Would appreciate brief clarification on leaders

[unmerged(104627)]

Hi Everyone,

The issue has been brought up before, but as I recall there has been no clarification on this issue:

In HOI2 many minor powers (e.g., Turkey, etc..) have an extremely limited amount of leaders. For example, I recall playing one game as Turkey and having only 2 air leaders, one of whom having only 0-skill. This is extremely frustrating once you have to resort to using randomly-generated leaders without any skill or the ability to gain experience.

Will this me amended in HOI3 by having leaders generated randomly on account of the leadership of the country or other factors? In other words, a country with a strong leadership should be able to generate skillful, specialized leaders. I hope this issue isn't resolved just by giving more historical leaders (I mean its nice that there are so many -- it's just that when you use them all up it would be nice if new ones of similar skill-levels can be generated, i.e., an unlimited amount).

Thanks

 

[son of liberty]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Especially if your war runs past the normal years. Some of your colonels/brigadiers from the 40's should begin to be available in the 50's or 60's.

 

[PIT_AMERO]

I'm strongly against "random" leaders. They aren't cool, and I don't want to face a random general with a random name and a random picture on the battlefield.
As to the lack of leaders for the minors...hmmm....for that reason they are minors after all. They don't have a lot of "leadership resources" and naturaly they are unable to command a lot of air armies.
Yes, there should be added a couple more historical leaders, but not and a tool which will give you more faceless generals.

That ofcourse are just my two cents!

 

[unmerged(104627)]

I'm strongly against "random" leaders. They aren't cool, and I don't want to face a random general with a random name and a random picture on the battlefield.
As to the lack of leaders for the minors...hmmm....for that reason they are minors after all. They don't have a lot of "leadership resources" and naturaly they are unable to command a lot of air armies.
Yes, there should be added a couple more historical leaders, but not and a tool which will give you more faceless generals.

That ofcourse are just my two cents!

If turkey has a large enough army you'll be fighting against those faceless random leaders anyway, except they will have 0 skill and the inability to gain experience. So what difference does it make if you replace them with random, faceless leaders who have skill consistent with the military training academies in their mother countries?

 

[wolf1455]

Minor countries can now invest in leadership resources if the player want. They should have leaders available to deploy and evolve in that case. I use to play sweden when I try a new mod or when I was new to hoi and hoi2 so I am eager to see what to do to increase my points that goes to the levers for leaders, research and the like. I hope its not a fixed total.

 

[Cardus]

I'm strongly against "random" leaders. They aren't cool, and I don't want to face a random general with a random name and a random picture on the battlefield.
As to the lack of leaders for the minors...hmmm....for that reason they are minors after all. They don't have a lot of "leadership resources" and naturaly they are unable to command a lot of air armies.
Yes, there should be added a couple more historical leaders, but not and a tool which will give you more faceless generals.

That ofcourse are just my two cents!

Agreed

 

[Battlecry]

Minor countries can now invest in leadership resources if the player want. They should have leaders available to deploy and evolve in that case. I use to play sweden when I try a new mod or when I was new to hoi and hoi2 so I am eager to see what to do to increase my points that goes to the levers for leaders, research and the like. I hope its not a fixed total.

I think you might be misunderstanding how the new "leadership" resource works. Increasing the amount of leadership devoted to officers will increase the ability/number of your lower-ranking (i.e. abstract) officers - lieutenants, captains, majors & such - and thereby increases your units' combat capability. It has no effect (that we've been told about) on the high-level leaders that you actually assign to divisions/corps/armies etc.

 

[unmerged(41649)]

It is kind of silly that you are given the power to change the complete makeup of a nations army, you can change it's political position, you can change its ministers, you can declare wars that never happened, you can redesign its economy and industry, but you are powerless to promote anyone who was historically of lower rank than major general even if your ahistorical army is suffering such a debilitating lack of divisional commanders.

 

[unmerged(61331)]

Why not compromise.
Every nation starts off with it's full compliment of leaders.
After all, who doesn't want Yamashita or Isoroku when playing as Japan, or Guderian and Rommel as Germany?
Plus they're a really nice way for modders to flesh out their worlds. I can't imagine playing Kaiserreich without getting to see people like Enver Pasha and Admiral Kolchak showing up at the battlefield.
However, your leadership should provide the abilities for your randomly generated leaders, if you run out. Nations like Japan, Russia, and Germany should have no trouble pumping out randoms with skills 1 or 2 at least, and maybe an ability. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get a new level 4 diamond in the rough.
Nations that produce small leadership pools (or don't devote alot to their staff), like say, Albania, should only occasionally muster a meak level 0 commander.

