(This article exceeds the maximum size for a single post. The article is concluded in the next post on this thread.)

Introduction

Leaders appear infrequently but can have a very large impact on the game. They have the unique abilities to rush wonders and to create armies.

This article describes rules which affect the appearance of leaders, techniques which can increase your chances of getting a leader, ways to use leaders, and some game strategies based on leaders.

Rules Affecting Leader Production

You can only have one leader at a time. If you have a leader who hasn't been used for anything yet, there is nothing you can do to produce a second leader at the same time. You must use the existing leader first, to rush something in a city or to build an army. You can check whether you currently have a leader by seeing whether one is displayed in the F3 display under "available leader."

You can however produce more than one leader in one game turn. If you get a leader, then move him to a nearby town and use him immediately, afterward you can get another leader in the same turn.

Each time one of your elite units wins a fight against a rival, there is a 1 in 16 chance that a leader will appear.

If one of your cities has built the small wonder "Heroic Epic" then your chance of getting a leader improves to 1 in 12 when you win a fight with an elite.

You can not get a leader by fighting a barbarian. Only fights won against rival Civs have a chance of producing a leader.

You can get a leader when an elite wins while defending as well as from attacking. The chances of getting a leader from a successful defense are 1/2 the chances while attacking, i.e. 1 in 32 without Heroic Epic, 1 in 24 with Heroic Epic.

When one of your elite units produces a leader, the game asks you for a new name for the unit. There's no need to give a name if you don't want to, you can just hit Escape. (Escape is better than hitting Enter because this way the unit's name will still be updated if you later upgrade the unit.) What is important is to remember which of your elite units have produced a leader. This is easy to check because every elite unit which has produced a leader has its experience level changed from "Elite" to "Elite*".

"Elite*" units, i.e. those which have produced a leader, are "used". No matter how many more fights that unit wins it will not produce another leader.

When you upgrade an "Elite*" unit, e.g. upgrade an Elite* Horseman to a Knight, the unit's experience level is reduced to veteran and it can produce a leader after it wins a promotion to become elite again.

Techniques to Improve Chances for Leaders

First a bit of background about unit experience levels. At any time each of your units is at one of the following experience levels:
Conscript: 2 health points, popped from a hut or drafted
Regular: 3 health points, built by a city without barracks
Veteran: 4 health points, built by a city with barracks
Elite: 5 health points
Elite*: 5 health points and has produced a leader

Each time a unit wins a battle it has a chance of being promoted to the next higher experience level.

To get leaders you need to win many battles with elite units. On average you will get one leader for every 16 battles won by an elite.

There are a limited number of battles you can fight in any given turn. Your enemies will only produce a certain number of units, and there are only so many barbarians available to fight. For the best chance of getting leaders you want to maximize your chances from the available battles.

Your first priority should be to avoid building regular units. You want to build barracks first and then build veterans. The early part of the game is an exception - it is usually more important to get units out exploring, and perhaps even to hit an enemy with an early rush attack. But after the early stages, never build units without first building a barracks. You don't want to waste fights getting your regular units promoted to veteran - it is better to use those same fighting opportunities to get veterans promoted to elite or to get elite wins to try for leaders.

The following notes describe when to use units according to their experience level. These are just general guidelines. In any given situation there may be over-riding priorities such as a crucial defense or a high priority target. But often these guidelines can be applied while pursuing your other goals:

Conscript & Regular:

As soon as you have some veteran units, stop using Conscripts and Regulars in fights. In Despotism or Monarchy use these inexperienced units at home as military police. In later governments disband them or save them for quick production boosts in cities when you want to rush a build. Don't fight with them, they waste promotion opportunities better used by your more experienced units.

Veteran:

1) Use them against barbarians to try for promotions to elite.

2) Use them against rivals after any available fights which can use elites (see notes below.)

3) When attacking a strong defense with a stack you may want to use veterans before using elites. This is a tradeoff. If you don't have good odds of winning with an elite, of course your odds are even worse with a veteran. Nonetheless, if you are producing new veteran units at a good rate back home, I suggest using veterans first when the odds aren't good. You'll lose some of them but you'll weaken the target, and that creates opportunities for your elites to finish off the defenders with less risk. I prefer to lose a few more veterans when it gives me more chances to safely use elites and get chances for leaders.

Elite:

1) If possible don't fight barbarians, use a veteran instead. An elite can't produce a leader from this fight but a veteran can get promoted.

