Role of Leaders

[kokono]

As indicated in the manual, leaders influence the unit you are assigned, but affects on other units? What is its scope?
Please oued me more information about the role of Leaders

Thanks

[rkr1958]

As indicated in the manual, leaders influence the unit you are assigned, but affects on other units? What is its scope?
Please oued me more information about the role of Leaders

Thanks

They increase the effectiveness of all units of the same country that are withing 8 hexes of the leader.

[BuddyGrant]

Note that in spite of information posted elsewhere, lower rated leaders beside higher rated leaders will reduce the effectiveness gains of units of the same country within 8 hexes. In other words, units within 8 hexes of two different leaders will receive an effectiveness bump based on the average of the two leaders ratings. Example: A German unit beside Rundstedt ('6') and Manstein ('8') will treat those combined leader ratings as a '7'. For this reason it is sometimes good to send a lower rated leader to a less active and out of the way front to ensure he is not dragging your units effectiveness down. That is, assuming you have enough better leaders to cover your most important fronts.

Edit: Changed the ' 8 ' so it would not display as a smiley.

[joerock22]

Note that in spite of information posted elsewhere, lower rated leaders beside higher rated leaders will reduce the effectiveness gains of units of the same country within 8 hexes. In other words, units within 8 hexes of two different leaders will receive an effectiveness bump based on the average of the two leaders ratings. Example: A German unit beside Rundstedt (6) and Manstein (8) will treat those combined leader ratings as a '7'. For this reason it is sometimes good to send a lower rated leader to a less active and out of the way front to ensure he is not dragging your units effectiveness down. That is, assuming you have enough better leaders to cover your most important fronts.

Can someone else confirm whether this is true or not? I was under the impression that the higher-ranked leader would command all the units within his range, and any overlapping lower-ranked leaders would have no effect. It doesn't make sense that Rundstedt's presence would make Mainstein's leadership worse. That's why you have one main army commander and a bunch of suboordinate commanders. They are supposed to work together to achieve the army's goals, not against each other! This isn't Roman times, where two top commanders traded command of the army every day! That worked so well against Hannibal, after all...

[BuddyGrant]

Note that in spite of information posted elsewhere, lower rated leaders beside higher rated leaders will reduce the effectiveness gains of units of the same country within 8 hexes. In other words, units within 8 hexes of two different leaders will receive an effectiveness bump based on the average of the two leaders ratings. Example: A German unit beside Rundstedt (6) and Manstein (8) will treat those combined leader ratings as a '7'. For this reason it is sometimes good to send a lower rated leader to a less active and out of the way front to ensure he is not dragging your units effectiveness down. That is, assuming you have enough better leaders to cover your most important fronts.

Can someone else confirm whether this is true or not? I was under the impression that the higher-ranked leader would command all the units within his range, and any overlapping lower-ranked leaders would have no effect. It doesn't make sense that Rundstedt's presence would make Mainstein's leadership worse. That's why you have one main army commander and a bunch of suboordinate commanders. They are supposed to work together to achieve the army's goals, not against each other! This isn't Roman times, where two top commanders traded command of the army every day! That worked so well against Hannibal, after all...

For sure, but in CEAW the leaders have no priority order (AKA rank). They have different ratings, but they are all treated the same way, as a leader unit. I can understand why it works this way from a programming perspective, I suspect it was a design decision to have the average of two leaders ratings influence unit effectiveness, that does make some sense too after all. Also, adding subordinate commander logic to this element of the game might have been considered needlessly complicated for this games scope.

Related note: There is obviously some code logic that prevents a unit from gaining extra effectiveness from multiple leaders at one time. That would certainly be noticeable on the Russian front where the leaders range will often overlap!

For anyone that wants to confirm this game logic, here is a simple test:
- Create a '9' leader and a '1' leader for one country.
- Start the test game, assign the '9' leader to a unit with some surrounding units. Have them sit for several turns until they reach max effectiveness. With a '9' rated leader that should be an effectiveness of around 102.
- Buy the '1' leader and assign him to one of the surrounding units, then check the surrounding units effectiveness the next turn. Should be a fairly dramatic drop even though they did not move or fight.

Note: This test assumes that weather conditions have not changed during the several turns needed to check this.

[rkr1958]

I'm surprised to say that I've confirmed what BuddyGrant was saying. Well sort of but not exactly. I ran a case using the British 8th army so I didn't have to worry about weather. I followed the effectiveness of the mechanized, armor, 6th infantry and 8th infantry corps and the fighter. Prior to deployment of any leader their initial effectiveness was 71, 62, 69, 69 and 66; respectively. I then deployed O'Conner, who has a leadership of 6 and which means that unit effectiveness should eventually increase by 12. It took 6 turns but effectiveness for these units finally reached 83 (Mech), 74 (Arm), 81 (6th), 81 (30th) and 78 (FTR). I then deployed Cunningham, who has a leadership of 4, which would give me an average leadership of 5. The very next turn effectiveness for all units decreased to 81 (Mech), 73 (Arm), 79 (6th), 79 (30th) and 78 (FTR) and remained at these levels until Cunningham was reassigned. The turn after he was reassigned all levels went back their previous max values of 83 (Mech), 74 (Arm), 81 (6th), 81 (30th) and 78 (FTR).

