Ken Ihrig

Join Date 05/2003

1 to 2 XP killing strong stack, leveling guide?

I have a "strong" stack of five heroes levels 6,7,7,8,9 plus Anna (wolf) which is level 3. I attacked a "strong" Crag Spawn stack (levels 2 to 7) and I noticed that I got 1 to 2 XP per char for the battle which gave me 8 XP total for killing a "strong" stack!!! That seems nuts. So I did some experimenting by removing various characters and re-doing the battle:

Levels 3,6,7,7,8,9 earned total 8 XP (example above)

Levels 3,6,7,7,8 total 34 XP

Levels 3,6,7,7 total 80 XP

Levels 7,7,8,9 total 23 XP

So getting rid of two of the highest level heroes made the biggest difference. So I figured it was a level based formula i.e. my level 8 and 9 were higher then the Crag Spawn so the XP dropped to nothing. However when I removed the two lowest level chars I received a lot more XP (23 versus 8). So is it the stack size that's penalizing me? Or is it the number of heroes in the stack that's causing the penalty? 1 to 2XP for killing a "strong" stack basically means I can't level up my stack... So clearly I need to figure out some better technique... Also I rushed Breon's Letters so that I could hire level 9 heroes. Now I'm thinking the only thing useful for this is to transfer their gear to my lower level chars and then either disband the higher levels or stick them in a city. Does anyone have a leveling and/or hero strategy they can offer up?

Thanks,
Ken

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Take a look at this old post of mine:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/438100/get;3293180

The basic problem is putting all your heroes in one group. The levels do matter but not nearly as much as just not grouping them all together.

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Ahh, so there is a major penalty based purely on hero count. It looks to be a lot worse then what your other post is listing however. I tried it again with heroes only. When adding up the total XP I got:

5 heroes = 7XP total or a little over 1XP per hero

4 heroes = 23XP total (avg 5XP per hero)

3 heroes = 74XP total (avg 25XP per hero)

2 heroes = 103XP total (45XP and 58XP)

1 hero = 120XP (wow!!! nearly a level in one battle!)

My one hero example unfortunately had some XP bonuses which impacts the numbers above but I didn't feel like running it again with a different hero... But either way the difference between 7XP total with 5 heroes and 120XP total with one hero says it all regardless of the bonuses... Basically your solution looks good i.e. one hero per stack only. I added in my wolf and as your other post pointed out there was no change in total XP gained by the heroes. So one hero...and max non-heroes.

This seems like a rather absurd hack to the game to prevent heroes from grouping. If they couldn't deal with it I would have thought they would have just limited a stack to one hero instead of doing really odd things with the XP. Thanks for the info!

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Battle experience gains are divided by the by the number of champions (including Sovereigns, but excluding Henchmen and Sions) that you have in your army. Additionally, the base battle experience values before the division by hero count are in some manner determined by the strength ratio between the army you attacked with and the army you attacked, and champions will usually count more towards the 'army strength' metric than trained units will, and higher level units count more than similar lower level units. The biggest thing affecting experience gain is still probably that you had 5 champions all in one stack, though - even just taking one champion out of that stack should give you a roughly 25% bonus to experience gain even assuming the basic battle experience value remained unchanged.

If you really wanted to see just how much of a bonus you're getting out of removing various champions, you'll have to take out the experience bonus from traits like Potential, Trainer, or Altarian Blood before summing up the battle experience. Net result should be a 25% increase for using 4 champions instead of 5, or a 60% increase for using 3 champions instead of 5, or a 150% increase for using 2 champions instead of 5, or a 500% increase for using 1 champion instead of 5, before accounting for the bonus you're getting for using a weaker army to defeat the enemy stack. Also note that each of the strength ratings appears to cover a range of values for some hidden strength metric, so if you take two different "Strong" armies against the same enemy "Strong" army you can get different amounts of experience out of the battle even accounting for differing numbers of champions and experience-booster traits.

