Experience Gain Loss in Gold

[mcaryf1]

I am thinking about acquiring Gold and I am wondering whether it treats experience gain and loss any differently to the previous version as I feel there are some useful improvements that could be made.

There are two areas that I think could be looked at to improve realism. First as far as I can tell all units are treated alike in terms of loss of experience when reinforcing using the argument that new recruits/replacements are not experienced. This argument falls down in most cases where the unit has a high content of equipment (the possible exception being aircraft). Thus a damaged tank group or warship ought to be able to replenish its equipment with relatively minor losses in experience. For example in the Goodwood Offensive the British Armoured Divisions lost a lot of tanks but in many cases the crews survived and walked back to be re-equipped from the vast stocks the Allies had landed, sadder but wiser as a result of their experience.

The second area I would like to have been addressed is with respect to how experience is gained. There are two aspects - first I would suggest that every newly formed unit or unit from a country not at war should start with no experience but automatically gain 0.1 of an experience point for every game turn until they have reached 1.0. This would introduce the concept of green units with which care should be taken - a good example being the US troops deployed in North Africa. The second point I would make is that you learn as much if not more from your defeats than your victories so I would like any sort of combat win or lose to boost experience by an amount likely to outweigh any loss from replenishments. Thus the majority of units that have survived to the end of a game and which are not "green" should be reasonably experienced. Even in the case of aircraft, where experienced crews were often lost, the unit as a whole learned and adapted e.g. the RAF fighter pilots moved from their initial V formation in the Battle of Britain because their losses had proved it less effective than the looser German formation.

It is possible to address some aspects of the issues I have identified via the editor e.g. elite reinforcements can be made cheaper for tank groups. However, as far as I am aware the experience routines are hard wired in the 1.07 game engine so I do not think a modder can do other than play with starting and production queue values. Is there any possibility that Gold could or might already have addressed this area?

Regards

Mike

[SeaMonkey]

Excellent suggestions, Mike. I'm a little skeptical on the Tank Groups, but definitely for warships as they are so hard to build any kind of experience level during the game.

Your second suggestion is right in line with a training mechanism of some sort, I've promoted this feature before. I would vote to leave air units out of the equation but your premise would tend to inhibit keeping units in the build Q and instead deploy them as soon as they are ready, not a bad thing.

I have another idea, which has its roots in the historical actions of armies to expose their troops to the enemy to acquire experience. Up to the max level of 1 experience, let us allow troops that are adjacent to the enemy accumulate experience without conducting combat operations. Just the nature of patrolling and reconnaissance would infuse formations with real life experience so that they are more familiar with enemy actions and the trial and tweaking of incorporating their training tools should allow them to advance one level. Border patrolling would fall into this category.

[awen]

I think the game is hard enough as it is without more experience, talking about vanilla global conflict. As long as the changes can be worked into the editor rather than the actual game im ok with it.

[mcaryf1]

Thank you for your responses. I think the enemy contact engendering experience idea is a good one recognising that troops who have been in the front line are different to those that have not. However, see my example below which illustrates that the best current way for a land unit to get substantial experience points is by picking on a weak enemy unit in the line opposite.

To illustrate my general argument I have been playing a scenario I created as the Axis based on High Tide with a number of mods such as rebuilds for ships sunk in port, two hits for a BB but at a slightly reduced attack strength, rockets as Kamikazes, reduced map size for Midway etc. I mention these just to show that they are not so outlandish that they change the whole game method. I had played it through to Autumn 1944 and left it to run overnight as AI versus AI with the Allies having a 0.5 experience benefit. It ended in a stalemate with the Allies retaking Paris but stuck on the German border whilst the SU had surrendered and Japan was keeping the USN at bay around most of its island perimeter.

Both sides had plenty of units that appear to have survived the war many with long lists of Honours. I guess a few of them could have been re-builds but the Honours indicate most were not. When I scanned around the units the vast majority of them had experience levels of 1 or less. Notable exceptions being rocket type units as plainly they do not suffer any losses when attacking.

Other high experience units were those in the Chinese theatre which had plainly just sat in a fortified position next to a relatively poorer enemy unit just banging away and occasionally taking an enemy strength point.

It just seems wrong to me that units could have plainly been involved in a tremendous volume of successful fighting, apparently survived through to the end and yet be judged as on the low side for experience based on a 5 point scale.

I do not think my suggestions add a great deal to the game's complexity. Experience is something a player needs to monitor, albeit, as it stands, in many situations they cannot avoid losing it if they want to do serious fighting.

By the way SeaMonkey I think there is a reasonable argument to make elite replacements cheaper for warships than even ordinary replacements. A more expert crew could be better at damage control and work arounds for disabled equipment. Thus the main penalty would be time rather than cost to rebuild your elite ships. This is important in the scenario I am developing because I have addressed the problem of "old" versus "new" battleships and CVLs versus CVs by giving the modernised or larger ones initial experience levels of 3 or 4 with commensurate strength point improvements. Plainly I cannot change the normal production routines to make all newly constructed warships have experience but I have addressed this to some extent, mainly for the USN, by putting a lot of their historical new BBs and CVs into the production queue with loaded experience. It does mean there are more units for the US that do not have to be paid for but I counter this by allowing the IJN to have more of the starting BB's and CV's that they actually had. It seems to be making a realistic game and a good challenge as the Axis start off a fair bit stronger but that will definitely turn round if the Allies survive without taking too much damage.

Regards

Mike