Slitherine

With all respect and admiration to the Dev Team, the leader list is flawed, at best. I am going to release Leaders Mod soon, but figured it would be better to post the changes here first and see if most of the players will agree to them.

The main idea is to give high Leadership stats to commanders that showed themselves capable of independent army and/or corps command while attack and defense stats are assigned based on division/corps command and performance.

French (keeping 9 leaders)

Name Leadership/Attack/Defense

Napoleon 10/2/3
Davout 7/2/2
Massena 7/1/2
Suchet 7/0/0
Lannes 6/1/0
Murat 6/0/0
Soult 5/0/0
Marmont 5/0/0
Ney 4/1/0

Most obvious changes: Davout becomes #2 instead of Massena (seems to be a consensus on many Napoleonic forums like Armchair General. for example).
Suchet takes place of de Beauharnais (why was he included on the first place, especially in top 3 after Napoleon?).

Russian (keeping 9 leaders, may need to bring the number down, althogh somewhat mediocre stats are compensation enough)

Name Leadership/Attack/Defense

Kutuzov 8/1/1
Barclay de_Tolly 7/0/0
Bagration 6/1/2
Platov 4/1/0
Miloradovich 1/0/0
Wittgenstein 4/0/0
Benningsen 3/0/0
Ermolov 5/0/1
Dokhturov 1/0/0
Alexander 1/0/0

I've edited first three only (did not do much research on the rest, I can only point to Alexander stat 1 for leadership and suggets it should be a bit higher, 2 or 3). Kutuzov vanilla stats 4/0/0 were simply inadequate. He shown himself a capable commader on divisional and corps level against the Ottoman Empire, fought well in Austria before Austerlitz, where his command was limited. He commanded all Russian forces and was successful on strategic level, while his defense at Borodino should earn him at least 1 point in defense.

Barclay, the original commander of First Army of the West, was the first to suggest the now famoused scorched earth policy against Napoleon and he was the one to advise Kutuzov to leave Moscow after Borodino. I bumped his leadership stat to 7.

Bagration got 2 defense points. If Massena gets 2 for defense of Genoa, Bagration should get 2 for his actions at Battle of Hollabrunn, defense of Smolensk and Battle of Borodino.

Feel free to critisize and suggest any changes.

Continuing further down the list of Russian leaders:

Kutuzov 8/1/1
Barclay de Tolly 7/0/0
Bagration 6/1/2

=================

Platov 4/1/0
Miloradovich 5/0/0
Wittgenstein 4/0/0
Benningsen 5/0/0
Ermolov 5/0/1
Dokhturov 1/0/0 deleted
Rayevsky 4/0/1 added
Alexander 1/0/0 deleted

Platov - 4 leadership is fine. A cavalry corps commander, +1 to attack is justified.

Miloradovich - 1 for leadership? What blunder justifies this low number? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miloradovich - here's a Wiki article about him, and while Wiki is not the source to rely on 100%, it gives a fairly accurate picture. I would bump his leadership stat to 5 w/o any bonuses to attack or defense.

Wittgenstein's stats are fine.

Benningsen, the commander of Russian army (not a corps commander) at Eylau, he deserves to have a leadership stat of 5, imho.

Ermolov stats are fine.

Dokhturov to be replaced with Rayevsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Raevsky

Alexander, I am contemplating of deleting him altogether. Yes, he imposed himself as commander of Russian army couple of times, but in name only. He was a menace to his own troops to be sure, but having a worthless leader like this in game is pointless. A human player will never select him, an AI does not need any handicaps anyway and Russians should not have 10 leaders when French have only 9.

Thanks, will consider it for future patches

And save me from editing the files myself? Great, thank you!

I will continue my research on the rest of leader list, British and Prussian leaders are next.

Ok, let us tackle England now.

Wellington 7/2/2
Picton 6/1/0
Hill 4/0/1
Uxbridge 6/1/0
Moore 6/0/0
Crauford 5/0/1
Pack 2/0/0
Beresford 4/0/0
Cole 5/0/0
Pakenham 5/0/0

I've bumped Wellington's leadership skill to 7 (previously 6). I am not going to raise him above neither Kutuzov nor Davout. He commanded his army well, but never was in command of large numbers of soldiers. By the standards of Napoleonic army he was more of a corps commander. His battle record is outstanding and gives him 2 for attack and 2 for defense (Waterloo would be sufficient enough to make it so).

I am not sure about the rest of the leaders. Any help in this area would be appreciated. To me they look fine as is, but I am not from England and the only leader I would be likely to use is Wellington.

On both Austrians and Prussians, I've changed only Archduke Charles and Blucher

Archduke_Charles 7/1/1

He was among best leaders of the era, after all he inflicted the first tactical defeat on Napoleon. That puts him side by side with Wellington, only the latter was fortunate enough to face Napoleon only once, at the end of his career, while Charles fought against Napoleon on numerous occasions.

Blucher 4/1/0

Not the best commander by any standards, but Prussian "General Forward" deserves plus 1 for attack and a slight increase (from 2 to 4) in leadership.

I am happy with the rest of Austrian and Prussian leaders (ignorance is a bliss), once again, if anybody has any suggestions, feel free to comment.

I have no plans to edit the Ottoman list, may have to revisit French list (since I took one leader away from Russians I might as well put Eugene back for the French) will post the mod up as soon as I get the descriptions and pictures of new leaders.

As a matter of fact, Eugene was a very able commander. He did a very good job on the Italian front during the 1809 campaign and won a significant victory over the Russians at Malo Jaroslavets just after the French left Moscow for their fateful retreat in 1812.

I also think Lannes would deserve a slightly better rating. He was may be the best of Napoleon's marshall, second only to Davout. His death at Essling was perhaps the worst aspect of the Emperor's first defeat.

Finally, if Platov gets a bonus in attack, then Murat should also get one. Although not a military genius, as a cavalry leader he was much better than Platov and certainly not inferior to him. He saved the day at Eylau and in many other battles.