2) If you have an unused leader try to avoid fighting with your elites at all. Use veterans instead. Depending on the overall game situation, consider slowing your advance on the enemy (due to not using your elites) until your leader has been used to build something. The reason for this is that every time you use an elite while you have an unused leader, you are "wasting" a fight which might have upgraded a veteran to elite (if a veteran were used) or which might have produced a leader (if the elite were used after the current leader has built something.)

3) Try to pick off the easiest enemy targets first with elites. There are two reasons:
(a) You increase the chance of a win. Which means you reduce your chances of losing. And you don't want to lose elites. It takes a lot of elite wins (on average) to produce a leader. You want them to survive to keep winning and winning until a leader pops up.
(b) Sometimes you'll win easy fights without even losing a health point. Then the elite can try again on the next turn vs. having to sit on the sidelines for a while to heal.

Elite*:

1) If the unit can be upgraded later in the game try to avoid using it at all, just set it aside for later upgrading.

2) If the unit cannot be upgraded later (e.g. Cavalry), or if you have urgent need of it, use it as your first attacker when attacking a strong defense. Maybe it will win. If it loses hopefully it will at least weaken the defender for your subsequent veteran and elite attackers.

Other factors (subjects other than fighting):

I think it is often advantageous to not upgrade elite units to a newer unit. E.g. if I've just learned Military Tradition, I will upgrade veteran and elite* Knights as quickly as possible, but I'll hang on to some elite Knights. They can wander around near the battle front looking for opportunities against weak or injured enemies. Any easy fight they find is a "free" leader chance, vs. an upgraded Knight (Cavalry) who will have to earn a promotion to elite before it can generate a leader.

"Militaristic" civilizations are slightly better for generating leaders. Their veteran units have a better chance of being promoted to elite in each fight. So they get more elites from the same number of fights, which results in more chances to generate leaders.

The Luck Factor

Each time that you try for a leader there is only a small chance of getting one. So game strategies which rely on getting a leader quickly at a particular time should be avoided - there's too much risk that it will take a long time to get one when you need it.

But it is entirely reasonable to plan on getting a number of leaders over a period of time. In the long run probabilities will work out and you can expect to get some leaders.

Because of the low odds in each fight there can be a great variance in how long it takes to get a leader:

1) Without Heroic Epic there is a 1 in 16 chance of getting a leader.

2) The best of luck is when a leader pops up on your very first fight with an elite unit. This will happen, but on average just one time out of every 16 times you try it.

3) There will also be runs of bad luck. There is a 1 in 16 chance ( for those who want the math, (15/16) ^ 43 ~= 1/16 ) that you'll have a run of 43 elite wins in a row before you get a single leader.

To get a feel for what can be expected in real play, suppose that we play a large number of games and that on average in each game we win 64 elite fights. If we look over a hypothetical average set of four of these games we'd see that:
1) There were a total of 16 leaders produced in the four games.
2) There was a wide variation in the number of elite wins between successive leaders. Sometimes it took just a few wins, sometimes a lot.
3) Once a leader appeared immediately, on the first try after the previous leader.
4) Once it took about 40 elite wins between one leader and the next.

Of course there's no rule which says that a particular set of four games with sixteen leaders would work out that way. But by the time you look at a larger number of games (say 20 or so) this overall picture will be reasonably close to the pattern you'll experience. It is a useful enough pattern to form a basis for your expectations and planning, i.e.:

1) Don't count on getting a leader quickly. A run of 50 elite wins without getting a leader is to be expected once in a while. Longer runs are possible but the odds do diminish. For example, a run of 40 is about a 1 in 13 chance. A run of 80 is about a 1 in 170 chance.

2) Do make plans which assume you'll get a leader eventually, as long as you are prepared for a long run when necessary. E.g. I think it is a reasonable strategy to plan on using a leader to rush a Forbidden Palace in captured territory, given that you are ready to keep on fighting for a while until you get the leader.

Heroic Epic

Building the small wonder "Heroic Epic" increases your chances of getting leaders to 1 in 12 elite wins (instead of 1 in 16.)

So why not build Heroic Epic as a matter of course in every game? There is a tricky tradeoff - you must have a victorious army before you can build Heroic Epic. And the only way to get your first army is to use a leader to create it.

I feel that early in the game armies are not worth having for their own sake. So I won't use an early leader to create an army unless the Heroic Epic more than compensates for the lost leader.

To work that out let's consider two cases for using a leader:

1) Create an army and build Heroic Epic. After doing this we expect a leader to appear on average every 12 elite wins. So 48 elite wins after this time we expect to have had 4 more leaders which we could use to rush wonders.

