacking. Note you do not get war weariness for attacking or being attacked in a tile where you have the dominant culture. This is another reason why enticing the enemy onto your own territory is a good tactic besides the Great Wall effect the OP is advocating.

Later in the game running Police State, Mt Rushmore and Jails can control the WW effect completely and you can make war continously without restriction.

In earlier ages you need to fight short offensive wars and try to get the enemy to pillage your mines or whatever tempting target you can afford to use as bait. The AI is stupid and will send a succession of weak pillage stacks into your territory for tens of turns. You just need to be aware and milk this for the maximum exp points. Alternatively fight a short offensive war against one AI opponent and then make peace. WW recovers much quicker when at peace. Then make war with a different AI. By shifting opponents you can be at war most of the time and not be limited by WW as each opponent has its own WW account and they are alternately ramping up and then recovering.

Another important way to lower WW in the early ages is to build up your own culture so you are fighting more on home territory. This has other benefits like winning AI resources without fighting by cultural pressure.

To use this approach to the maximum extent I would now suggest a different strategy for building and using your troops. Drafting is a powerful way to generate lots of cannon fodder. After Education is researched GGs can be used to make a military academy and that (after the patch) gives a 50% hammer bonus for troop production, and this strategy needs lots of troops and they are considered expendable and having low experience is viewed as an opportunity rather than a limitation. So building military academies helps to get more GGs for more academies, a sort of self reinforcing effect, just be careful to not take it too far.

This has caused me to completely re-think my attitude to attritional warfare and I am now much more enclined to the use of quantity over quality. If you are using this strategy you would want to emphasise military academies in more cities and spread military instructors around. Producing many more troops at 5 exp is probably better than a few at 17 exp. It should certainly get more GGs.

Yes, you get more XP for winning against worse odds. I think that if a spearman beats a tank, he gets like 20+ xp... the exact formula is in the CFC thread here that talks about how combat statistics work. You also get something like TWICE as much experience for ATTACKING which is why I get the Morale promotion--it usually gives you an extra attack if you are using a Tank, Panzer, or Modern Armor unit.

But consider this: if you have a good unit with Leadership, you ALWAYS get at least 2 xp for each kill. I usually find my highest-xp tank which usually already has all four Drill promotions, then I attach a GG to him and promote, in order: Leadership, Morale, Combat I, II, III, IV, V, VI.

Also, I agree with you. I usually use my GG's to make academies because the main problem is that I wind up early on with not enough units to garrison the cities that I capture. But I decided to be different in my current game, because I was getting so many GG's and... this may sound stupid, but I run Representation and I wanted those extra three beakers [more if you count the boost from library, obs, university, etc.] from each settled GG. And also because I was spawning so many GGs, I realized that I could get Drill IV tanks if I settled 2 GGs, so I did so. The value of Drill over Combat promotions is negligible at first, but it goes way, way up after a certain point, and Drill IV is usually that point, as it lets your troops take less collateral damage and get some insane number of first strikes in.. 4-7 with Modern Armor. Even without GGs, some of my Modern Armor that started with Drill IV got Combat I promotions all by themselves with no GG adding xp. I used to make some tanks have combat, some drill, some collateral damage, but now I just use bombers to soften targets up for my all-Drill tank army with airlifted infantry to garrison newly-captured cities.

Side benefits to quality-first approach to unit construction: fewer cities make war stuff = more research, less maintenance. The war stuff I do make = higher quality = less WW.

To Ori: darn! Okay you can still TRIPLE your rate of GG generation with Imperialistic + GW.

To Rico: You are absolutely correct about the waves of enemies seeking to recapture their cities. I would take a city with my tanks and then hit next turn.. the next pre-turn would take AGES as the AI would hit my newly-captured city with a seemingly endless parade of artillery, cossacks, and miscellaneous infantry. I just sat in my newly-captured city for a few turns and my first Modern Armor GG went from Drill IV, Combat III to Drill IV, Combat VI. And since it was technically my soil that they were fighting on, I got to double-count for purposes of spawning a GG.

Ecofarm, Rico: I disagree about the flanking promo which I see as a needless waste of promotions for the possibility of a few more xp points at the expense of not doing as much damage and wasting hammers. Flanking has niche uses but you are mathematically better off with combat-promoted chariots that have shock or cover or whatever you need against the enemy. You lose more units than if you had flanking promos, but you also do more damage.

Manu-fan: That's what I thought too; xp points not units killed. I'm not sure if you get credit for killing FIVE units if you sink a transport, which is why I started to let transports get past my navy so that my army could assure me of four kills per enemy transport.

P.S. I tried sinking a transport filled with troops, and you only get the xp for killing the transports, not the cargo. Nuts.

 

[Cornstalk]

This is a very interesting idea, since getting a great general or two early on can be increadably helpful. I had a game where I got one around 2000 BC I think, which meant one of my cities was spitting out 2 promotion units while Vassalage wasn't even on the horizon yet.

If you have a solid defensive team and don't mind getting the rep hit with your nearby neighbors, declare war on a few of them and run amock pillaging their land and putting them in defense mode. Eventually they'll build up enough archers (this is still early in the BC's by the by) that they'll send some of them after your land. Best bet is to try and wrangle them to enter your territory on some flat land by sticking your defending force on the forests and hills. They're there to plunder you, not kill you. Pick them off and reap the reward (assuming you got that great wall out at some point).

