Leader Retirements.

[son of liberty]

I want to check with the community and see if I am over reacting to a new feature to be implemented in 1.03. Leaders will now retire at set dates. Playing Italy in 1.03 Beta, this caused me serious issues. Multiple leaders retired DURING ONGOING BATTLES. Including my only Grand Admiral during a major naval engagement. This left one BB fleet with no commander, and my combined fleets over command limit. It caused similar problems in Iraq and Africa during active engagements.

So, what does everybody think? I have suggested to the Devs that no retirements be permitted during war.

 

[JRHINDO]

I have suggested to the Devs that no retirements be permitted during war.

Or at minimum NOT during combats.

 

[phordor001]

I agree, not during combat. If this is going to happen it would be nice if there could be a month or so warning that a leader would be retiring. Then you could replace them before they head into battle.

 

[Cybvep]

I agree, not during combat. If this is going to happen it would be nice if there could be a month or so warning that a leader would be retiring. Then you could replace them before they head into battle.

+1

 

[son of liberty]

I would be fine with the warning. If I could have replaced the leaders that would have been better. It still would have put the RM in a bad spot though. I would have had to suspend operations until the new Grand Admiral was selected.

 

[CylonAndrew]

Yeah Leaders should not retire that often and at critical situations.

 

[Rotten Venetic]

Fine as it is imo. If you send frail old codgers to lead your forces in war, they may be shoved into retirement by illness, accidents, strokes etc. etc. at the most inopportune of times.

 

[son of liberty]

Fine as it is imo. If you send frail old codgers to lead your forces in war, they may be shoved into retirement by illness, accidents, strokes etc. etc. at the most inopportune of times.

If I have a leader die in combat, then yeah I deal with it. This is retirement. How did Ghe even get off the Battleship during combat in the first place?

 

[Rotten Venetic]

He didn't. He went into a coma and is doing exactly squat for the battle.

Alternatively, he retired earlier, between the last battle and the current, but they were still following his doctrines, plans, last orders, established routine or whatever, until the battle took a turn for which his last plans had nothing to offer.

Besides, making your guys fight on New Year? That's kinda harsh, man.

 

[son of liberty]

Blame the UK, we were just "cruzin round the Med" when all of a sudden a large RN fleet pounced on us.

 

[CylonAndrew]

Actually, I hate loosing leaders at all because playing as National France in Kaiserreich, you only get a handfull of leaders and if you take back france through exploiting German turning defeat into victory and zerg rushing them from behind, then its a problem when you need to rebuild France's armies. So recruiting new leaders may be a nice new feature. Had no shortage of money in my situation and was spending it on War Games to get the few that I had to level 4 or 5 field marshals.

 

[Easy1]

Very few leader retire in the midst of a war. I say make them only retire if at peace

 

[Ferrim]

Besides, making your guys fight on New Year? That's kinda harsh, man.

I use to delay offensives if it happens to be one of these days I may be ready to attack in December 25th but I will wait to the 26th to start the offensive xD. If there's an on going battle, then that's a bit too much and I keep attacking.

 

[son of liberty]

Could one of the mods make a poll? Give options like:
1) Retire Jan 1 no matter what
2) Retire only if not in combat
3) Retire only when at peace

 

[MartinBG]

You miss the main point why this has been added to the game - to allow long games without a century old men leading your armies or country and without the need to sleep them with events or in scenario files.

BTW retired leaders (and that applies to killed in battle leaders too) are auto-replaced by a new one if you have the "Auto-assign leaders" option enabled.

 

[son of liberty]

BTW retired leaders (and that applies to killed in battle leaders too) are auto-replaced by a new one if you have the "Auto-assign leaders" option enabled.

Auto assign is terrible at assigning leaders. Also how would that handle the grand admiral situation?

I am not opposed to retirements in theory. However, retirement should not be a surprise. It should not happen in the midst of combat.

 

[Pasha]

Auto assign is terrible at assigning leaders. Also how would that handle the grand admiral situation?

I am not opposed to retirements in theory. However, retirement should not be a surprise. It should not happen in the midst of combat.

I agree with this. And in the same vein, I hated how certain leaders were killed off in HOI because they died historically in our universe, like Bilboa, Yamamoto, etc. How does DH handle this now? I believe there should be a certain chance that someone like Yamamoto could be killed off due to a historical event, but it shouldn't be 100%.

 

[unmerged(449764)]

What about:

-No retirements if the country is at war
-However if the retirement date comes and you are at war, your leader's skill starts dropping one point every month. You get a message alerting you to this. This represents your Grand Admiral is now 80, going senile, and not really capable of leading the fleet as well. Leaders all stop gaining XP at this stage.
-If your leader's skill hits 0 and he is past the retirement age, he retires if the unit is not in combat (he's so senile he can't lead anyone into combat and some other staff officer has to take over, effectively retiring him). If the unit is in combat, he dies in combat (he's finally so senile he gets himself killed).

That gives you at least a one month warning that your leader's age is becoming a factor and a chance to gracefully replace him. If you ignore those warnings, then you pay the price.

 

[son of liberty]

What about:

-No retirements if the country is at war
-However if the retirement date comes and you are at war, your leader's skill starts dropping one point every month. You get a message alerting you to this. This represents your Grand Admiral is now 80, going senile, and not really capable of leading the fleet as well. Leaders all stop gaining XP at this stage.
-If your leader's skill hits 0 and he is past the retirement age, he retires if the unit is not in combat (he's so senile he can't lead anyone into combat and some other staff officer has to take over, effectively retiring him). If the unit is in combat, he dies in combat (he's finally so senile he gets himself killed).

That gives you at least a one month warning that your leader's age is becoming a factor and a chance to gracefully replace him. If you ignore those warnings, then you pay the price.

This would seem to require an individual retire officer button. I am all for that if it can be implemented.

 

[unmerged(449764)]

This would seem to require an individual retire officer button. I am all for that if it can be implemented.

If that is an issue, perhaps the devs could do the following:

-When an officer hits retirement age, tag the trait "Aging" on him. So you get a popup like "General So and So has become a Hills Fighter". Only now you get "General So and So has become Aging".
-6 months after aging fires, they retire no matter what.

We could set the AI to automatically remove all all Aging officers and never assign them. Players would simply have to make sure they remove the officer when Aging fires and not assign them in that period where they are aging but not retired. So it adds some human management, but avoids the retires in combat part. It also means no one has to create a "retire officer" button and makes it more realistic for the devs to put in (they could just create an Aging milestone, like how there is a milestone to become a Hills Fighter/Ranger/Desert Fox/etc).

Actually if we want longer gameplay, maybe the ultimate solution is for every officer to have a set life cycle. At some point in their service life everyone gets the "Old Guard" tag added. Then 5 or 10 years after that, they pick up Aging, then 6 months later they're gone. It would be kind of annoying since it could create time periods when you had mass die offs of officers, but it would prevent me from using WWI German officers to invade America in 1950.