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