chances for getting leaders

[djafrot]

I only seem to get leaders from battles that are difficult. Is this just my imagination? I've also heard that the odds are something like 1 in 12, but there's no way this can be true (at least from my games).

[Worthingtons]

People often complain about leader odds, the difficult battle thing is not true tho.

The odds are 1/16
increased to 1/12 for a militaristic civ
increased further for a civ with Heroic Epic


I know they seem rare, i only have ONE in my current modern age game with England, which is dissapointing, but they are possible. In a game with Rome, i got 20(twenty) GL's in a game which didnt even reach the modern age.

[Jaybe]

Rothy, militaristic civ improves promotion odds, NOT for getting leaders.
1/12 chance for civ with Heroic Epic.

[Worthingtons]

Sorry for the mis-info then, although i was almost certain that it increased the leader odds. When I was playing the game with Rome, where i got 20 leaders, i can assure you it happened a lot more often than 1 in every 12 battles, must have been luck.

Cheers
Matt

[djafrot]

1 out of 16, huh? There must be some other variable, because in this game I must have knocked off at least 100 dug-in infantry with my tanks, and only got one the whole game. Playing the aztecs, too.

Oh well... it's stealth bomber time.

[Tiberius]

1/16 for victorious elite units. These are your chances, which means you can get 3 leaders in a row if you are lucky or don't get any if you are very unlucky.
(It's like rolling dice: you have 1/6 chances to get a 6, yet sometimes you get several in a row, while some other time none; imagine now a die with 16 sides )

[Captain THC]

I find I don't get GL's that often either.

[ducki]

I was having the same problem, so I decided to conduct an experiment.

Japan, Pangea, Sedentary Barbs.

The entire goal of the game was to get 5 leaders.
Seemed impossible to me, as I usually get 0, 1, or 2(wow!).

Anyway, if you want leaders, you have to make them a priority. I got 4 before Military Tradition...

...but that was my entire goal. I didn't care about culture - well, not any more than was needed to hold my own cities - I didn't care about Wonders(except Sun Tzu's, which actually helps with leaders peripherally), and I didn't care about winning.

As such, my empire was a mess by the time I was done, but I got my leaders, experiment was a success.

If you focus on getting them, you can.
Just remember that any given Elite victory has a distinct and unrelated-to-any-other-factor chance of 6.25% to generate a leader. It doesn't matter if you have had 1 elite victory or 100, each chance is distinct.
You can maximize the odds, though, by having lots of Elite victories.

Also, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that 1/16 (6%) is the chance for an offensive elite victory and that defensive victories actually have even lower odds.

Go to the Strategy forum and check out "Getting the Most out of your Elites" by (I think) Theseus. It's a really good thread with good info on leader generation and other stuff.

HTH

[bongo]

If you are attacking the odds are 1/16, if you are defending the odds are 1/32. Building Heroic Epic improves the odds to 1/12 and 1/24.

Only elite units can generate GL's and they can only do so once per unit.(if you upgrade a unit that has given you a GL then it can give you another)

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Tiberius
1/16 for victorious elite units. These are your chances, which means you can get 3 leaders in a row if you are lucky or don't get any if you are very unlucky.
(It's like rolling dice: you have 1/6 chances to get a 6, yet sometimes you get several in a row, while some other time none; imagine now a die with 16 sides )

Yep. DnD dies always made my head spin. I always play a Militaristic Civ, so I can assure everyone I've never had a problem getting GLs. There's just no way they can adjust the odds to be better, because it would be way too unbalancing. As it is I always end up building 1/2 the Wonders with leaders anyways. You just never know when you're going to get the leaders... It just so happens that I built every IA wonder with GLs as the Celts, and a few more to boot.

Now the one thing I have noticed is that you can never have two GLs simultaneously existing in your Civ at any one time. You can, however, get more than one GL per turn if you use one of them up before you start fighting again (which I've done a couple times). I tested my theory out last game when I kept one of my GLs through the late IA and the rest of the game, and I guarantee I would've gotten another one if I had used him up (because I proceed to conquer 3/4 of the world with Domination turned off, and as the Germans).

[Arrian]

Yeah, only 1 leader at a time.

1/16 on attack, 1/32 on defense - 1/12, 1/24 with the HE. Difficulty of battles has no effect. It's all about the RNG. Sometimes it's nice to you. Sometimes it's not.

I played back-to-back games as the Celts recently (well, I finished the first one and have put the other on indefinite hold). The first game generated 4 leaders by the early middle ages (army, sun tzu, sistine, leo) and several more later on. Suffice it to say I did rather well in that one. The second game generated 2 by the early middle ages, but that second one was REALLY hard to come by (I had again used the first for an army). Result: I have an optimal Palace/FP setup, but have lost Sun Tzu, will lose the Sistine, and probably Leo's. Great Library was built on the other continent (in game #1, I captured that from a neighbor).

