Update 06JUN10

Ranking Points and Commander Experience gains are now awarded to players and commanders according to the level of their participation in the battle during which the enemy units were slain. 

Slaying Commanders (either attacking or defending) no longer gives any Experience Points or Ranking. You can only gain XP and ranking from killing troops. 

Multiple Commanders from the same player share the experience points that the player gained amongst them equally. 

Example: How the experience and ranking points are now distributed.

• Take a City with 2 armies from 2 different players defending it
• Army 1 has 2 Commanders and a lot of troops, making up 80% of "total" city defence
• Army 2 has 4 Commanders and a few troops, making up 20% of "total" city defence
• An attacker fails to win an attack against this city, and there are 1,000 Experience Points up for grabs
• The 2 Commanders in Army 1 will gain 400 Experience Points each, and the Player will gain 800 Defense Ranking Points
• The 4 Commanders in Army 2 will gain 50 Experience Points each, and the Player will gain 200 Defense Ranking Points

This is quite a fundamental change, and means that a third party player can no longer put commanders in a heavily attacked and 'defended by other players' city to soak up experience gain and ranking whilst doing little to nothing in return. 

Commanders that have gained experience up to this point using this mechanism will keep their experience gains thus far. 

Ranking points, however, will be adjusted over the next few days to reflect this new calculation.