Units Lose XP upon Upgrade

[Joxer]

I was not a warmonger, just a really good ally in my last game as the Russians. I had several good CR3 Axemen and Med2 Pikes. They were levels 6 and 7. Once I hit the gunpowder age I immediately upgraded the most experienced units. They remained levels 6 and 7 but their Xp slider went from 30/36 to 10/36.

Granted, some of their promotions were not attainable if the unit was newly created but I thought that was the advantage of the obsolete units surviving to be upgraded.

I must have missed something in the manual as it happened to all my units so it was not a one unit bug.

So anyone have the answer?

BTW I am playing vanilla 1.6 version.

 

[svv]

You're lucky; as I recall mine go down to zero XP when I upgrade them (but stay at the same level). You're stuck with it - you lose experience points when you upgrade, so they won't get any more promotions unless or until you work them all the way back up.

 

[UncleJJ]

That is how it works when you upgrade a unit. If it has more than 10 xp it is reduced to 10 xp and has to work its way from there up to its next promotion. I guess that is a design idea to stop the player upgrading highly promoted units too frequently.

When you upgrade a unit:
If your unit has 10 xp or less then it keeps its xp and promotions.
If it has more than 10 xp it is reduced to 10 xp and keeps its promotions
It seems to be the same upgrade system for Vanilla and Warlords.

The exception is a Great General which does not lose any xp when it is upgraded (which is also free).

 

[Legba]

One perk I've found to keeping an old iron age unit around is that I can use a Great General on him and promote him with things like City Raider that modern units, like Infantry, can't get. Then upgrade him for free.

 

[axident]

One perk I've found to keeping an old iron age unit around is that I can use a Great General on him and promote him with things like City Raider that modern units, like Infantry, can't get. Then upgrade him for free.

GG's used in this way also mean that the unit doesn't lose xp during those (free) upgrades.

For regular units.. look, don't get greedy. Having a few CR III axes and swords turn into CR III grenadiers = total ownage already, just pack a few cannons to knock down walls and cultural bonuses and to spread around a bit of collateral. CR III grenadiers dominate city defenders during that era.

 

[ZB2]

when this first happened to me i thought it was some sort of bug and kept going to world builder to change it. i never found that article in the manual and it was only after looking thoughout this forum i found that its MEANT to happen :\

i think half of the units xp should be lost, rather than a fixed 'back to 10xp' seams harsh for some units that will now never be promoted again.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The rollback of experience is controlled by MAX_EXPERIENCE_AFTER_UPGRADE in globaldefines.xml. So you can change this behavior by modifying the iDefineIntVal.

Safety Pup reminds you to do this to a copy of the file in your custom assets folder, not to the original.

 

[obsolete]

This is just another reason why I don't care about the whole precious XP building of units and killing off numerous weak units to keep the higher level one from getting pinged off during an attack.

It's just not worth the trouble.