I considered that as well but I started thinking of situations such as...
I flank the enemy's unit and then beat the crap out of it. It barely survives but it manages to escape. My units would earn no XP for this because it got away, and the hurt unit heals up with no consequences? Doesn't seem fair to me. I'd much rather see the attacker gain some XP for pulling off a good move like that, and the defending unit lose some XP to heal back up.
If you think about it, losing some XP for healing does make sense. Thematically, their archer unit is a whole group of archers. When you deal damage to them, you are basically killing off some of their archers. When they retreat back to their borders and "heal up" they are just replacing what they've lost. But since the units that are joining their forces are not experienced, the XP of the force as a whole goes down.
Great thread! IMO, this is a very relevant topic.
My first thought when I realized that, in most battles, both units survive after the fight was "Wow - nice!".
Then, I noticed the XP being awarded to both units. Mmmmm... Not very nice.
Let me share my idea with you, people:
- Attacking unit: receives its XP as usual.
- Defending unit: 50% (or more) chance of not receiving any XP. Game favors the attacker.
- Healing (after attack or defense): complete healing (from any amount of damage) decreases a *fixed* % of the XP from the unit. This fixed % would be determined by the damage suffered in the battle (Big Damage == Big %). This model agrees with the idea from
MasterDinadan, quoted above, which considers a unit as a "group of individual soldiers" - the dead veteran soldiers must be replaced by rookies in the "healing" process. Also, deducing a fixed % from the XP would prevent the game from crashing.
And yes, past promotions, after the number crunching, may be lost. Sorry.
Let's try and create a model for this situation!