Auto-promote vs Manual

[Johnhawkwood]

I have always promoted my own leaders but in my last game I tried auto-promote. While I can appreciate the advantage of maintaining skill levels with the auto-promote I found that I just did not get the amount of promotions that I wanted - I just did not have the amount of generals and field marshalls that I want (playing as Germany).

Having Reichenau, Kluge, Leeb etc as Lt. Gens at Fall Gelb or Barbarossa is frustrating.

Promoting my own leaders is good as a kind of difficulty level modifier, I usually play on hard so promoting my own leaders makes it just a little harder but am now playing at very hard level and would appreciate better leaders.

I remember seeing something in previous posts about 'old guard purge' - is this what I need to do to get the leaders I want?

How do I do it as Germany?

 

[unmerged(40435)]

I had the same considerations as u. I simply took from here:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4679908. Works fine.

There is another option of creating a kinda designed "purge all old guard leaders event that i havent tried: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~klas/OldGuardEvents/. But i found likewise a purge old guard for England.

So when i play the game there is an event for both England and Germany at the first day of the game where all old guard leaders retire. Works fine. US doesnt have so many old guards - they do fine in any case but UK and Ger is a pain with all those old guards - imo

Takes a week or 2 after the event fire b4 u get up again with new leaders but imo no problem.

 

[Johnhawkwood]

thanks for that thundershield...

 

[unmerged(48743)]

It's not so bad having a very good leader only as a Lt.Gen. He stil can lead 6 units when there is a HQ in adjecent province. 6 armored units are very strong.

But it's true, GER has not much G or FM (especially when old guards purged). One slot is used by Himmler...

 

[unmerged(136398)]

Exactly how does the auto-promotion work anyways? I have personally just manually promoted my generals all of the time. I keep looking at the leader statistics and promote them when no skill or only a negligible amount is lost.

 

[unmerged(48743)]

Exactly how does the auto-promotion work anyways? I have personally just manually promoted my generals all of the time. I keep looking at the leader statistics and promote them when no skill or only a negligible amount is lost.

1 Skill point is always lost, when manually promote.

If a leader is auto-promoted, no skill losses. As your army grows (in number of units), leaders are again and again promoted. There are some (quite komplex) rule, which one come first. Generally, higher skilled has higher probablility to be autopromoted.

 

[unmerged(105989)]

auto promote works on the size of your force. I think the wiki has the exact proportions, but basically larger armies (navies, and air forces) require more of higher ranks, and the computer does it. I leave autopromote on myself, but since my basic unit of manuever is the 3 division corps, I need more good (or at least decent) LTGs than Germany has, even with autopromote. So, I tend to manually promote them as I go. A good thing is that the good ones will quickly gain skill back, as the game will allow leaders to gain experience quickly to their 'desired' rank. This is one of those things hidden in the code, but I find useful.

 

[sbr]

You can still manually promote leaders with Auto-promote on. It is the best of both worlds.

 

[andergaster]

You can change the number of Generals in relation to the size of your army in the AI folder.

- for Germany/Grand Campaign you have to open the file "ger_1936.ai". You can do this with the windows editor.

- search for "leader_ratio" in the section called "Ground Combat, Leaders and Garrisons"

- this is the section for ground leaders in my file:

land_field_marshal = 0.040 # = 1/25
land_general = 0.066 # = 1/15
land_lt_general = 0.250 # = 1/4

in your file the text behind "#" might not exist. This part is ignored anyway by the program and only works as little helper.

the number 0.250 for lt Generals is standing for 0.25 Lt. Generals per unit.

example: your army consists of 7 infantry divisions and you have 1 Lt. General. When your 8th division is coming into service the game will promote one of your major generals to Lt. General. With the numbers above an army of 15 divisions would lead to a promotion to General as long as no other General is in service.

you also have to consider that the ai autopromotes no air or sea commander who is attached to a unit. usually the ai promotes those land commanders first who are in the field.

 

[Conanteacher]

wow, great stats! I never heard of there being a standard proportion of leaders!

Does this mean that if I rule e.g. Greece with 20 divisions I cannot promote 15 leaders to FM? Or has it to do with the entire leader pool?

Guess the best for me, as a micromanagement - freak, would be to retire every old guard separately and whenever needed/ great extra for the AARs!
Is there such a possibility? like an f12 command "kill leader 12345"...
I don't mind killing the general, I only want some free slots!
Specially with USSR, or any major.

 

[Rocket88]

Does this mean that if I rule e.g. Greece with 20 divisions I cannot promote 15 leaders to FM?

Well you can do this via manual promotion (if you want to ) - but the AI wont if you have autopromote turned on

 

[I-15]

I use auto promote. But when i first start a game i go through and promote all the MJG to LTG. Mostly because it annoyed me to no end when i deployed a 3 division tank corp and i couldn't get it auto assigned Guderain because he was a MJG.

 

[unmerged(105989)]

IMO never use auto-assign. The AI has a funny way of determining who should be where, and you'll find your best panzer leaders in charge of 3rd line garrison divisions, while cruddy old guards are leading your assault formations.

 

[Julle64]

You also don't have to use the auto promote from the beginning. When I play Germany I usually turn it on a month before Danzig or War. IIRC since the Armageddon addon the leaders already commanding a unit are promoted first.