 

[unmerged(104627)]

Why not compromise.
Every nation starts off with it's full compliment of leaders.
After all, who doesn't want Yamashita or Isoroku when playing as Japan, or Guderian and Rommel as Germany?
Plus they're a really nice way for modders to flesh out their worlds. I can't imagine playing Kaiserreich without getting to see people like Enver Pasha and Admiral Kolchak showing up at the battlefield.
However, your leadership should provide the abilities for your randomly generated leaders, if you run out. Nations like Japan, Russia, and Germany should have no trouble pumping out randoms with skills 1 or 2 at least, and maybe an ability. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get a new level 4 diamond in the rough.
Nations that produce small leadership pools (or don't devote alot to their staff), like say, Albania, should only occasionally muster a meak level 0 commander.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I recall from HOI2 is that the random, faceless, level-0 leaders do NOT gain any experience... They permenently stay Mj Gens and never gain experience or skill. Other than that, I agree completely. Germany and other majors (or modern minors) should pump level 2 mostly (plus a few gems). Other minors should be able to generate 0s or 1s... bit without the bug where they cannot gain experience. All this is in the case the usual pool of historical commanders runs out, of course.

 

[unmerged(61331)]

Yes, this would work on the assumption that these new commanders can get experience.

 

[unmerged(41649)]

Why not compromise.
Every nation starts off with it's full compliment of leaders.
After all, who doesn't want Yamashita or Isoroku when playing as Japan, or Guderian and Rommel as Germany?
Plus they're a really nice way for modders to flesh out their worlds. I can't imagine playing Kaiserreich without getting to see people like Enver Pasha and Admiral Kolchak showing up at the battlefield.
However, your leadership should provide the abilities for your randomly generated leaders, if you run out. Nations like Japan, Russia, and Germany should have no trouble pumping out randoms with skills 1 or 2 at least, and maybe an ability. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get a new level 4 diamond in the rough.
Nations that produce small leadership pools (or don't devote alot to their staff), like say, Albania, should only occasionally muster a meak level 0 commander.

I am pretty sure this is not a compromise, but exactly what the OP was describing. Nobody ever suggested getting rid of Rommel or Zhukov, just replacing the faceless guys with something semi useful.

 

[semaphore]

Yes, I agree in principle. I'd like to see a bunch of automatically generated 0 skill generals who stays in the pool in case I run out of anyone decent. There's an RP element too, take an obscure freshly promoted major general in the middle of nowhere and slowly work him through the ranks to become general of the army XD

 

[MaybeNever]

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to justify this either on gameplay grounds, because it'd be a little more fun, or on realism grounds, as an ahistorical expansion of Turkey's air force would surely bring new leadership to the fore - including men who might have been geniuses if only they'd had the opportunity in our history.

 

[unmerged(52507)]

I want the random leaders to come in at 0 skill Maj. Gen or Rear Adm. and then be able to gain xp. Even if their historical setting is Maj.Gen and skill 0, they will be able to slowly gain. This would make playing minors heaps better - and the odd major too.

 

[unmerged(112834)]

completely agree, i mean, honestly, its not like the leadership of an army is only composed of major generals or higher. Or more accurately, from where would you have us receive Mj. General Erwin Rommel?, thin air?

having them named historically is certainly a nice touch, but its flavor, does he fight any worse in game terms if he hasn't a name? Nope, you'll get exactly the same given his stats. This is something that no matter what the devs do, if it is open, someone with some free time will go further, if they give us 400 commanders for germany, someone, somewhere, will push that past 500, just give it a little time.

The fact that you can run out of leaders is absurd, an army in need will do what it must, if that means accelerating promotion schedules, or field promoting someone that shows promise, because no one else is ready and this division NEEDS a leader and now, then they will.

