Posts from [ARTICLE] Troop Experience

Due to numerous complaints about how experience complicates battle analysis, leads to errors in assessing troop strength, etc., I will write a brief manual on troop experience.

So, when playing with experience, troops gain levels during battles, from level 0 (no experience) to level 10 (elite).

Newly purchased troops have zero experience. Experience is retained when upgrading. When merging two stacks of the same type into one, the experience of the resulting stack is calculated based on the principle of preserving the total amount of experience. For example, if one stack has 20 units with 10,000 experience, and the other has 60 units with 0 experience, the result will be 80 units with 2,500 experience.

In battles, all troops in the player's kingdom gain experience – not only those in the battle, but also those roaming around or stationed in the castle (recruited). This is what makes experience valuable – it encourages players to engage in as many battles as possible, fight on multiple fronts, actively use roaming heroes, and generally play more aggressively than when playing without experience, where such actions often only increase losses and time spent without a significant benefit.

Experience is only awarded for won battles – experience is not gained when retreating or paying off the enemy. Experience is also not awarded if the battle is won by the castle/mine garrison in the absence of a hero.

Troops gain experience equal to 50% of the experience gained by the hero. The Learning skill only affects the hero's experience and does not affect the troops' experience – they will gain the same amount as without Learning.

When killing upgraded enemy troops, experience is awarded based on their nominal health, without taking into account upgrades or the 25% bonus of special units.

Each troop level has its own experience scale required to reach that level. Lower-level troops level up faster, while higher-level troops level up slower. For example, level 1 troops gain their first promotion at 1000 experience, while level 7 troops gain it at 4000 experience.

Each level of experience increases the combat stats of the troops – attack, defense, damage, hit points, and speed; archers also increase their ammunition. To see how many bonuses a specific unit will receive, double-left-click to open its window and right-click on the image; the result will be approximately as follows:


This table should be enough to understand how it all works. From it, you can derive an important consequence for practical tasks – how much percentage of total power a specific experience level adds, in other words, how to convert an upgraded stack into its non-upgraded equivalent.

Let's consider an unupgraded unit in a battle against troops of its level as an example.

At level 1, the unit gains 1 health (rounded up) and 1 defense. That is, 100 level 1 units are approximately equivalent to sqrt(1.1/(1-0.025)) ~ 106 units without experience. By calculating all levels in a similar way, you can get the following table:

0 - 100
1 - 106
2 - 109
3 - 127
4 - 139
5 - 147
6 - 150
7 - 168
8 - 180
9 - 189
10 - 193

As you can see, at level 10, the units almost double their combat value.

The formula does not take into account the speed bonus – starting from level 7, units gain +1 to speed.

If you create a similar table for angels, you will get approximately the following:
0 - 100
1 - 107
2 - 115
3 - 123
4 - 131
5 - 140
6 - 149
7 - 159
8 - 169
9 - 179
10 - 190

Similar tables can be created for other units, and they will all have a similar structure.

For lower-level units, efficiency increases unevenly – the levels that increase damage are of great importance. For higher-level units, the dependence of strength on the level is almost linear.

I hope this small material will help you better calculate the strength of your army when playing with experience.

A small addition: sometimes the experience of individual units decreases. It happens very rarely; I've only seen it once. It was fixed by reloading the game, but I don't know how to fix it in general.

Everything is well explained, but one question remains unanswered: "What is the purpose of experience?" I personally haven't found an answer to this question for myself.

This particular aspect of experience is what makes it valuable – it encourages players to engage in as many battles as possible, level up on multiple fronts, actively fight with low-level units, and generally play more aggressively and dynamically than when playing without experience, where such actions can sometimes only increase losses and time consumption without a noticeable benefit in the end.

I'll add from myself: experience increases the variability of tactics: I have often managed to turn the tide by leveling up troops of level 1 or 2 in a hopeless situation against an enemy who got lucky with cons or hives in the middle of the second week.

Everything is well described, but only one question remains unanswered: "What is the purpose of experience?" I personally haven't found an answer to it.

It's an additional feature that, for me personally, increases interest in the game.

Everything is well explained, but one question remains unanswered: "What is the purpose of experience?" I personally haven't found an answer to this question for myself.

