Why are some of my champions gaining massive XP and others hardly any?

Do your heroes have the +XP advantage?  If so thats could be a reason some get more than others.  Also, if you have more champions in one army, then you get a reduced amount, so if you have then taken out 1 champ with say 3 normal units and win, you would go wow...that sure is alot of xps, when compared to the 3 or more champs party.

Monster level is important. So even if the threat level is the same if the mob is higher level it will give more xp. On top of which the base xp a monster gives is defined per monster type so it's possible that the monster your sov killed is just not giving out an appropriate amount of xp regardless of the other factors. 

Ialso kinda suspect that the length of the battle also plays into the resultant xp. Could just be be coincidence but I wouldn't put it past Stardock at this point. 

IMHO the xp calculation in this game has always been needlessly complex. And they're also general tight lipped about it so it remains a mystery. Unnecessarily. 

Yeah, I thought of that stuff, but in my playing around with it, here's what I discovered:

*Every* battle that Bannon and Jortnur fight gives them loads of XP, regardless of what they're fighting. Sometimes it's just 30, sometimes it's 80, but it's always a lot.

*Every* battle my sovereign and the heroes that were stacked with him (they're no longer stacked with him, but are now fighting on their own) fight gives them minuscule amounts of XP, regardless of what they're fighting. Sometimes it's 1, sometimes it's as high as 3, but it's always tiny little single digits.

All of my champions have 'Tutelage' on them, but the difference I'm seeing isn't 25%.

I (A) don't have multiple heroes in one stack, (B) am fighting lots of different things [monsters, enemy armies, etc], and (C) don't think that the +XP traits can account for the difference I'm seeing.

What am I missing?

Ya that Scythe you get from that big ass Ogre has that on it -100% for 42 dmg...it hurts getting hit with too.

I don't think so; at any rate, all four of the affected heroes aren't using it.

More and more, I'm thinking it's a bug. It's like I put too many champions together and got a big penalty, but when I split them up the penalty didn't go away.

there's one thing yo may not be aware of - trained units (enemy AI armies) give a lot less XP than monsters. it's not uncommon to conquer city with a strong garrison and only get single digit XP rewards out of it, while killing a group of mites or darklings still yields maybe 10 or 15 XP

OK, now that I did not know. Let me go kill some monsters with my guy and see what happens.

Which I think it really dumb.

AI wins should be just as relevant for XP advancement compared to monster wins.

Conquering cities should also merit reward.

Compounding that, losing a city should cost your empire Fame.....and conquering a city should grant you a reward of Fame.

Thats true GfireflyE...i agree totally.  In the end it does come down to battling the AI opponents

and why should you not be getting decent xps for fighting them and defeating.

The reason you don't get as much XP from AI units as you do from monster units is that you could more easily "camp" the AI for XP gains if the two were more equitable. 

It's actually a well thought out mechanic, even though it can be infuriating at times.

The reasoning behind that is because of balancing. Neutral monsters are your early game enemies that you have to fight in order to epxand your empire, they are also gone forever once they are killed off, hence they provide for a major xp boost to lvl your heroes and to give them much needed items. Enemy faction troops become your regular enemies from mid- to endgame and the key difference compared to neutral monsters is that they "spawn" infinitely because they are trained in cities and the lower xp reward is supposed to reflect that. If enemy faction troops would provide your heroes with the same amount of xp, you could easily lvl your heroes to oblivion by killing off streams of relatively minor troops.

Now I definitely agree that engaging and defeating enemy factions needs to be translated into a fame reward.

This needs to be checked. I know most people here rarely "cross the streams" to begin with, so if the XP split penalty sticks after you break up your heroes, that could fly under the radar. It is especially hard to notice if you are not testing for it because XP calculation is such an inscrutable mechanic to begin with.