Mechanics

Experience and promotion

Units that fight gather experience; as experience passes the thresholds a unit is promoted to the next rank. A rank gives the unit discipline and a higher morale ceiling — it does not give a power multiplier.

How experience is earned

A unit that comes out of a fight alive, without routing and having dealt damage to its opponent earns 1 experience. A unit that kills an enemy unit in the fight earns an extra 1.

There are three cases that earn no experience, and the combat preview says which one applies:

• A unit that dies in the fight.
• A unit that routs at the end of the fight.
• A unit that dealt its opponent no damage — risk-free attacks do not farm experience.

The attacker and the defender follow the same rule.

Ranks

Thresholds are total experience; the discipline and morale ceiling on each row are that rank's total values, not a share added to the previous row.

Rank discipline is added to the type's own discipline; the total is at most 4. Discipline reduces morale loss in combat and, if high enough, prevents the loss from a friend dying beside the unit (Morale and rout). A unit at the top rank has a morale ceiling of 7.

A player who knows Mobilization has their thresholds come earlier — the recruit threshold stays where it is, every other threshold fills one experience point earlier (a threshold never drops below 1). The same table with this node:

Starting experience

A unit born in a city that has a Barracks starts not at zero but at 2 experience — depending on the promotion thresholds, this can put some units into life having never seen the recruit rank at all. For a unit born in a city with no Barracks this share is zero, regardless of technology.

A player who knows Household Troops has their infantry (Spearman, Janissary, Archer) earn a further

experience on top of that share — but only if the city they are born in already has a Barracks; in a city with no Barracks this extra is also zero. Sipahi, Artillery and Forlorn Hope do not count as infantry and never get this extra share — they still get the Barracks' own share.

The moment of promotion

Promotion happens as the result of a fight and does not change that fight's numbers: the power and damage in the preview belong to the unit before promotion. If the new rank raises the morale ceiling, the unit also gains that much morale.

On the board

A promoted unit shows as many notches on its icon as its rank; a recruit has none. The selected unit's panel shows its rank, its experience and the next threshold. The combat preview says where experience will go and whether the unit will be promoted.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.