+1
probably an attempt to turn the game into a cocktail with other games, which only spoils it.

I am against experience. Experience brought me back from the advertised TE to SOD. And only with the appearance of TE-Lite did my opinion change. Dreamcatcher explained how to disable experience. I have a request to ASM: remove the health increase from Broghild and other heroes with a specialization in certain units. Supporters of SOD dislike this, and I agree with them.
P.S. When I lose, I think: people play with experience on to make their troops stronger and avoid losing:)

Everything is well explained; only one question remains unanswered: "Why is experience needed?" Personally, I have yet to find an answer for myself.

The main reason is actually stated—Kober quoted it—it is a direct incentive for higher-quality gameplay. Especially in the late game, as that's where the largest amount of experience accumulates, and precisely there, due to the strategic complexity of positions and limited time on the timer, the difference in skill becomes most apparent.

The second factor is increasing the significance of native growth compared to uber-stacks of angels, vivs, or demons. Because leveling up these uber-stacks can be quite difficult—they are constantly replenished, and they are too high level for efficient grinding.

And it's simply one more parameter characterizing development. The more such parameters there are, the more varied the development becomes.

Added after 34 minutes

P.S. When I lose, the thought occurs to me: on buy games they play with experience so that troops are stronger and they don't lose :)

Stronger troops do not protect against losses because with stronger troops, players push into stronger guards.

The percentage of losses correlates most strongly with skill, not with settings.

Added after 12 minutes
By the way, regarding the question of distribution balance, a real-life example—a Castle vs Castle game. One player is given a couple of trashy Griffin Conservatorys, the other 2 external dwellings of pokemons and 1 of griffins.

If they played without experience, events would unfold like this: the first takes the Griffin Conservatorys (losing all their same-tier units there), breaks the Dragon Utopia on the 2nd week with angels, while the second just sits around waiting for the 3rd week.

But with experience, it happened differently—the first player's development was the same, but the second quickly leveled up the pokemons to rank 10, resulting in something like 120 very angry comrades, which in terms of PPS (penetration power parity) were equivalent to ~230+ basic pokemons, with which (supported by others) they also broke the Dragon Utopia on the 2nd.

This is a direct incentive for better gameplay.

In my understanding, good gameplay is when you win a battle through skill, not because neutral creatures simply can't kill your level 1 unit. It's one thing to fix an obvious imbalance (like the number of starting stacks or the number of Trolls for Shakti), but when they try to add something to the game that it already looks great without, I don't understand it.

An extra feature that, like classes, personally increases my interest in the game.

For me, as for other supporters of SOD balance (not SOD), the interest lies in playing a familiar game that I'm used to.

For example, chess. Why are electronic clocks being introduced? To avoid imbalances with flags, so that everyone can see exactly how much time they have left, instead of guessing. This is really needed. But why aren't they introducing new pieces? For example, why have two knights on the board? You could remove one and replace it with another, creating more options and making it more interesting. Because nobody needs that. The point of the game isn't that.

When Alessandro focuses on something, but Cobra doesn't, who thinks about the TROOP EXPERIENCE?:p

By the way, regarding the balance of map seeds, a real-life example - a Castle vs Castle game. One player gets a couple of trashy cons, the other gets 2 external dwellings of pokemons and 1 of griffins.

If they played without experience, events would unfold like this - the first takes the cons (dumping all the same small fry there), breaks the Dragon Utopia on the 2nd week with angels, while the second just sits and waits for the 3rd week.

But with experience, it happened differently - the first player's development was the same, but the second quickly upgraded pokemons to rank 10, resulting in something around 120 very angry comrades, which by PPS (penetration power parity) are equivalent to ~230+ simple pokemons, and with them (supported by others), he also broke the Dragon Utopia on the 2nd.

The described example is merely an exception to the rule. More often there will be seeds where one player gets lucky with both experience and cons, breaks everything on the second week losing less, takes the Dragon Utopias, and kills the opponent somewhere on 124. In this case, experience only increases the gap in the layout.

