Divisions using leadership

[zeekater]

In Dairy nr 4 leadership was defined as:

This week we introduce the concept of leadership; this represent educated people who live in your country. They are used for research, diplomacy, espionage and your officer corps.

So I was surprized to see that brigades don't take up 'leadership' when you create them (diary 7)

IMO it would fit perfectly with the philosophy of leadership, that you need to make decisions about your strategy. Do I build a ton of infantry divisions to overwhelm the enemy, but thereby rob myself of my engineers, scientists, ...

Even between brigades you could have differences in how much leadership a brigade takes up. Imagine the paratroopers, taking up relatively more leadership because of all the specialist training. Militia would use almost no leadership, great for when you're running out of smart people to fill the officers and NCO's ranks

From the developers point of view I can understand that this would make it harder to correctly balance the leadership points, but that's no excuse

Development Diary 4:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=380894

 

[Bobb4]

Good point, but don't you mean Divisions and not Brigades?

 

[Battlecry]

Good point, but don't you mean Divisions and not Brigades?

I think he's referring to the "division builder" screenshot, which shows the cost for each brigade. Division cost is just the sum of the cost of it's brigades. I was also rather surprised not to see a cost in leadership - we'll have to wait and see what they have in mind.

 

[Myth]

In Dairy nr 4 leadership was defined as:



So I was surprized to see that brigades don't take up 'leadership' when you create them (diary 7)

IMO it would fit perfectly with the philosophy of leadership, that you need to make decisions about your strategy. Do I build a ton of infantry divisions to overwhelm the enemy, but thereby rob myself of my engineers, scientists, ...

Even between brigades you could have differences in how much leadership a brigade takes up. Imagine the paratroopers, taking up relatively more leadership because of all the specialist training. Militia would use almost no leadership, great for when you're running out of smart people to fill the officers and NCO's ranks

From the developers point of view I can understand that this would make it harder to correctly balance the leadership points, but that's no excuse

Development Diary 4:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=380894

I thought that was what "officer corps" referred to?

 

[zeekater]

We don't know how the command system will work, but perhaps each level could have a cost in leadership too?

IMO, 'Leadership' sounds like the perfect way to dynamically interconnect the various aspects of the game

 

[Alexander Seil]

I'm guessing that another use for leadership will be to generate random leaders. That's how it worked in Victoria, and the concept of leadership is lifted straight from there (but it had a more narrow military application, plus units really did cost you leadership points).

 

[Alex_brunius]

I agree that "specialist" brigades should cost leadship. They often actually had more and better leaders. But smaller numbers (manpower).

 

[Battlecry]

I'm guessing that another use for leadership will be to generate random leaders. That's how it worked in Victoria, and the concept of leadership is lifted straight from there (but it had a more narrow military application, plus units really did cost you leadership points).

Johan said something about leadership representing, among other things, officers of lower than division-command rank. I should think every single brigade would cost a certain amount of leadership...ah well I guess we'll have to wait and see...maddening, isn't it?

 

[Alexander Seil]

Before everyone has a heart attack, or stroke, or whatever you're about to have over this, you might want to note that the interface changes radically with every development diary. The first one didn't even have a number for Fuel!

My best guess is that they're still putting the interface together, and what we saw was literally the first time they put together a functional division builder.

 

[potski]

Before everyone has a heart attack, or stroke, or whatever you're about to have over this, you might want to note that the interface changes radically with every development diary. The first one didn't even have a number for Fuel!

My best guess is that they're still putting the interface together, and what we saw was literally the first time they put together a functional division builder.

And there is a strangely wiiiide column for mph, as if there is still a column to go in there.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Actually my bet is that it's the supression and they didn't come with an icon for it yet. The current supression value uses the "leadership" flag icon. And the MP brigade got 0 supression. It's all very peculiar. My bet is that they were rushing it for the diary and didn't have any ideas for representing the supression value as an icon, so they went ahead and skipped that column, with the leadership values move over to the next column (note that the rest of the numbers make sense, but supression only makes sense if you interpret it as leadership).

 

[daemonofdecay]

Actually my bet is that it's the supression and they didn't come with an icon for it yet. The current supression value uses the "leadership" flag icon. And the MP brigade got 0 supression. It's all very peculiar. My bet is that they were rushing it for the diary and didn't have any ideas for representing the supression value as an icon, so they went ahead and skipped that column, with the leadership values move over to the next column (note that the rest of the numbers make sense, but supression only makes sense if you interpret it as leadership).

Or maybe its because they havn't put revolt risk/partisans into the Alpha build yet, and don't need a number for suppression because there is no suppression game mechanic.

 

[Alexander Seil]

They did work out approximate mph even though there are barely any units on the map to move, so I doubt that's the reason. None of those numbers really have any "practical" meaning because it is rather clear that if the OOBs exist, they only exist on paper, not in the game.

 

[zeekater]

The flag-symbol for suppression is kinda ackward, a change from the HoI2 rifle-symbol, but I wouldn't search too much into that

After all, Johan stated what each of the rows were, and I don't think he would intentionally lie to us

 

[Battlecry]

After all, Johan stated what each of the rows were, and I don't think he would intentionally lie to us

He told us what the columns that were in the screenshot represented; nothing was said about whether this was a complete list, or whether new additions might be made. Lie? Perhaps not. Not volunteer information? Haha yes, he does/they do that one a whole lot.

 

[zeekater]

I agree that "specialist" brigades should cost leadship. They often actually had more and better leaders. But smaller numbers (manpower).

In Doomsday and Armageddon they tried to represent this by making the mountaineers, paratroopers and marines more costly in manpower, while the new leadership concept would mean it's much more expensive to build lots of specialist divisions

 

[Alexander Seil]

Actually there could be a much simpler mechanism. Presumably, your country generates leadership over time. I'm assuming that instead of costing leadership to build, large armies could reduce your leadership gain? That would represent that a large standing army ties up a lot of the nation's "leadership corps." Much better than a one-time reduction.

 

[Bullfrog]

I'm sure each division costs leadership, but whether it is shown in DD#7 or not does not mean much right now. The leadership "requirement" will be different for each country and perhaps for each division within your army. I am betting that it will have something to do with 'standing army' as well, if not completely replacing it. I also want enormous leadership costs for air units to simulate pilot training.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Actually, didn't Johan mention something about leadership impacting *performance* of the armed forces? Perhaps each unit will raise the "minimum" leadership reqirement (with air units raising it more than most)? That would nicely handicap the Japanese air force, if they have a tiny leadership pool that's mostly wasted on land forces on the Asian mainland.

Although, if that is the case, I would prefer some kind of a difference in impact of going under minimum leadership. Certainly, air units should be impacted more than land forces.

 

[Battlecry]

Actually, didn't Johan mention something about leadership impacting *performance* of the armed forces? Perhaps each unit will raise the "minimum" leadership reqirement (with air units raising it more than most)? That would nicely handicap the Japanese air force, if they have a tiny leadership pool that's mostly wasted on land forces on the Asian mainland.

Although, if that is the case, I would prefer some kind of a difference in impact of going under minimum leadership. Certainly, air units should be impacted more than land forces.

This might work, but I see some issues regarding destroyed/weakened units. Such losses have to be modeled some way, and anything other than having a part of a unit's strength as 'leadership' (and, ergo, part of the cost) would seem more complicated than it has to be.
If this does turn out to be the case, I'm hoping Paradox has some brilliant solution - because I don't want to destroy a Wehrmacht army group, only to see the quality of their remaining forces improve because of the leadership released/less units etc.