-Arrian

[djafrot]

oh for cryin' out loud... if I'd known you could only have one leader at a time that would make a lot of difference. I usually try and stash the suckers for a time of good use.

Good to know.

Maybe a good strategy for generating GL's would be to set the barbarian ratings high and sit there waiting for them with your elite units. Has anyone tried this? I'm also assuming the high numbers of barbarians would beat down the other civ's.

A seperate question: does the AI adjust for the world type and # of civ's?

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by djafrot
Maybe a good strategy for generating GL's would be to set the barbarian ratings high and sit there waiting for them with your elite units. Has anyone tried this? I'm also assuming the high numbers of barbarians would beat down the other civ's.

One other point on GL's. You must win in combat against another CIV in order to produce a GL, so your idea to use your elites on barbarians will not work. You can use them for training to get your regular and veteran units to elite.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by djafrot
Maybe a good strategy for generating GL's would be to set the barbarian ratings high and sit there waiting for them with your elite units. Has anyone tried this? I'm also assuming the high numbers of barbarians would beat down the other civ's.

A seperate question: does the AI adjust for the world type and # of civ's?

Actually barbarians are pretty much non-threatening in Civ3, vs. the previous Civ games. They never really do much of anything to either you or the AI. I always set it on Raging Horde, or whatever the equivalent in Civ 3 is. But they're nothing more than a nuisance at best.

I don't know if the AI adjusts for the world size and # of Civs. But I always play on a random, huge map with 16 Civs on Emperor (Deity is coming soon), and I can tell you that that in itself helps to generate a lot of leaders.

[Arrian]

Barbs don't hurt the AI much, because the AI is always playing on "regent" and thus gets a huge combat bonus vs. barbs.

-Arrian

[Explorer579]

It is frurstraing to make leaders! I can play 3 games before seeing one (and yes I have lot of elite units with many winning battles). I do not play militaristic usually. So it is odd that only militaristic societies get leaders. Ghandy was a leader and Christ was a leader, yet they did not engage in warfare.

I do not like leaders. They make armys, which are ususally useless. ( I would rather attack with 3 swordsmen then attack with 3 swordsmen stacked in an army unit).

Or leaders finish a wonder. Yeah, immgine sacrificing a pharoh to finish the pyramids. How realistic!

I am going to see if I can use the editor to turn leaders off!

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Explorer579
I do not like leaders. They make armys, which are ususally useless. ( I would rather attack with 3 swordsmen then attack with 3 swordsmen stacked in an army unit).

I have to disagree on your assessment of GLs. I find them crucial in the following situations:

1. Building Wonders on Emperor and Deity.
2. Building MI modern armies, which are amazing on defense.
3. Building MA modern armies, which are awesome to crack tough MI defenders.
4. Building ancient armies as deterrents to AI expansion.

I'd say number 1 is most important. There's almost no way to keep up with the AI wonder building on higher levels without GLs.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Explorer579
I do not like leaders. They make armys, which are ususally useless. ( I would rather attack with 3 swordsmen then attack with 3 swordsmen stacked in an army unit).

Or leaders finish a wonder. Yeah, immgine sacrificing a pharoh to finish the pyramids. How realistic!

I am going to see if I can use the editor to turn leaders off!

Very bad luck, I guess as I have never had a game that did not get a leader or 2, even when non military civ.
Armies are not useless, that is just a fact. You may not care for them and that is fine. To say that are useless does not stand up to scrutiny. Consider the case you mentioned. The swords attack individually. They could lose each and everyone, without killing the unit they atacked. If they are vets they have 4 HP each. That mean only four rolls are required to beat them. If in an army they have 12 HP. I presume you are not attacking a unit that they can not hope to beat, so they now need 12 rolls to win, before the army get its 4 or 5 rolls. Say it is an elite pike. The pike could win in either case, but I do not like its chance against the army.
As to the hurry build, it is just a contrivance for the game, not mean to be raionalized, just used.
Armies are very handy for cracking cities with infantry. If you now the Pentagon, you will have 4 members in that army. Likely used elies, so 20 HP's. Makes taking down that dug in unit, much safer. (Yes I know about combined arms, but that is out side of he scope of this issue).

[vmxa1]

I left out one other good use for an army. They are great for sitting on captured cities while you get the resisters pacified. I love my old obsolete calv armies for this job, especially if they have 4 units.