Note that the infantry effectiveness dropped to the average of the two leaders. Armor effectiveness dropped by not by the average. And fighter effectiveness did not drop; but stayed the same.

So premise that the best leader was used if two or more leaders are in range is wrong. It does appear that for infantry the average of their leadership is used.

[OxfordGuy3]

And fighter effectiveness did not drop; but stayed the same.

I was under the impression that leadership only affected ground units, does it also affect air units then? What about naval units?? Thanks

[rkr1958]

And fighter effectiveness did not drop; but stayed the same.

I was under the impression that leadership only affected ground units, does it also affect air units then? What about naval units?? Thanks

It effects air and naval too.

[BuddyGrant]

(snip) Note that the infantry effectiveness dropped to the average of the two leaders. Armor effectiveness dropped by not by the average. And fighter effectiveness did not drop; but stayed the same. (snip)

Thanks for the extra insight rkr1958. I did my tests in early summer on the 1941 Russian border (before Barbarossa), with edited leaders (a very high rated leader and low rated leader) in an effort to find out how extreme the effect was, but I can't recall checking aircraft effectiveness.

[joerock22]

Thanks to BuddyGrant for bringing this to our attention and to Ronnie for running that test. I really don't like this rule. I don't suppose it's something we could look at changing for the next GS update?

[esde56]

Potentially stupid query alert!
I noted from an earlier posting by rkr1958 that a leadership rating of 6 will eventually increase appropriate units by 12 points. I was surprised by this, as I have not hitherto detected in either the original CEAW manual nor the GS manual that the leadership effect is actually x2 that of the leadership rating: have I missed it somewhere?

Also if a unit with a leader moves and/or attacks, does this in anyway reduce or interdict the incremental (GT by GT) increase to unts within the command range?

FWIIW, although it was an interesting revelation that leaders of different ratings averaged out where a command overlap exists, now that I know about it, I am quite content for it to be so, as historically, leaders of equal rank or even those of a lower rank, have often had some detrimental effect upon the plans of their more brilliant colleagues.

Kind regards.

Stephen

[rkr1958]

Potentially stupid query alert!
I noted from an earlier posting by rkr1958 that a leadership rating of 6 will eventually increase appropriate units by 12 points. I was surprised by this, as I have not hitherto detected in either the original CEAW manual nor the GS manual that the leadership effect is actually x2 that of the leadership rating: have I missed it somewhere?

No, I don't think so. I think this is one of those facts that has been "learned" as passed on from experience. In terms of the GS manual, it's scope was only to document those things that were changed from the standard (or vanilla) game and how leaders work was not changed in GS.

[esde56]

In terms of the GS manual, it's scope was only to document those things that were changed from the standard (or vanilla) game and how leaders work was not changed in GS.

True but ...
Whilst I fully appreciate the original intention and scope of the GS manual, perhaps this aspect is sufficiently important for it to be included?

The aspect of the leadership rating being averaged (where an overlap of command ranges occurs) has been included in the GS manual because it was deemed an important piece of knowledge for the players to be aware of, even though it had not been 'changed' per se, in the GS mod. This aspect would appear to be of similar import.

Whilst not wishing to further burden the head honchos, nevertheless, perhaps there is a valid case for hitherto 'hidden rules' to be outlined in the GS manual, possibly in a seperate rules clarifications section? This would be a great way for those unearthed rules/facts to be brought into the general domain of players. I hasten to add that this should be restricted to genuine rules and/or hidden facts rather than just optimal play guidelines.

Whilst it should be relatively simple (assuming this suggestion is adopted) to cut & paste a new fact/rule onto such a section (as queries are answered), perhaps some kind soul other than the overworked leadership could help by going through all of the earlier topics/postings and extract such relevent information and proffer it to them for inclusion?

This type of information is of great interest to all players and will potentionally impact upon gameplay (& thereby player enjoyment). Furthermore, it will certainly level the PBEM playing field between those who have such arcane knowledge and those who do not. In my own particular case, had I not decided to have a look through some of the older forum pages, it may have been some considerable time before I detected this during normal PBEM games (& perhaps not at all): whereas, now that I know this is the case (& the overlap rule too), I will utilise and (possibly purchase) leaders quite differently.

Kind regards.

Stephen

[rkr1958]

Borger brought the following fact to my attention and I thought I'd pass it along. Maybe it's obvious to most but I had never ever made this connection before. Here it is ...

A leader in a unit that's forced to retreat is injured.

Again, I had never made that connection before.

[PanzerGeneral]

Borger brought the following fact to my attention and I thought I'd pass it along. Maybe it's obvious to most but I had never ever made this connection before. Here it is ...

A leader in a unit that's forced to retreat is injured.

Again, I had never made that connection before.

That is very valuable info, I never knew this. I will have to rethink where I place my leaders in the future. Perhaps not wisest to put them in the spearheads of my attacks

[Hill621]

Now that is very interesting! I also notice in Panzergeneral's AAR that it seems possible to relocate leaders to another unit. Do I understand this correctly? And, as I have missed this in the manual, how does one do this? (as I have found out, letting the 'host' unit be killed is not an efficient way of relocating a leader!)
Thanks in advance!

[bendamaster]

If you select a unit with a leader, there is a small red 'X' next to the leader portrait.

[Hill621]

Ah, many thanks!
It's turning '43 now, and as the axis it is time to take a more defensive attitude to my worthy opponent