Question on experience gain

[Mr_B0narpte]

Sorry if this has been asked before:-

Regarding the experience gain for land combat generals - does it matter how many units are in the corp?

I.e. would a General commanding 1 division gain the same experience in AoD as a General commanding 9 divisions?

Note: initial tests suggests it does matter - a general (off doctrine, 3 skill) commanding 9 divisions gained 10 experience in a battle lasting less then 4 days. Another general (off doctrine, 3 skill) commanding 1 division gained 3 experience in the same battle. There was a HQ present to prevent any over-command penalty. Perhaps it is relevant who is the commander of the battle itself, I did not give myself time to check that.

 

[KostasL]

Sorry if this has been asked before:-

Regarding the experience gain for land combat generals - does it matter how many units are in the corp?

I.e. would a General commanding 1 division gain the same experience in AoD as a General commanding 9 divisions?

Note: initial tests suggests it does matter - a general (off doctrine, 3 skill) commanding 9 divisions gained 10 experience in a battle lasting less then 4 days. Another general (off doctrine, 3 skill) commanding 1 division gained 3 experience in the same battle. There was a HQ present to prevent any over-command penalty. Perhaps it is relevant who is the commander of the battle itself, I did not give myself time to check that.

This is something that i first time hear of !

You could easily answer the question yourself and enlighten us all !!!

But thank you anyway...

I shall test it and report back as soon i get the results !!!

 

[Pang Bingxun]

Sorry if this has been asked before:-

Regarding the experience gain for land combat generals - does it matter how many units are in the corp?

The amount of divisions in a formation should not matter. It does of course need to be at least one and if you are in the red, due to being over the over command limit, some restriction may apply.

The hourly gain of experience depends only on branch(army, navy, airforce), rank, skill and max_skill.

Using many formation of one division only commanded by general majors is a way to gain a lot of experience and thus skill.

 

[Commander666]

Note: initial tests suggests it does matter

Those results seem unusual. But I'm also wondering why that "second general" was even there. A lower ranked commander would have gotten way more than 10 exp gain. As AoD does not penalize anymore for promoting, then one General with 1 division in that corps and 8 Mj. Generals capable of commanding 1 division gaining exp at fantastic rate is the best way to go provided there's enough offensive doctrine leaders for the 9 corps.

This set up seems to encourage somebody picking up extra terrain trait. He'll become my new General once he has gained a couple skill level.

The downside is, of course, it's a messy province with all those flags stretched out.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Further tests just confuse me:-

Battle for just under 4 days:-

4 divisions led by a general gained 12 experience
5 divisions led by a general gained 8 experience
2 divisions led by a general gained 8 experience
1 division led by a general gained 8 experience

2 armoured divisions led by a lt. general gained 16 experience - same for another two armoured divisions
2 divisions led by a lt. general gained 3 experience

2 divsions led by a mj. general gained 25 experience
1 division led by a mj. general gained 37 experience


Perhaps the type of units is relevant, perhaps the attacking effectiveness. But I'm not sure as most units were attacking from the same province and most were infantry. The armoured divisions seemed to gain experience quicker. I guess further tests are needed....

 

[Pang Bingxun]

Further tests just confuse me:-
[...]
The armoured divisions seemed to gain experience quicker. I guess further tests are needed....

Did you make sure that different max_skill does not screw up your result? Your panzer leaders may simply have higher max_skill.

Hourly gain of experience is, as i recall it, proportional to (max_skill + 1 - skill)^2 / max(1;skill). So max_skill has a significant impact. max_skill is often correlated to initial skill, most generals with initial skill 5 have max_skill = 9, but not all of them. And some generals with high max_skill start at low skill. Namely the chinese leader Pang Bingxun starts at skill 0, but max_skill 5 and the german general Bärenfänger starts with skill 2 in 1943, but has max_skill = 9.

max_skill is an attribute that does not appear in the game itself, but is can be read from savegamefiles etc.. Or you can try to measure it from the hourly gain of experience, but that really is a mess.

Edit: I addd the crucial "^2" to the formula.

 

[Commander666]

Further tests just confuse me:-
2 divsions led by a mj. general gained 25 experience
1 division led by a mj. general gained 37 experience

I'm guessing that the Mj. General leading 2 divisions must have been over-command as he can only lead 1 division (and no HQ will double the corps command). All offensive stacks must be properly led (not over command) or, it seems, there will be less exp gain. Makes sense.

But the rest of this whole discussion makes little sense as regards game playability, IMO. Like let's consult the files to learn the magical max skill to so understand what is happening with exp gain every time there's a battle. I would simply shove "max skill" into that wonderful mystery box that AoD has... and enjoy the exp gain I am getting - even if it seems arbitrary.

