Overview
Experience, and how it affects units stats.
The basic of experience
v 1.1, added an extra example to show the power of specialized units.
Here is a quick guide to help players understand how experience affect combat in Panzer Corps.
Experience Points:
Experience is earned in combat by killing enemy steps, suppressing enemy steps also give experience. The stronger the enemy the more xp you’ll get for hitting him. Stronger means both better hardware and more experienced.
Both the player and the AI xp gained in combat are afffected by the Difficulty level setting:
- Sergeant: player xp : 200%, AI xp: 50%
- Lieutenant: player xp : 100%, AI xp: 80%
- Colonel: player xp : 100%, AI xp: 100%
- General: player xp : 100%, AI xp: 100%
- Field Marshal: player xp : 50%, AI xp: 100%
Experience is lost by using green replacements, in that case the tooltip will tell you how much xp you will loose. If you don’t want to loose xp during replacement use the more expensive elite replacements instead.
Scenarios or campaigns may put a cap on maximum xp. In particular this is the case in the Grand Campaign.
Level up:
Basically every 100 points of experience gives the unit an experience star. Each star, or level, improves your unit combat values. However since rules 1.20, the bonus are class specific. i.e. units from different type like tank, infantry, etc.. improve in different values. Moreover the values can be +0.5, +1 or +2 depending on unit classes. Here is the full list:
Note that:
– Initiative only ever get +0.5 per level,
– Fighters and AA guns get a big +2 Air Attack boost per level, giving them an increasing edge over tactical or strategic bombers,
– AT units whether self propelled or not get a +2 Hard Attack bonus making them better vs tanks.
– Most combat units get a Defense bonus, but Infantry is the only ground unit that also improve in Close Defense.
In many cases the improvement gained by leveling up is better than gaining a hero.
When you right click or use the ‘F7’ key to see your units values, the game only show the stock unit values. The extra benefits gained from experience or heroes are just computed for combat and only visible in the detailed combat log.
Additionally each star allow you to purchase an extra strength point above 10, using elite replacement. Since rules 1.20, overstrength is progressively more expensive with every extra point. Whereas in rules 1.14 the cost for each overstrength point was linear, and set to 10% of the unit price if I remeber correctly.
Examples from actual combat
Now here are two examples from actual combat:
Note that the Initiative, attack and defense values, are effective values after all modifications.
in both cases the defender have an experience of 100.
Firstly in each row I increase the experience of the attacker by 100, until reaching 500 xp.
Then on the second block, I increase not only the experience of the attacker, but also maximize his overstrength, to show how powerful the combination of high experience plus overstrength is.
It’s worth mentioning that if both side have equal Initiative, the combat is fully simultaneous (baring rugged defense), and both side make their full damages. However for each point of Initiative advantage 20% of the kills and suppress are applied to the enemy before he can retaliate. Hence with a difference of +5 in Initiative you make full combat damage before the enemy retaliate.
I tried to replicate the value given by the detailed combat log, the most important value being of course the “Killed” in red and “Suppressed” in blue.
First example Grenadier vs Infantry
A fairly common situation, a German early war Grenadier attack a Soviet regular Infantry. The Soviet unit is in a city hex which gives an entrenchment bonus of 3, moreover city being a close terrain hex it has a capping effect on Initiative.
Second example Panzer IV G vs T34/43:
Now a Panzer IV G with Initiative 8, Attack 13 and Defense 14 is attacking an unentrenched T34/43, no terrain defense bonus or Initiative cap.
Both units are of equal strength as shown by the similar results when both units have the same xp (100). So this gives a pretty good idea of the experience and overstrength benefits.
Third example StuG III F/8 vs T34/43:
I added this to highlight the power of specialized unit gaining Attack + 2 per level, instead of the common +1 for most units. Here the Stug IIIF/8 has a similar Attack value as the Panzer IV G of the previous example, However its base Initiative is only 5, this is how the game represent the disadvantage of having a non-turreted gun. So the inexperienced StuG III F/8 isn’t as good as the Pz IV G, However with medium experience the StuG catch up with the Pz IV, and become better at high experience. This is even more significant with overstrength.
Don’t get discouraged by the weaker performance of your AT guns, be patient and train them for the late war as they tend to be more cost effective as tanks this is a good investment.
Experience is a critical factor, in particular it helps a lot to take less hits and to increase the survivability of your units saving prestige in the end .
This also show why it is harder to field new fresh units later in the campaign. As they start with 0 xp they have a big disadvantage when the enemy often have 200+ xp units. It is an issue in particular for the front-line units like tanks and infantry and fighters. For tanks and fighters, you can try to field a green unit equipped with the latest hardware available, for example a green Tiger II or Me 262 is fairly solid even vs experienced enemy. But for infantry you don’t have such a luxury after 1943. For artillery or AA units this isn’t such a big deal as you can keep them out of harm’s way. It’s usually a good idea to start farming new recruits as soon as possible, in particular when your core units have already reached the xp cap, consider fielding a few new units for training and keep some of your best units in reserve.