2) Don't create army, don't build Heroic Epic. The first leader rushes a wonder. In the next 48 elite wins we expect to get 3 more leaders. At the end of that period we'll have had a total of 4 leaders used to rush wonders.

So 48 elite wins after the first leader the two cases come to the same thing - at that point four "useful" leaders (i.e. not counting the leader used for the army) have been produced.

At any time before producing those four leaders we're further ahead to not build Heroic Epic. The first three useful leaders come sooner without it.

At any time after producing those four leaders we're further ahead by having built Heroic Epic. We'll average one leader per 12 elite wins after that instead of one per 16.

In a typical game I'd expect to get from 3 to 5 leaders before the mid-Industrial Age (they're most useful before that time I think.) I often want to use them as quickly as possible. E.g. I might feel that Great Lighthouse would be helpful and that a rival is closer to completing it. So I don't usually go for Heroic Epic. It won't gain much in the long run with just 3 to 5 leaders, and in the short run I'd rather seize the opportunity to rush something right away.

OTOH, in a game where I plan to go for a lot of leaders (e.g. if going for 20K culture in one city and planning to rush a lot of wonders there with leaders) Heroic Epic seems well worth building. With Heroic Epic you can expect to get 12 useful leaders from the same number of elite wins as would produce 10 useful leaders without Heroic Epic.

Another factor: With Heroic Epic, the "luck factor" becomes a bit more predictable. As noted earlier, without Heroic Epic there's a 1 in 170 chance of needing 80 elite wins in a row before a leader appears. With Heroic Epic the risk of 80 elite wins in a row not producing a leader is reduced to 1 in 1050. There's still a lot of variability but the chance of long leaderless streaks is considerably reduced. That's helpful in a game where you are trying for a somewhat regular supply of leaders.

A special case: Suppose you get a leader at a time when you have no particular use for one. If you expect you'll be saving the leader for a long time before using it, it can be a good gamble to create an army, build Heroic Epic, and hope to get a new leader before you next have a use for one.

If you do go for Heroic Epic, don't take chances with your army's first fight! I recommend stacking the deck heavily. E.g. load two veteran Knights into the army and then have it attack a wounded archer on grassland. (Imagine losing that first army attack - you've used the leader and you still can't build Heroic Epic, not a result to be contemplated.)

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(continuation of "Creating and Using Leaders" article)

Using Leaders

What's the best way to use a leader? It depends on your long term strategy and the situation in the game. The following notes describe possible uses, with the ones I feel are most important first:

Palace or Forbidden Palace:

Having two separate productive regions, one around a Palace and one around a Forbidden Palace, can double your empire's productivity and is a high priority. There are three ways to accomplish this:
1) The "Palace jump" technique. This can be highly effective but takes planning and often involves some compromises (e.g. keeping all other towns small at the time of the jump, and stuffing workers into the target city.)
2) Build a Forbidden Palace. This compromises speed vs. overlap - if the Forbidden Palace is close to the capital its effect is less, if far from the capital it takes a very long time to build.
3) Rush a Forbidden Palace (or a new Palace if Forbidden Palace has already been built near the original capital) with a leader.

I think this is often the best way to use the first leader. Sometimes the first leader will appear before you have a productive region ready and it may be better to use the leader for something else, gambling on getting another leader for the Palace/FP.

Wonders:

There are so many useful ones! Which wonder to rush depends on the map and your overall plans. I find the following wonders especially powerful, depending on the game circumstances: Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, Great Library, Sun Tzu's, Leonardo's, JS Bach's, Hoover Dam, United Nations. In some games the science producing wonders are also particularly good to have.

If you are building a particular wonder and you get a leader, it can be nice to use the leader to rush the wonder in another city and to shift your existing production to a new wonder which is less urgent.

It is of course best to use leaders to rush wonders in cities which can benefit most from them (for example with science improving wonders or continent-based wonders), and also to use them in cities where not many shields have been invested in the city's current build. The leader can as easily rush the wonder from a starting point of zero shields as from 90% built. Whatever shields the city has invested in its current build are essentially wasted when you rush production with a leader.

Save Leader For Later:

Often you'll be in a position where there's something urgent coming in a while but you can't build it yet. E.g. there might be a place you want to rush Forbidden Palace but you haven't yet taken it from a rival, or you might be 10 turns from learning Literature and rushing Great Library is a high priority for your game plan.