In case you're curious:

Champion Level. Experience to next level / total experience required for current level

10 / 0
22 / 10
37 / 32
54 / 69
74 / 123
97 / 197
122 / 294
150 / 416
181 / 566
?215 / 747
?251 / 962
292 / 1213
335 / 1505
381 / 1840
429 / 2221
481 / 2650
536 / 3131
594 / 3667
655 / 4261
719 / 4916
786 / 5635
??? / 6421

These numbers are mostly accurate, though I'm not positive about the experience required at levels 10 and 11 to gain the next level. Also, these values are the same for regular units, but regular units earn half of whatever the base amount a champion would have earned from the same battle (add in Trainer, Potential, and General bonuses if you happen to have them in your army). As far as I'm aware, units will always gain at least one experience if they survive a battle. Even if they do not, though, they will still count towards the 'army strength' used to calculate the base experience value, and a champion who falls in battle will still count towards the total number of champions involved in the battle for dividing experience afterwards, even though the fallen champion will not gain any experience for the battle.

At least for the levels covered by the chart, it would appear that a quadratic curve fit based on character level is sufficient for computing the experience required to attain the next level:

exp_for_lvlup = 1.462*cur_lvl^2 + 6.475*cur_lvl + 4

This third-order polynomial fit also appears to match the numbers well:

exp_for_lvlup = 0.004*cur_lvl^3 + 1.306*cur_lvl^2 + 7.915*cur_lvl + 1.033

I would more readily believe the second-order polynomial matches the formula used than that the third-order polynomial does, but either should work reasonably well.

One thing to note about the experience requirement curve is that it makes taking the Potential and Knowledge traits somewhat questionable. Knowledge on its own will break even (in terms of trait count) at the point when your champion would normally be level 12 or so, Potential I breaks even when you'd normally be level 20 or so, Potential I and II together break even at roughly level 18, Potential I-III together will pay off when your champion would normally be around level 16. Knowledge with all three Potential traits will break even when your champion would normally be somewhere around level 10 or 11. If you're playing Legendary Heroes, this means that Potential I is more or less worthless, as there aren't any further Potential traits to take, and you're never going to have enough experience to be a full two levels ahead of a theoretical regular champion unless you really drag out the game and focus on leveling a champion (really - you'd have to be somewhere around level 40 on a regular champion before Potential I will give your champion a two-level or 1-trait advantage). If you're planning for a long game, they're decent (especially if you're focusing on one or two main champions to get to high levels), but otherwise they're a little bit wasted.

There are also some older threads on the value of the "champions divide experience gains", if you want to see player discussion of its worth. I have posted in several of those threads, so you could find some through my post history; I believe Leo in WI has also posted in several of those threads. One of the longer such threads is this one: https://forums.elementalgame.com/443801/page/1/

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Quoting Ken Ihrig,

reply 2

I find it to be a very thematic solution. If you have two heroes, they only need to do half the work to dispatch there foe. They are only going to be phyisically and mentally taxed half as much. Half the experiance and share the loot seems conclusionary to the equation.

I find a problem to exist with experience for monsters versus experience for AI. Currently the player receives little to no experience for defeating AI, even if it's a solo hero going into the frey.

The agruement for this lack of XP is that the AI need to be defeated in order for you to win the game, so giving extra XP is just unnecessary bonus. I don't buy that.

Imo, if a hero or sovereign is part of the conflict, the XP rewards should jump to match. Likewise, if you are defeated, the AI should be properly awarded for defeating your hero/sovereign.

I understand that sometimes the AI likes to do silly things with heroes and have them die often. To balance, perhaps only give the bonus XP if the hero doesn't have a penalty trait.

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I don't have a problem with experience splitting amongst heroes but even so the total experience given out to heroes shouldn't drop as you add heroes, it should just get cut up into more shares.

I have a big problem with scaling the XP given based on the comparative levels between the monsters and the player's group. It's already challenging to level up heroes and it certainly isn't fun to pop every item, special ability and spell you have to kill a higher level dragon and then find you get 10XP for it!

Lastly there seems to be another weird factor in play in Ken's numbers because they just don't make sense, unless the XP scaling for comparative levels is a massive factor.

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I find experience given to be quite variable, regardless of how many heroes there is. Sometimes i get lots of XP out of a battle, other times very little; how much don't seem to match how difficult the enemy was. I wish the XP was standardized somewhat...

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Well, it is possible to standardize but it is a pain. You can assign how much xp something is worth within the monsters file or assign a trait that makes a unit worth a certain amount of xp based upon its level. This is a difficult thing to balance tough as you would have to turn off the xp based upon combat rating or reduce it or change the xp curve to adjust for fixed instead of variable xp values that are currently in game.

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