An excelent solution i think, regarding how to implement the new leaders, is to take the combined skill of that entire branch of the armed forces, and then divide by the number of leaders present, this will yield the average experience of the army, find a random number between 0 and this average, rounded down to the nearest whole, this is the combat experience of your new leader, now promote him into use, reducing experience by one point, as with all promotions.

This system rewards a military that is efficient, putting the leaders it has to use before asking for more, a highly skilled command structure will provide a new, skilled major general, a weak command structure has no hope of providing anyone impressive.

To have historical names, simply have the game draw names from a list(either random, or in order, doesn't matter to me) of leaders to use, and when these are expended, start randomly combining first and last names from lists provided for the country.

Do this and there is no exploiting it, any produced general will not be an instant best general in the country, likely won't even stand out. You'll never run out of able commanders, as anytime you need a new one, just generate him and bang, new general, and you can easily have as many historical general names as you can come up with, and an absurdly large number of generals named appropriately for your country.

 

[Cardus]

completely agree, i mean, honestly, its not like the leadership of an army is only composed of major generals or higher. Or more accurately, from where would you have us receive Mj. General Erwin Rommel?, thin air?

having them named historically is certainly a nice touch, but its flavor, does he fight any worse in game terms if he hasn't a name? Nope, you'll get exactly the same given his stats. This is something that no matter what the devs do, if it is open, someone with some free time will go further, if they give us 400 commanders for germany, someone, somewhere, will push that past 500, just give it a little time.

The fact that you can run out of leaders is absurd, an army in need will do what it must, if that means accelerating promotion schedules, or field promoting someone that shows promise, because no one else is ready and this division NEEDS a leader and now, then they will.

An excelent solution i think, regarding how to implement the new leaders, is to take the combined skill of that entire branch of the armed forces, and then divide by the number of leaders present, this will yield the average experience of the army, find a random number between 0 and this average, rounded down to the nearest whole, this is the combat experience of your new leader, now promote him into use, reducing experience by one point, as with all promotions.

This system rewards a military that is efficient, putting the leaders it has to use before asking for more, a highly skilled command structure will provide a new, skilled major general, a weak command structure has no hope of providing anyone impressive.

To have historical names, simply have the game draw names from a list(either random, or in order, doesn't matter to me) of leaders to use, and when these are expended, start randomly combining first and last names from lists provided for the country.

Do this and there is no exploiting it, any produced general will not be an instant best general in the country, likely won't even stand out. You'll never run out of able commanders, as anytime you need a new one, just generate him and bang, new general, and you can easily have as many historical general names as you can come up with, and an absurdly large number of generals named appropriately for your country.

Agreed: De Gaulle was just a Colonel!

 

[oribiasi]

Let's also not forget that too often battlefield leaders were called away to do various things like run officies for the government (think of Goering with the Luftwaffe, who I am guessing didn't see a lot of combat in WWII) or Rundstedt, who sat in a field office somewhere far behind the soldiers.

There is a difference between the commander/general who is leading you from close by (like Patton used to do, from time to time) and the commander who is miles away from the front, giving orders.

 

[PIT_AMERO]

OK, you may be right.
After all, one army will always find someone to lead the new formations.
But that tool should be used (maybe even turned on and off) only as a last resort and the numbers and the quality of the new generals to depend on how much "leadership" you are investing in the army.

 

[unmerged(112834)]

that would be why i suggest linking the quality of the leaders you get both with the skill level of your current leaders, and with how many leaders are unused.

if all of your leaders are being used, and are decently skilled, then so too will be your new commander, suggesting he gained this skill at some posting of a lower rank and is being promoted as the best choice currently. However, if you are not using all of your generals, you should not see skilled generals come of this, or it becomes explotable, spamming new leaders until you have a sufficient force of skilled leaders not to need combat for experience.

linking it to leadership may be flawed, after all, theory is just that until tested. What is needed is actual experience, there's a reason casualties are always highest among green troops, they lack experience, and are nothing compared to those blooded even just once. Linking it to the experience of the military that promoted them seems more sound to me.

As to turning it on and off, that shouldn't be necessary, it should be a button you hit when you find yourself out of generals when you goto assign one, you instead find the promote button to promote a lower rank into usage. Possibly even costing you some of your leadership pool(after all, he might have a replacement below him waiting to be promoted already, but keep that up and you'll get a posting with no-one to promote in, you need a new man for the job)