It is a judgement call whether to hold the leader for the upcoming priority vs. using it for something else now and hoping for another leader to appear in the meantime. If you save the leader you'll be wasting chances to get another during that time, but you'll be sure of getting your priority build. If you use the leader you're taking a chance that a long leaderless run follows and you won't have a leader when you really want one. You'll just have to decide in each situation, balancing the odds of getting another leader against the urgency of the build. E.g. you might work it out like this: "It will be 5 turns before I learn Literature; I'm averaging about five wins with elite units per turn, 25 such wins without a leader would be about a 1 in 5 chance, so it is about 80% odds I'll get another leader in time if I use this leader. But if I don't get the Great Library my whole plan is toast because I'm so far behind in tech. And I know France is close to it. So I'll hold the leader, it is not worth the risk." Or you might apply the same reasoning in a situation where no one else has a significant build started and come to the opposite conclusion, you might figure you can build the Library the hard way if necessary, or that you can afford a low chance risk of missing it, and therefore at 80% odds you might as well use the current leader now and go for another leader.

Army:

The priority of using a leader this way depends on how important you consider armies to be. I seldom consider armies worthwhile before well into the Industrial Age, so up to that time I only use a leader to create one if I want Heroic Epic.

Late in the game, if there are no wonders to be rushed, I often use leaders to create armies. At this point armies can be useful in attacking Infantry defended cities. Might as well create some when there isn't a more urgent use for the leader.

City Improvement:

In some games it can happen that you have massive forces in the Industrial Age or Modern Times, with many elite units, and during a war at this point you get a lot of leaders. Sometimes you even get more than one per turn. By this time leaders aren't very valuable. You've got all the wonders you can, you have as many armies as you want. In the occasional game where this happens I use the leaders to rush city improvements. Might as well save some money and rush expensive builds such as Universities, Mass Transit, Battleships, whatever seems most desirable.

Leader Farming

It is possible to take extreme measures to increase leader production, trading off other game elements such as rapid expansion to improve the chances for more leaders.

I think of leader farming not as a single technique but as a combination of things where the overriding emphasis is on getting leaders, even at the expense of other factors.

In many games this can be a useful technique for some short period(s). For instance at a time when a few wonders are available and you can't build them all before your rivals. At that time it may be worth putting extra effort into leader production to see if you can get one or two extra wonders that way.

In some games it can be useful to go much further, leader farming through most of the game. For example this can be helpful in getting an early 20K culture city victory.

The first part of leader farming is, of course, to use all of the techniques described so far. In addition to those techniques, here are some ways to leader farm more aggressively:

1) To carry this approach to the maximum you'd like an appropriate map. Ideally you'd play as a Militaristic Civ, on a Pangaea map (or at least a map where you can easily reach a good number of rivals), and you want to reach a position where you have a few large rivals who are nonetheless not as strong as you are. A technology lead or a resource advantage, resulting in you having stronger attackers than your rivals' defenders, is helpful.

2) Attack your opponents slowly. You don't want to cripple their production, you want them to keep producing units (preferably weaker than your own) so that you can keep fighting.

3) At any time when you do not have a leader, attack your rivals' exposed units aggressively with your elite units, trying to produce a leader. If you feel you don't have enough elite units then also attack with veterans to get some of them promoted. The right number of elites is hard to say, it depends on circumstances and your style. Generally I'd like to have at least 5 to 10 elites attacking each turn. After attacking exposed enemy units, if you still have elites who can attack this turn then consider attacking some enemy cities with them. You'll have to balance between reducing their territory (and thus their long term ability to produce new cannon fodder for your troops) vs. getting a leader quickly by continuing to attack. This balance depends on your long term goals and the number of other rivals available after the current ones. Where possible without over-killing them, attack with all of your available (i.e. healed) elite units each turn until you get a leader. Don't use veterans during this phase unless you feel that you need to promote more of them to elites.

4) As soon as you get a leader, rush him to the city where he'll be used. Every turn he takes to get home slows you down. Try to have shortest routes set up in advance from the warfronts to home, including having ships ready at water crossings. If you produce a leader while taking an enemy town, consider finishing off that town with veteran units before moving the leader - capturing the town before moving the leader might let your leader use roads to shorten his trip home by a turn.

5) During the turns your unused leader is moving to where he's going to be used, fight only a holding action. Pull your troops back from the battlefront and fight only any enemy units which come after you into your territory. Use only veteran units to fight those invaders - any fights you win with elites while your leader is heading home are wasted, these fights can't produce a new leader. Instead use veterans to get some of them promoted to elites.

