XP and Leveling

[Pillager]

I think that the current model for hero experience needs to be reworked.

Huge battles give too many levels, and small tasks (like capturing neutral cities) do not yield enough experience.

I find that my heroes often fail to level until they search a high level ruin or fight in a large battle...and then they often go up 2 or 3 levels at once. This doesn't feel right to me.

Right now, heroes gain experience based on the strength of the units they kill in battle....therefore, bringing along a medusa or a battering ram actually means you will get less experience from a battle. This seems ridiculous.

A hero should gain experience for killed units based on the number of turns that unit takes to produce, not its strength (since strength is modified in nearly every battle).

KGB devised a system for XP rewards that seems fairly sensible to me (although it may need a tweak or two).

[KGB]

Repeating what I meant to send to Piranha/SnotlinG in our 4 player game but accidentally only sent to you:


The problem now is that because big battles are all the XP, everything relies on big battles. And more than big battles it has to be big battles with gobs of XP involved. Because a L1 Paladin + 7 bats attacking 8 bats (2's vs 1s') gets 1/5 the amount of XP that a L1 Dreadlord + 7 Gryffons attacking 8 Pikemen in a L1 walled city (10's vs 5's) gets. Even thought the battles winning percentage outcomes are identical and there is no more planning in one attack than the other.

For example your hero (Piranha) got 4 levels from taking my city and killing 10 men. And not levels 1-4 either but levels 5-9. My hero took 2 of your cities. In the last one he killed 15 men in that city! In the other one he killed 10 men. He got 2 levels TOTAL. 2! So he went from L1 to L3. See the problem?

And your hero was 85% likely to win. So it wasn't like it was a 50/50 battle you barely won. It just happened to be my armies were worth more points. That's the only reason you got more XP. Nothing to do with planning because I actually hurt myself by bringing Siege/Medusa and lowering your strength and therefore the XP rewarded. I should have gotten more XP for combining units. And in your battle you did no planning because your only bonus's came from your Dreadlord hero while I actually had a Pegasi for increased defense in my city.

The other problem is that because SO much XP is rewarded from big stacks being involved in combat you are DEATHLY afraid to attack a hero stack unless you are sure you can kill him. Because you'll be giving away gobs of XP to your opponent and have a good chance to make the hero more powerful than he was. So I am much LESS likely to attack a hero stack than any other stack. That isn't right.

Lastly cities/ruins/quests/blessing etc is worth NOTHING at all. I played a solo test game on the test map, used my initial hero and conquered the entire map. I didn't even make L5 for conquering 20+ cities. That doesn't seem right given that taking cities is the purpose of the game.

What I'd prefer is the following formula:
Capture a City: 200 + 100 per defense bonus (1-3)
Search a Ruin: 300/400/500 for L1-3 (or 300/500/700 if L2/L3 ruins really do have a 10%+ chance of dying)
Bless: 250 per bless (so 500 potentially if you get both bless types)
Non-City Combat: 100
Armies killed: 25 for each 1-2 turn unit, 50 for each 3-5 turn unit (you could argue 75-100 for a 5 turn unit).

So kill a single bat: 125. Kill a stack of 8 bats: 300. Kill a stack of 8 dragons: 500. Capture a city with L6 walls (+2 defense) with 1 bat: 425 and so on. Fixed XP for everything. You can concentrate on making overkill hero stacks without worrying about losing XP because the battle is too skewed in your favor.

Now capturing 3 neutrals is roughly L2 experience. 6-7 neutrals will be L3 etc. Your initial hero now has a chance to level up without needing a L3 ruin or some super battle that he lucks into.

No one will ever level up multiple times from 1 battle. On the other hand they will level up steadily from doing lots of productive things like capturing neutrals, searching ruins, killing scouts/small stacks etc. After all capturing 10 neutrals is far more useful in terms of winning the game than beating a random 8 stack of enemy units.

I'd set the XP table to be 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000, 8000, 10000, 12000, 15000, 18000, 21000, 24000 and so on. Basically every 4 levels the amount of XP between levels increases by 1000 XP.

KGB

[joasoze]

Very well posted. I agree to everything

[LPhillips]

It sounds very reasonable. Certainly the current system is detrimental to strategic gameplay, and maybe a fixed XP gain is the best approach to balancing it.

[piranha]

Sounds like good ideas. We will rework the XP system for Beta4.

[Pillager]

How much XP for killing an enemy hero? Perhaps something like 100 XP, plus 25 XP for each level after the first. So, a level 3 would be worth 150, a level 5: 200 and a level 10: 425 XP.

[Moonknight]

That sounds good to me Pillager...

[LPhillips]

That's low. Very low.
Even if heroes soon gain XP more quickly/reasonably, and the heroes you are fighting are a higher level.

You lay your hero on the line to kill another hero, and gain 1/10 of a level? Maybe it's extreme, but killing an enemy hero could reasonably be set as an auto-gain, especially if their level is equal to or higher than yours. If it's lower, give 500 points.

Some people might think that is going too far, but again we're talking about risking your own hero. There needs to be some real reward for that. Of course, unless/until heroes are capped, they're not as precious as they should be.

[Pillager]

You are risking your hero whenever you use a hero stack to attack.

Sometimes attacking an enemy hero with your own is a big risk....more often (in my games) it isn't much of a risk at all.

That said, I agree that 100 +25/level is not too impressive. However, If quests are being introduced in beta 4, then killing a hero shouldn't be too huge of a reward in itself since 'kill an enemy hero' is a classic (and awesome) quest.

[KGB]

You can't factor risk into the XP given for killing an enemy hero. That's what is going on now and is skewing things badly.

After all many times that enemy hero may already be weakened by the loss of units as you 'soften' him up before using your own hero. So you may have a full 8 stack and the enemy hero may be down to 3-4 men. Thus there may be NO risk at all to your own hero.

As a minimum you are going to get 200XP for killing a L1 enemy hero who is by himself (100 for the hero, 100 for winning the battle). If that enemy hero has 7 bats with him that's another 175XP making it 375 for a L1 hero + 7 bats.

I would not have a problem making it +50XP per level instead of +25. So a 10th level hero would be 550XP (Pillagers original numbers for a L10 hero was incorrect as it should have been 325).

KGB