Unit Experience

[magian]

In warlords 3 units that fought in a battle had the chance of gaining a medal. In warlords 4 they took it further and made units upgrade in interesting ways after getting a certain amount of experience.

Right now a unit recruited at a city is just as good as a unit that has fought in 20 battles. This isn't realistic, because green recruits are not equal to battle-hardened veterans.

I think it would add another dimension to the game to have units gaining power by surviving battles. It could take some of the edge off the breakneck expansion that is currently rewarded. Because losing all but one unit to take a city may not be the best option in the early game.

Maybe some of the more powerful units aren't so mighty when produced from a city, but become terrifying after gaining some levels.
IE a dragon could emerge as a hatchling or a dragon whelp and grow into a full fledged dragon, you could express this growth with several color shifts. So hatchling->dragon whelp->young dragon->green dragon->red dragon. Strength, abilities, wounds and movement could increase with each new level.

[Jeremy]

In Warlords 2, units that fought in a battle with a hero had a chance of getting +1. Cute. Not super necessary.

[KGB]

Jeremy,

Actually you could get up to +4 as it was possible to be awarded 4 medals.

So an average unit like Giant could eventually reach 9 strength with 4 medals or 3 medals and a bless. At that point it was very powerful.

I'd like to see some kind of medal concept added in a future beta.

KGB

[Moonknight]

I second the medals concept that was in W3...I thought it was a great addition, I did not like the way W4 was setup though.

4 medals was maybe too much, but I think up to 3 would be good!

[Moonknight]

I'd like to bump this concept up

[tabanli]

I think without making big changes, we can easily give Bless+, Speed+, UL+ bonuses to a random surviving unit of a battle where 5 unit dies.

[Iceman1234GO]

Hi All,

I support this idea!
...
btw is there anyone from developers listening to these discussions? If a topic receives a number of positive comments, I would expect some kind of response...
...

EXP development is one of things that distinguish Tactics from Strategy - even at a casual level.
In other case you have simply mass slaughter , no smart tactics...
Conclusion: ""A general must value his men"

Cheers!

[magian]

Some sort of necromancy has returned this old post from the dead. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that having units level up into more powerful unit types would require lots of work (of both the graphical and balancing variety). I agree with Moonknight that W3 did it best with their medal system. Although, I don't think the random roll to receive a medal after a battle is a great distribution system. Also, Darklords was a bit stingy with medals in general.

In response to Iceman, I have always found Piranha and Snotling very open to suggestions. Lots of ideas that were posted on the forums have made their way into the game. However, they are a team of two, and have a long list of tasks to accomplish, and bugs to hunt down.

[SnotlinG]

I´ll bring this to our list of things to consider / implement at a future date.
Right now tabanli´s idea seems easiest from amount of work needed

Iceman; myself and piranha often read this forum and scans it for good ideas. And we have so far picked up several and included into the game
Not all ideas is workable though, either due to technical constraints, or due to the fact that the idea actually would make the game boring / more tedious etc. Or maybe the amount of work needed to implement compared to the gain in game experience is just to big to justify it.

Also even if we often read here we dont so often post, but dont let that stop you from keeping the ideas coming.
If its a good and doable idea, chances are it will sooner or later get included