6) Plan ahead for the turn when your leader reaches home. On the turn before that, move your elite units into positions ready to attack. On the turn when the leader gets home, use him and start attacking with elites right away, repeating the whole cycle until you get your next leader.

7) Use one of your early leaders for an army and build Heroic Epic. If you're planning to farm a lot of leaders Heroic Epic is definitely helpful.

8) Look for chances to cripple your rivals' ability to produce advanced units. For instance if you are at the Chivalry/Feudalism stage of the game, try to pillage your rivals' sources of iron and horses. This will help you in two ways: a) Your rival can only produce weaker units, resulting in a higher rate of success for your units, and b) Your rival will produce cheaper units and will thus produce more of them - you'll get more leader chances by killing three enemy archers than by killing two swordsmen!

Conclusion

I think that producing leaders is not an exact science. Techniques to improve your chances must be adapted to circumstances to fit with your overall strategy. And leader production remains at heart a matter of luck. Sometimes they may seem to fall from the sky. At other times you may want to curse the random number generator. I wish you more of the former!

I hope you enjoyed reading this and found some useful tips in it.

May your leaders appear often and at the best of times!

Great Article SirPleb, this will be useful to many players out there.

I have a couple of point I would like to add that I have used to great effect in a recent Deity Always War game, aiming for a quick 20k victory.

1) Artillery bombardment.

In my particular case, my starting area had no horses, so with no access to a 2 move attack, and attacking defenders who were often of a similar or better Attack Defence ratio, I want to improve the odds of getting a leader further…. The best way I found to improve the win ratio, and hence generate more elites and leaders was with artillery.

This meant that my early SoD consisted of 2 spearmen (just in case), about 10 swordsmen (mix of vet and elite) and about 15 catapults. With a regular supply of enemy troops approaching the Stack each turn, the catapults could bombard them all down to 1hp before the elites went in for the kill, improving the kill ration and resulting in fewer injuries to my elites.

This theory was also used to great effect in the later game for the invasion of the other continent. By this point, I was in the early industrial (railroads and riflemen), Vs opponents who were producing infantry, cavalry and siphai in large numbers. My stack at this point in the game consisted of some 50 or so cannon, 2 riflemen armies, 20 or so extra riflemen and 10 cavs (vet and elite). A continuation of the technique was my saving grace in this period of the game. I was managing to hold out against attacks by up to 50 cav and siphai in between turns (arrmies with artillery support) and normally managed to generate leaders every 2 to 3 turns by bombarding all approaching units to a pulp. With the leaders and extra armies created during this period I was able to slowly gain the upper hand.

Ghandi built the Manhattan project about 20 turns later, so that put paid to that AW attempt, but the experience could be transferred to other leader farming games to great effect in my opinion.

2) Sun Tzus

I belive this is perhaps the most important wonder in a leader farming game. Damaged elite units can retreat easily to recently captured towns, can even if these are in resistence, they are quickly healed and can go back to the front. Without this wonder, the regeneration rate of elite and potentially elite troops is much slower.

Hope these points help add to what I have already stated was a great articles by one of the civ masters, Sir Pleb.

Cheers

Nice write-up SirPleb.
I have some comments that you might agree with or not. Feel free to ignore them if they seem inappropriate.

Minor comments: Leader creation in defense is half likely than the one in attack 1/32; 1/24.

Minor note about conscripts and regulars promotion:
you can keep them fortified on mountains or other good defensive positions so that you have high odds of defending successfully from an AI attack and promoting the unit quickly.

Minor note about veterans use:
To max out leader creation you should use them most of the time when attacking enemy cities or fortified AI positions. Softening the AI with vets for winning with elites increases leader creation. Use vets as much as possible to increase promotions among them.

Remember that using vets in the first wave decreases your overall success rate. Use this technique only for leader farming not for decisive battles.

Minor comments on other factors:
On the other side you might need to upgrade some elite units as you don’t want them to sit around and wait for an easy fight, while they could have been upgraded, and could have already promoted back to elite. Plus that every time I lose an elite unit that I could have upgraded I feel it could have won if upgraded.

Militaristic civs also have better abilities for non-veteran units to promote. A conscript of a militaristic civ has a 50% chance to promote for every fight it has.

Minor comments on wonders:
More than the production invested in a city that it’s lost when you use a leader to rush a wonder, you will lose the production of that city for the following turn as well. For this reason I usually build wonders in corrupted cities (20K is an exception).