Take chess, for example. Why are electronic clocks introduced there? To avoid any imbalance with flags, so everyone can see exactly how much time they have left instead of guessing. This is really necessary. But why aren't new pieces introduced? For example, why have two knights on the board? You could remove one and replace the other, that would give more options, make it more interesting). Because nobody needs that at all. The point of the game isn't about that.

The chess example is incorrect because its gameplay is quite balanced and diverse in itself. That's why they don't touch it, only tweaking the interface.

Similarly, for example, with StarCraft — the balance was last changed way back in 2000, and since then for 10 years only bugs have been fixed and the interface slightly improved. Because the game was originally very deep and balanced.

With Heroes it's different — the developers didn't bother to polish the game to a proper state, a mass of raw and poorly thought-out things, a ton of bugs and imbalance. Hence the attitude towards the gameplay is not so reverent: as soon as you see something off, you immediately sharpen your scalpel or prepare a prosthesis.

And everyone is doing this — our SoD players (through rules and external programs), and foreign SoD players (by editing text files and again through rules), not to mention WoG and its successors like TE and VT.

The same HeroesWorld rules for SoD are quite far from the original Heroes gameplay, and various tweaks and clarifications are constantly being made to them.

Some Chinese rules or WCL rules or Chaos League rules have also deviated significantly, and in a different direction. So it's hard to talk about SoD as some kind of classic/standard; each sandbox has its own standard and its own classic. In WT, at least the rules are more or less unified (despite constant attempts by various irresponsible comrades to shake them up), there isn't such a wide spread, even if the gameplay is a bit different.

When Alessandro fails at something, but Cobra doesn't, who thinks about UNIT EXPERIENCE?:p

Of course, Alessandro!!! Cobra plays with experience:)

The described example is merely an exception to the rule.

Come on... that's actually a pretty typical situation.

More often there will be distributions where one person gets lucky with both experience and cons, breaks everything on the second [week] losing less, takes Dragon Utopia and kills the opponent somewhere on 124

No... if you break cons-Dragon Utopia quickly, you lose a lot of troops, whether you have experience or not. A common picture is that after Dragon Utopia on 123, only angels and one native stack of something remain in the army, maybe two; all other growth was spent on attrition.

For example, recently in a game with Alessandro, I arrived at his place on 126 with angels and grands, leaving everything else in cons, I didn't even take Dragon Utopia. And this happens often. And as for the upgrade of angels/vivams... having experience here is actually beneficial to the receiving side.

Furthermore, when taking Dragon Utopia at tempo, it's not always possible to pre-upgrade the army, and yet at the start of the 2nd [week], all the experience from the 1st sinks into growth; you practically start from zero. Normal troop leveling usually happens exactly on the 2nd week, but then one must deliberately focus on it, postponing the taking of heavy banks for a few days.

In this case, experience only increases the gap in the layout.

That's the thing—experience doesn't increase the gap in the layout, but simply shortens the duration of the game, and including that, reduces the time to realize the gap in the layout. And IMO that is good.

Experience is a "papskaya" feature precisely because it simplifies the confrontation with the map and complicates the confrontation with the opponent. While something like morale is exactly the opposite—it complicates things with the map and simplifies them with the opponent. That's why it's a "lamskaya" feature.

For example, recently in a game with Alessandro, I attacked him on day 126 with angels and grand angels, leaving everything else in the reserves, I didn't even take mermaids. And this happens quite often. And angels/vivams have such good stats... having experience is an advantage for the defending side.

If you also had angels and grand angels with experience...
Exactly, I didn't like that in hot-seat mode, archers shoot for longer (instead of 24 shots, they have 30).
Once, Samurai organized a tournament "Bai vs. Runet" with Bai rules. I signed up and played against Markon. In the first game, on week 3, I was thinking about whether to take a utopia or not. I decided to take the risk. I was surprised that, thanks to the experience, I didn't lose much.
I really liked Invisibl's phrase: Heroes with experience are not Heroes!

Alessandro, what you just described only shows your low skill level. Yes, with experience, the game is different. What do losses have to do with it?! In Utopia, the tactics are almost the same.
P.S. Now I know for sure - when I lose, it's because of a lack of experience, and when I lose with experience, it's Cobra's fault.