As a bonus, they're going to have a dwarfed ecomomy because your 1-2 exploring units have kept their workers hiding and chewed up all their improvements, making them easy pickings for those nicely promoted units you just earned.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

I remember reading a while ago that there was a bug with combat calculations regarding first strikes where it didn't factor them into the displayed odds. That would in effect give you more experience than you deserve if you say had a Drill IV unit attacking an equal strength unit, e.g. a Longbow with Drill IV vs a unpromoted sword with no defensive bonuses would show 50% odds, but the first strikes would put the longbow in favour.

Was that fixed in the 2.08 patch, if not it would give the drill promotions a definate edge in earning XP and thus GG experience.

 

[druidravi]

Would leadership promo work in combo . Lets say I have a warlord immortal with leadership promotion which gets 2 exp due to leadership in a >99.9% combat in my territory with great wall. The actual exp is 1 but you get 2 due to leadership.

total gg points = 2[1+1(imperail)+1(great wall) ]= 6 exp or
= 1[1+1(imperial)+ 1(great wall) + 1(leadership)] = 4 exp
= 1[1+ 1(imperial) + 1(great wall) ] = 3 exp

which one would be right here.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I also have 3 almost-invincible Modern Armor warlords by now, one of which is Combat VI, Drill IV, Morale, and Leadership enabled

I'm jealous.

 

[Wodan]

I've been playing with this concept. Very interesting. The idea that enemy forces are a limited resource that you can use to generate a variable amount of GG points, depending on how you use them. I like it.

As with many things in the game, there are pros and cons. Also, like other things, you can spend a different resource (production, in terms of dead units) to increase this resource.

One thing that doesn't quite "fit" in this puzzle, though, is the way the Great Wall works. It doesn't allow Barbs in your borders. However, it gives double GG points for combats in your borders. So, the "trick" works for AI but not Barbs. Well, I guess you can't have everything.

Wodan

 

[johnny_rico]

I've been playing with this concept. Very interesting. The idea that enemy forces are a limited resource that you can use to generate a variable amount of GG points, depending on how you use them. I like it.

As with many things in the game, there are pros and cons. Also, like other things, you can spend a different resource (production, in terms of dead units) to increase this resource.

One thing that doesn't quite "fit" in this puzzle, though, is the way the Great Wall works. It doesn't allow Barbs in your borders. However, it gives double GG points for combats in your borders. So, the "trick" works for AI but not Barbs. Well, I guess you can't have everything.

Wodan

Regarding the barbs: You can use this somewhat to your advantage if you can isolate an area of the map and keep it unsettled. You can send you new units into the wild, get them up to 10 xps (something is better than nothing for GG generation), and return them home. You then use these 10 xp units to mop up enemy AIs in your borders after your 'green' units have done their part (engage at low odds in an attempt to generate greater xps). You're only going to be willing to sacrifice 'x' number of units with this anyway, and you'll definitely want some veterans to mop up the AI scraps before sending them to the front lines for your offensive manuevers.

These tactics work like a charm for imperial leaders (I prefer these tactics with Cyrus' immortals) because at least you're getting double the GG xps in killing barbs, 3x when defending your home turf from the AI, with the great wall.

 

[axident]

Would leadership promo work in combo . Lets say I have a warlord immortal with leadership promotion which gets 2 exp due to leadership in a >99.9% combat in my territory with great wall. The actual exp is 1 but you get 2 due to leadership.

total gg points = 2[1+1(imperail)+1(great wall) ]= 6 exp or
= 1[1+1(imperial)+ 1(great wall) + 1(leadership)] = 4 exp
= 1[1+ 1(imperial) + 1(great wall) ] = 3 exp

which one would be right here.

I bet (or maybe I HOPE) that the leadership bonus comes before anything else, so you get 2xp for the warlord. +100% for the GW, +100% for imperialistic, for 6xp. But there's only one way to find out for sure... want to Worldbuilder this for us? E.g., I tried sinking transports in a real game to see if I would get xp for just the transports or the units within, and I only got xp for the units within. But you could worldbuilder it too to find out. I'd try this out but I'm on a different game now; if I remember to try this out I'll post the results here.

To digital: Thanks, I had a GG from getting Fascism first, so I kept him around for a while before slapping him onto a tank that grew into my first Modern Armor.

 

[UncleJJ]

Would leadership promo work in combo . Lets say I have a warlord immortal with leadership promotion which gets 2 exp due to leadership in a >99.9% combat in my territory with great wall. The actual exp is 1 but you get 2 due to leadership.

total gg points = 2[1+1(imperail)+1(great wall) ]= 6 exp or
= 1[1+1(imperial)+ 1(great wall) + 1(leadership)] = 4 exp
= 1[1+ 1(imperial) + 1(great wall) ] = 3 exp

which one would be right here.

Unfortunately the Leadership promotion does not help. It gives double exp to the Warlord unit the GG is attached to but only normal exp points are added to the total needed for the next GG. I tested this last night, my warlord got 2 exp and the total increased by 1.

Regarding the barbs:
...
<snip>
...

These tactics work like a charm for imperial leaders (I prefer these tactics with Cyrus' immortals) because at least you're getting double the GG xps in killing barbs, 3x when defending your home turf from the AI, with the great wall.

Unfortunately killing barbarians gives your unit exp (upto 10 exp max) but does not count towards the next GG. Only fighting and getting exp against AI or other players in MP gives points that add to the total needed for the next GG. I tested this last night.

One final source of exp I am not yet sure of is the 1 exp a unit gets from withdrawing from combat. That may or may not give GG points. I'll test that later when I have time to play. I have a game with cavalry and cannons that can withdraw it is just a case of carefully checking the GG total before each attack until I get a withdrawl.

Edit: I have just tested withdrawl from combat. My artillery withdrew and gained 1 exp and also 1 GG point, so it does contribute.