[star mouse]

You can get GL's more often than you should while preserving your elite units by strategic save and reload. If you're desperate for a leader, here's how to get one.

1. Have a stack with veterans and elites that have not yet produced a GL.
2. Save before fighting, with random number saved.
3. Fight with a veteran.
4. If the veteran dies, okay, you probably just stopped an elite unit being wasted.
5. If the veteran wins but doesn't promote, that's okay.
6. If the veteran wins and promots to elite, reload the game and fight the battle with an elite. Chances are good you'll get a leader.

[The Pioneer]

That's too much of a hassle. I'll reload my games sometimes if somethinf went wrong but this is just too boring. But it's true and if somebody is so desperste then it may be worth the time!

So long...

[bongo]

Interesting, have you tested this?

The time required to reload a game is simply too much for me to bother with cheat anyway.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by bongo
Interesting, have you tested this?

Only once -

I saved the game before a battle (more to save the game than anything) and beat up on the enemy with a veteran Cavalry. My cavalry won, and promoted to Elite. I decided to load the game again just to see what would happen if I used an Elite unit instead. So I reloaded and beat up on the enemy again with an Elite cavalry from the same stack. The elite cavalry won and popped a Leader.

I haven't tested this much, but it's clear that leaders are generated in much the same way as battlefield promotions. If for example, both are calculated by comparing the result of a random number to 0, then it will work much the same. There may be times when it won't work (such as Heroic Epic and militaristic civs), but the chances are you will probably be able to get a leader in this manner at least 50% of the time.

[Catt]

One way to understand the concept is to understand how a typical Randon Number Generator (RNG) works. If we assume a 0 - 1023 RNG string (i.e., for each "random" event the string is consulted which generates a number between 0 and 1023), and also assume that you're not playing a militaristic civ, then the odds of veteran to elite promotion are 1 in 8; the odds of leader generation are 1 in 16 (1 in 12 with the Heroic Epic!). The RNG string is consulted at the conclusion of the battle to determine whether or not a promotion or a leader is warranted. For the promotion (1 in 8) perhaps any RNG result of 896 or higher (1/8 of 1024) results in a promotion. For the leader, any RNG result of 960 or higher would create a leader. Since you know, via your re-loading, that the RNG was at least as high as 896 (since the veteran was promoted), you're actually only playing a 50% chance of the leader -- is the RNG result higher than 960 on a scale of 896 to 1023?

Slightly off-topic and definitely overly moralistic: Don't cheat yourself by reloading the game is more engaging when you play the cards you're dealt.

Catt

[bongo]

So the changes for a veteran to elite promotion is 1 to 8. What is it when you are a militaristic civ? Are the odds the same for other promotions, like regular to vet?

[Catt]

Here are the promotion odds directly from Mike B. of Firaxis:

Odds of promotion are based on whether the civ has the Militaristic trait or not and whether the victory was against barbarians or not. Basically, chances of promotion are halved for victories over Barbarians and doubled for Militaristic civs.

non-militaristic civ vs. non-barbarians:
conscript to regular: 1 in 2
regular to veteran: 1 in 4
veteran to elite: 1 in 8

non-militaristic civ vs. barbarians:
conscript to regular: 1 in 4
regular to veteran: 1 in 8
veteran to elite: 1 in 16

militaristic civ vs. non-barbarians:
conscript to regular: 1 in 1
regular to veteran: 1 in 2
veteran to elite: 1 in 4

militaristic civ vs. barbarians:
conscript to regular: 1 in 2
regular to veteran: 1 in 4
veteran to elite: 1 in 8

If a victorious unit fails to get promoted, it will always be promoted upon surviving any other battle in the same turn . This gives an obvious advantage to defenders as well as an incentive to use the same offensive units for additional battles whenever possible.

One tweak on the "two victories in same turn = promotion" -- "victory" in this sense means actually destroying a unit. If an attacker retreats before dying, that is not considered a "victory" for promotion purposes.

Catt

[bongo]

Excellent!

Thank you very much

[Explorer579]

Originally posted by Catt
If a victorious unit fails to get promoted, it will always be promoted upon surviving any other battle in the same turn . This gives an obvious advantage to defenders as well as an incentive to use the same offensive units for additional battles whenever possible.

Catt

Does this apply to leaders? That is, if an elite unit fails to be promoted to a leader, it will always be promoted upon surviving any other battle in the same turn. ?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Explorer579
Does this apply to leaders? That is, if an elite unit fails to be promoted to a leader, it will always be promoted upon surviving any other battle in the same turn. ?

No. Great Leader determination is totally separate from promotions. An asterisked (*) Elite is not a "promotion" from Elite.