I concentrate the other way - writing existing exp gain right on the stack name. Then after the battle I have accurate record of skill gain making me aware how that stack performed, but - as you seem to be discovering - that is no clue as to what other stack might get. I think that is a great revelation; and glad you brought it up.

But I find it rather difficult to control exp gain because how armies can move and the number of battles they can be involved in is limited by practical considerations. Simply use more junior commanders where possible for their greater gain... and enjoy whenever anybody makes 100 exp. However, when it comes to aircraft commanders repeatedly pounding same target and the Commander of a CTF doing repeated port strikes then player can be actively involved in battles done precisely to raise exp. This is quite useful to train new lower ranked commanders to accumulate exp. But that same flexibility doesn't exist with land units.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

I had no idea about max skill, I'll look at that and test accordingly. Thanks Pang!

Regarding over command, the updates have changed the ranking system, so

Field Marshall can still command upto 12 divisions
General upto 9 still
Lt General can now command 6 divisions
Mj General can now command 3 divisions

So my tests were not affected by over-command. I had a HQ with a FM/General adjacent to the battles and made sure I used no more then 24 divisions per province - I had one unit with a FM attacking in each province to ensure no over command penalties were in place.

 

[froglegs]

Assuming these factors are contained in only the exe file, does anybody know exactly what the lines of code in the exe file are concerning this? Show me the code!

I agree that rank, level, and maximum level are the factors and that naval, air, and army are different.

Also, rate of gain is contained in the misc file.

Maximum level, rank, and level are in certain txt files in the game that I know of or can be edited in the savegame file.

But there must be some equation/equations hidden in the exe file.

Simplistically, each rank level and each experience level halves the rate of experience gain.

If two leaders are in the same battle and at the same level rank and experience, a leader with a higher maximum experience level gains experience faster.

At a leader's maximum experience level, his experience can increase to greater than 100 but he will not increase to the next level.

I did a lot of experimentation with this years ago in the game, and most was in the HOI2 days rather than AOD. I found at that time than number of units under command had no affect.

If in your example of one leader getting more experience with more units (all other things being equal, I would suggest that was so because their maximum level was not equal.

 

[Pang Bingxun]

Simplistically, each rank level and each experience level halves the rate of experience gain.

That is greatly simplyfied. The step to skill 3 takes more than twice as long as to skill 2.

GM is 100% rate, GL is 2/3 rate, Gen is 1/3 rate, FM is 1/10 rate.

 

[froglegs]

So, what is the exact computer code and which file contains it

 

[Pang Bingxun]

So, what is the exact computer code and which file contains it

None that you can access, it is hardcoded. The formula has been known since HoI2, AoD did not change it. The value in the misc file may vary.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Thank you for your answers, it clarifies a lot!

 

[Commander666]

Thank you for your answers, it clarifies a lot!

Thanks for pointing out the change in Lt. and Mj. Generals to command 6 and 3 divisions respectively. Why do people purposely keep changing this game in ways that make it worse? Did it occur to the DEV that now there is nobody whose maximum command level is only one division - a rather common occurrence and what was a fitting restriction?

Changes like that should never be done without proper examination of the implications. In this case it would have needed the addition of a new junior commander type such as Brigadier General or even lower Colonel or even lower Major to replace the missing gap in command level. For sure the army ranking system has plenty of choices for AoD to apply as best fits the game. But what doesn't fit the game at all is anybody arbitrarily and probably independently just changing it so it fits their short-sightedness. And it is just terrible when experts don't even abbreviate the ranks properly... and write acronyms reversed as if insisting that forced dyslexia is correct.

As regards the other thing, not sure the facts are welcome news except that we might agree that different people in identical situations and of equal everything else also indeed gain experience differently. In this way there is some similarity to real life... but for game playability the whole set-up using hidden parameters is generally not good except to broaden the attitude of "it's a paradox".

And thanks to Froglegs for his detailed post. But his experience now made not fully correct anymore because of arbitrary change to outdate previous versions in many ways that never mattered exposes the greatest criticism of all - that people's work over the years regarding learning this game is being eroded and wiped out at an alarming rate ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF UNNEEDED, UNWANTED, and UNAPPRECIATED CHANGES OF DETAILS THAT DIDN'T NEED CHANGING AND REALLY DON'T MATTER ANYWAY. There is zero difference to game appeal with the new command system or previous one - except the change lessened most people's familiarity with the new game facts.

What matters is improving the game, fixing errors, and adding enhancements - but not a flurry of new versions changing things that should never have been touched so the collective learning acquired by the community is wiped out.