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Killing a Leader seems to give way too much XP

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Jolly Joker

Jolly Joker

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Mar 29, 2012
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I just killed a Lvl 5 Leader with two T1s (yes, for the 2nd time, just after coming out of the Void after being killed for the first time) with a 6-unit stack and got 15 XP for each unit, so 90 XP in all. Resource editor says, a leader is worth (30 + 5/2*Level) - at least that's how I understood "Level per Bonus". So this would make hero value 42.5 + 8 for the two T1 units = 50.5.

However, if Level per bonus is a MULTIPLIER, the formula works: (30 + 5*2*level) would mean 80 in this case, for a total XP of 88 or 15 per unit.

This, however, wouldn't make a lot of sense, so I suppose there is some kind of bug involved.

Can anyone shed light on that?
 
Ok, I loaded an autosave before the first battle against the Assembly Leader. That battle involved 12 units from me and was fought in a Colony against said Level 5 Leader plus 4 units for 18 kill XP and a Militia guard worth 20 kill XP. Each unit got 11 XP from that fight, so all in all 132.

No matter how you look at this, it leaves a lot of XP unexplained. Is there an XP modifier for battles in a Colony? Is there a modifier for units who gained ranks or have mods? And how much XP DOES a Leader give (and a hero)?
 
Well, that's not really the point. The point is that T1, T2, T3, T4 are worth 4, 6, 8, 12 XP, respectively. Which means, a stack of 6 T4s is worth 72 XP, and when you attack such a stack with 2 stacks yourself, every single one of your 12 units would get 6 XP.
So you can imagine my bewilderment when I sent that Leader with his 2 support units into the void again with 6 units, 2 of them heroes, both heroes leveling up, and then a check said, all units got 15 XP for the (easy) battle.

The XP value is also not reflected in the strength value.

Which invariably means, something is just WRONG here - bug, whatever.

I mean, it looks like hero XP ladder is silly, just as in AoW 3, way too easy to level up, but that's on another page altogether.
 
Enough is enough. I killed the guy for the third time. So now this has become an exploit: Kill a Leader, wait around, do quests or attack sectors, eventually, when leader's back, they'll reappear, keen on reconquista, only to get mauled again ... and again ..,. and again. Around a 100 XP every 3 turns or so for a stack.

For actually a ton of XP. Still looks like a Leader is worth 30 + 10*Level XP, which is completely bonkers. I suppose, correct might be (8 + Lvl) for heroes and (8 + Lvl)*2 for Leaders or some such, but the way it is, it's utterly silly.
 
To be honest, while the formula should match the encyclopedia, is this really that big of an issue? If you have a leader on farm status then you've basically won anyway?

Edit: Also this involves units spending large stretches of time in one location?
 
It should be corrected. I guess this aspect was not tested very deeply, because it is a secondary effect until you start exploiting it. I am sure they will correct it some time in the future, thanks to the tireless XP miners :).
 
It's not a secondary effect - it's actually two effects in one, and they are not secondary:

1) Leaders (and heroes) are giving a very large amount of XP in relation to regular units. Not only does this make no sense. It's also a balance problem. I'm not sure whether this isn't actually already the case, but it might make sense to modify unit XP as well with regard to mods and upgrades they have, although this may be too much hassle for too small an effect.

2) AI play and the necessity to correct it. I mean, it may happen: an AI player (on highest difficulty) aggressively smacks a colony right down the throat of a human player, giving him casus belli, and in an immediate reaction the AI player loses colony and leader and finds itself in a war. Fine. But should the AI really move its revived leader with minimal troop support into the range of the strong stack that is marauding its sectors and give it an easy chance to kill the leader yet again? Decline a truce, only to pull that stunt again?

No, the AI shouldn't do that, because at that point it's not funny anymore, it's just ruining the immersion.

Note, that this is not the result of "strange play leading to an exploit versus the poor AI". It's been completely natural play. I only mentioned "exploit", since, after the leader got himself killed for the 3rd time in a row, it looked like some cartoon flick. You might position yourself behind a corner with a club, look onto your watch and strike 7 you bash without looking, hitting the same target every day.

You don't want to win games this way, but as long as you can, it's a serious flaw.
 
Garresh said:
To be honest, while the formula should match the encyclopedia, is this really that big of an issue? If you have a leader on farm status then you've basically won anyway?

Edit: Also this involves units spending large stretches of time in one location?
Click to expand...
Sorry for the late answer, read this just now - yes, it IS a big issue. Keep in mind, a map can have up to 12 players, and leaders and heroes as well will come back and be a target again. Considering that a T4 is worth 12 XP, and a T2 6, you need to slay a lot of units to come close to killing 1 Leader. I suppose a bug at work here, wrong "*" in the formula or something like that.

For the game itself, having a leader on farm status, as you call it, is spoiling the fun, that simple. And the stack I have there is marauding the leader's sectors, simply because Leader doesn't want a truce. Lambs to the slaughter, not good.
 
Hard to tell from your wild speculation about the formula, which has spread over a whole order of magnitude.
However, if its even half an order of magnitude out, that is a big error.
At worst they just say WAI and close the report. Then we can discuss the balance implications.
 
The formula as it should be is in the resource tool in globalherosetting. I can only repeat that I got so much XP that I started investigating, and until then the XP gain is in line with someone switching the "/" for a "*". This is easy to test, since the level-dependent part would be four times as high, so the difference would be all the higher, the higher the hero level is. So with such a switch, if you'd kill a Level 12 Leader, you were supposed to get 60 XP, but what you'd get was 150 instead.
With regular Heroes the formula can be simplified to (10+Level), so a level 12 hero should give 22 XP, but what he would give with that error was 58.

Should be easy enough to check.
 
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