Slitherine

I posted it there in the other forum but I want to post it here too, because it''s bothering me and it killed my excitement at firing up FOG Empires.

I fought the Aetolians with my elite Spartan phalanxes and imported to FOG2, and they were above average as they should be. I didn't really take bad casualties. In my second battle against Aetolia, I import and suddenly they're just average. Why is this? They have more experience than before, not less!

Is it a bug? I don't really understand how quality is allocated. How am I supposed to gain veterans? I only had 7 percent casualties in the first battle. It really made me want to stop playing out of frustration. That first battle was a tactical masterpiece on my part and I am being punished instead of rewarded for having so few troops killed.

After one fight, your army is tired, so the next turn your units are weak(level lower).

That is one possibilty, the other is that the enemy has a better general than you, which is assumed to degrade the morale/readiness of your troops owing to the enemy’s superior prebattle manoeuvres. This is abstracted into a temporary reduction in troop quality for the side with the worse general.

So although troops may be veterans they can still have their quality temporarily reduced by exhaustion or being outmanoeuvred by superior enemy generalship (which would impact the supply situation, availability of water, etc. Etc.)

All quality changes are due to a strategic reason, not arbitrary.

yes the absence of a general or having only a poorly rated general can have devastating consequences on your army - I had to play a battle where nearly all my troops were rated "raw" or "below average". This makes such games unique and quite an interesting challenge - in this case Empires said I would lose the battle using the Empires system, and I lost it twice using FOG 2, before finally having a bit of luck and better management in the third try and winning that (but only just). You should check out the opportunity to add a good general to your army. Some buildings (such as the Academy owned by the Spartans) allow you to have extra generals, as do some leader attributes. Also, to see the actual state of your army, check the army listing in the ledger - you will find that some of your troops showing green are in fact showing some loss of effectiveness. You get your losses back by moving to a region that has more than 50% loyalty and enough food to feed the army (plus you have to have enough manpower, metal and equipment to replace the lost items).