Leader levels

[The Boz]

Individual experience, as well as leader levels, really need a rethink in this game. There is no such thing as education, college, apprenticeship, or knowledgebase in any of the empires. Your governor knew really well how to manage a sector? Tough, he died, and his replacement finished high school in 2200, and hasn't learned a thing since. This goes double for scientists. Shouldn't there be some kind of... increasing skill floor as time/tech goes on?

And, related to that, can we, as a playerbase, finally come to an agreement that most traits, civics, techs, or whatevers that grant extra leader level caps are absolutely useless in a vacuum? The first one, maybe two are okay, but outside of a venerable tree-of-life or outright immortal species, a skill cap of 8+ is just not going to happen. Unless it happens to a scientist, moments before they randomly die.

 

[AlknicTeos]

additional leader skill levels are indeed useless, as you reach max lvl 10 almost always without pushing it. And to finally get lvl 10 govs and so, you need about 150 y additional leader span

 

[Nakkivene]

It could be done with traits if you want to just get it simply done. Sometimes you'd get a Promising Protege trait for minimum starting level. Perhaps you'd get the genius of his generation for +5 level cap, or a cogitator unit for +25% xp gain and level cap 7. And so on.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Getting increased lifespan techs / bonuses is really very easy - you can usually add around 40-50 years before the mid game.

What would be a nice benefit would be a variety of leader levels at recruitment, with appropriate additional costs. So that:

Lvl 1 - 100 EC
Lvl 2 - 250 EC
Lvl 3 - 400 EC

(The extra 50 per lvl would be because of saved time with levelling up)

This way, you can spend more to start at a higher level, but you can also reach Lvl 10 sooner.

 

[The Boz]

Getting increased lifespan techs / bonuses is really very easy - you can usually add around 40-50 years before the mid game.

What would be a nice benefit would be a variety of leader levels at recruitment, with appropriate additional costs. So that:

Lvl 1 - 100 EC
Lvl 2 - 250 EC
Lvl 3 - 400 EC

(The extra 50 per lvl would be because of saved time with levelling up)

This way, you can spend more to start at a higher level, but you can also reach Lvl 10 sooner.

Nobody would EVER buy a cheaper leader of a lower level.
My idea goes more along the lines of "passive" experience generation for the *position*. If there is a leader of a specific type present in the empire, that leader's *position* gains a tiny bit of XP each month, so that by the time the leader is level 4, the minimum level of new leaders spawned at that position would be 2. We could even have an option to *gasp* retire (or sit at a new "teacher" position) our leaders early (hello stubbord/arrested development), and have them teach the new kids, boosting passive position XP generation while they live, and the passive XP accrued is beneath their own level.

 

[The Boz]

Also also PLEASE can we split up scientist (survey) and researcher (techs) jobs?

 

[Patrocious]

And, related to that, can we, as a playerbase, finally come to an agreement that most traits, civics, techs, or whatevers that grant extra leader level caps are absolutely useless in a vacuum? The first one, maybe two are okay, but outside of a venerable tree-of-life or outright immortal species, a skill cap of 8+ is just not going to happen. Unless it happens to a scientist, moments before they randomly die.

My beloved god-empress disagrees. She just hit Level 10 at the sweet young age of 300 and ruled for another ~40 years till the game ended. All without any cybernetic implants. Although I have to admit she had a research nexus and a tech ringworld dedicated to the research of cell revitalization technologies. One venerable scientist was even 5 years older than her

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Nobody would EVER buy a cheaper leader of a lower level.

Not necessarily, in the early game you'd be stupid not to get the cheapest leader, or you'd be spending all of your EC on leaders, and would not have enough to fill other roles. Later on, there's a cost / benefit ratio - do you have more chances of gaining additional leader traits, or do you get more experience quicker for a bigger cost.

My idea goes more along the lines of "passive" experience generation for the *position*. If there is a leader of a specific type present in the empire, that leader's *position* gains a tiny bit of XP each month, so that by the time the leader is level 4, the minimum level of new leaders spawned at that position would be 2. We could even have an option to *gasp* retire (or sit at a new "teacher" position) our leaders early (hello stubbord/arrested development), and have them teach the new kids, boosting passive position XP generation while they live, and the passive XP accrued is beneath their own level.

Your method sounds overly complex to code though, if I understand correctly, you'd need something that is tracking the experience gain of each leader for each empire in play to see if it reaches a threshold where it can then level up the 'base' level of each leader in that category, which could carry on until you have Lvl 10 leaders as default, which seems way to OP.

My method is simply two more price options with two different outcomes assigned to the existing leader pool system, and basically makes it easier to reach the level cap without insane lifespan bonuses.

 

[The Boz]

Not necessarily, in the early game you'd be stupid not to get the cheapest leader, or you'd be spending all of your EC on leaders, and would not have enough to fill other roles. Later on, there's a cost / benefit ratio - do you have more chances of gaining additional leader traits, or do you get more experience quicker for a bigger cost.

No, the cheap one only ever makes sense if you want a scientist out of the gate. It is a clear loss in every other chance, EC are not a limiting factor.

Your method sounds overly complex to code though, if I understand correctly, you'd need something that is tracking the experience gain of each leader for each empire in play to see if it reaches a threshold where it can then level up the 'base' level of each leader in that category, which could carry on until you have Lvl 10 leaders as default, which seems way to OP.

It really isn't complex to code at all, and you misunderstood completely, which is somewhat baffling. At 1 XP/month, it'd top out at ~rank 5 in 2600. If you use policies and mentorship to *double* that *from 2200 on*, it's rank 7. Way to OP, indeed.

 

[meiam89.]

They should raise the level cap to 15 and have level 7-15 take the same amount of experience, that would fix most problem. But yeah I hope they do some sort of rethink, I like to play with my main species with all the leader perk and then just massively promote pop growth for other pop but leave them all at residence so that I only have my main pop as leader, but it's not very helpful, at this point I just do it for RP.

 

[Archael90]

I believe that leader level caps could be released, and simple algoritm added to make sure that leaders will always have lvl to reach. All lvl cap bonuses could be change to min lvl with which leaders starts.