Experience dependent upon army size?

[Stepsongrapes]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

There is also a tapering off when using the same ability more than once in a combat though, which I don't recall if I ever figured out exactly.

I don't recall any mention of this in the long dragon exp thread in the subforum.

Are you sure you're not simply seeing the affect of the yours/theirs leadership ratio changing as the battle progresses? Dragon exp is calculated based on the ratio at the time the ability is used, not for the overall battle.

In other words, casting an ability when you have 1 peasant to their 100 peasants (early in the battle) nets you more dragon exp than casting the same ability after you killed half of their peasants.

[Zechnophobe]

I am not basing this at all on observation, but rather on what I recall reading in the manual.

Edit: I was somewhat inaccurate, see below post.

[Zechnophobe]

So I translated some more, and found additional tidbits:

The dragon gains more experience if its level is lower than the hero's.

It DOES gain experience based on the damage it deals... but only if the damage happens DURING THE CASTING OF THE ABILITY. That means ball lightning's surprisingly high base damage is actually compensating for you not getting any credit for the damage. You gain a bonus to experience (this is simply added to all else) = 1.7% of the total leadership of units killed. This value is bounded by an odd equation:

LevelDiffExp / (Petlevel/5 +2)

Where LevelDiffExp is the amount of experience it takes to get from the current dragon level to the next (independent of your current actual experience).

This means that killing things somewhat above your level is good, but it maxes out.

Furthermore: The scalar for dragon xp (K) which is determined by your leadership / enemy leadership maxes out at 1. That is, having far less leadership will only ensure that the value remains at 1, it will not increases it past one. In addition, the first ability you use every battle will always have a K of 1, independant of the size of the opposing force.

This is why you can get actual dragon experience from the 10 devilfish you kill on debir, even though they are a vanishingly small percentage of your own leadership.


Let me try to sum this all up into a few key words:

• You always get full experience on your first dragon ability
• You get less experience after the first, if you have more leadership than the opponent in play
• You get full experience so long as your leadership at casting time remains equal to or less than theirs
• You get 1.7% of the direct damage you deal as bonus dragon experience
• You get more experience if you are higher level than your dragon
• That means increasing your own experience also increase your dragon's experience!
• It also means it becomes hard to level your dragon up if it is higher level than you.

[DGDobrev]

Wonderful, Zechno!

Now that is something extremely important, and the players should be aware. It would seem that overleveling your pet in the beginning may be a problem. You may be waiting for one of its skills to open up or upgrade (and you may need it quickly!), while due to overleveling it may take quite a while.

Heaps of useful information. Great work again, Zechno

[Rhygadon]

Very interesting stuff, Zechnophobe! A few followup questions, if I may ...

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

This value is bounded by an odd equation:

LevelDiffExp / (Petlevel/5 +2)

Where LevelDiffExp is the amount of experience it takes to get from the current dragon level to the next (independent of your current actual experience).

This means that killing things somewhat above your level is good, but it maxes out.

Is that last sentence meant to follow from the preceding equation? If so, I can't figure it out. It seems that the only factor governing the stated equation is the pet's absolute level (which in turn determines the XP-to-next-level figure). Since the denominator scales from e.g. 2.2 at petlevel 1 to 10 at petlevel 40, this would mean that the maximum "bonus" xp for damage is equal to half the length of the xp bar at level 1 or 1/10 the length of the bar at level 40.

Is that right, or am I misunderstanding? I can't see where the level of the enemy comes into the picture. (For that specific damage-based XP component, that is.)

Meanwhile, I have a few questions about the details of the more fundamental XP-for-Rage-use equation...

1. Were you able to find an equation for the effect of player level being higher/lower than pet level?
2. Are summoned troops counted in the calculation of enemy leadership / player leadership?
3. If so -- and here we get REALLY esoteric -- do you know if a Mystic Egg gets its leadership value set upon casting, or only when it hatches?

I'm interested in the point about summons because would seem to make a huge difference in the dragon-XP value of Mystic Egg. With my current lowbie Warrior, I've been starting fights with the Egg instead of a damaging skill, on the theory that it lets me build up combat advantage without yet decrementing the enemy's total leadership. But if summons count, then the difference is going to be much smaller, or could even run the other way. (Likewise for the strategy of going in short-stacked and letting Royal Thorns or Royal Griffins summon cannon fodder to take the hits while your pet does the damage.)

The final question is only really relevant in the special case where you cast Awaken Dragon before the Egg hatches ... but hey, if we were in this for the practical value, we'd all just be playing the game instead of reading this forum.

[dashcunning]

Dragon xp is multiplied by the ratio of hero level to pet level. I did some experimenting and posted my results here.

I did not do any testing on how summoned units factor into it. If you are technically inclined at all, it's fairly easy, if tedious, to do some testing for yourself. You could also double check my work.

Use winrar or similar to open data.kfs (found in the data folder) and edit pet.atom with any text editor. There you can change the experience values for the skills to something like 1000. Run a bunch of tests and with a number that large, it's easy to see if and how it changes. A backup of the original is probably a good idea.

[Harush]

I've found if you go with a pure rage build, you can get the dragon much much higher than Amelie's level. At level 35, my dragon was level 53 and was still gaining more exp per fight as a percent of his level than I was. Mostly because I open every fight with a fiery phantom or lava burst.

[Zechnophobe]

Yes, even though you are getting a fraction of the experience you would get due to the level difference, you also get more due to using more higher damage abilities. Once you start getting a lot of Fiery Phantoms going, it can start to, sorta, landslide. Though, if it weren't for the level disparity rule, it would be even more ridiculous.