Thanks Sir Pleb,
This is a well written, well thought out article. Kello you also make a good point with the artillery. You have moved my learning curve forward by at least two difficult games.

Bugsy

Originally posted by Yndy

Minor note about conscripts and regulars promotion:
you can keep them fortified on mountains or other good defensive positions so that you have high odds of defending successfully from an AI attack and promoting the unit quickly.


I think SirPlebs point here is that every enemy unit is a potential leader generator and you don't want to waste any opportunity to generate a leader except to promote a veteran to elite. All those promotions from conscript all the way to elite were potential leader generators. SirPleb optimizes the number of leader generating opportunities.

If you have lots of veterans but few elites, there is a way to promote them in less battles (but with more veteran casualties).

Leave your victorious veterans undefended in enemy territory after winning a battle. If they defend against the counterattack they will automatically promote to elite.

This works best if your units can retreat, so your new elite can run away if more units continue the counterattack.

In scenarios where the human is not player 1, you may have to defend during the AI turn and then attack during your turn for the auto-promotion.

Very good article, SirPleb!:goodjob: I'm sure you're probably sick of hearing me singing song about you; therefore, I will try not to sing today.;)

Great article, especially the Heroic Epic part. :goodjob:

Excellent Article. Too often I think we feel that we have to only write a strategy article if we have invented a new strategy (such as Ring City Placement). However, there are always dozens of new players coming along who don't know all of the ins and outs of some of the basic strategy moves. This article is long overdue and I hope it prompts more people to write articles on basic strategy.

Thanks everyone! :beer:

Kello: Leader farming in deity, always war, with inferior units? :ninja: :crazyeye: (I wanted to find a "hats off" smiley!) Well done and thanks for the description - the combined arms SoD sounds quite effective, now I want to try it too. Too bad you were stymied in that AW attempt, sounds like you were very close. BTW, what size map was that game? I'm wondering if a larger map with a resulting slower tech pace might make it possible...

Yndy: Thanks, I didn't know about the lower leader odds when defending. I haven't had many leaders from defending, figured it was because I'm generally so offensive :)

DaveMcW: Thanks for the tip, that's interesting about a guaranteed promotion for a second win in the same turn, including both our turn and our rivals! I knew about winning twice in a single player's turn causing a guaranteed promotion. That part doesn't often matter in planning - early on there aren't many chances to increase odds of two barbarians hitting at once, and later in the game with two-attack units it doesn't matter much for leaders anymore. But this twist you've pointed out, hmmm, that suggests some nice opportunities for ensuring promotions!

Moonsinger: I can't imagine anyone getting too much Moonsinging. I think many of us are a bit smitten :love2: Of course with your new role at CFC I guess some may be smitten in new ways :whipped: :lol:

Zagnut: Quite so! I have another article I keep meaning to write, I hope the urge will strike one of these days and I'll actually dig in.

Originally posted by SirPleb
Kello: Leader farming in deity, always war, with inferior units? :ninja: :crazyeye: (I wanted to find a "hats off" smiley!) Well done and thanks for the description - the combined arms SoD sounds quite effective, now I want to try it too. Too bad you were stymied in that AW attempt, sounds like you were very close. BTW, what size map was that game? I'm wondering if a larger map with a resulting slower tech pace might make it possible...


It was on a standard map, 70% water, continents, all else standard. My only mod was to generate the map in Edit and make sure that I'd have at least 30 or so turns before the first AI reached me.

It was very close, but my lack of decent naval or air support really ruined my chances, it's frustrating to see your ironclad keep getting gobbled up by submarines you can't see, and your improvements bombed out by bombers that your troops can't recognise.

I'd highly encourage you to try it, I'm sure you'd have a blast and put my attempt to shame. As for trying it on a larger map, I think that might be even tougher. Considering the amount of offensive units a decent sized deity civ can produce when it has been gearing up for war for 3500 years (I had 3 to face in the industrial in this game), I dread to think how many units 6 or 7 or more opposing civs could produce. The key to sucess in these games if you get bogged down with inferior units is the ability to create unbreakable strongpoints (that can generate leaders at a fairly regular rate), and developing a good idea of how and where the AI will attack next. Their naval assaults on my homeland were always pitiful, and I knew they'd always try and take my outposts on their continent with all they could throw at me.

I'm at work now, but I'll post some screenies later if you are interested.

Another tip that I didnt see is to keep in mind that any unit that wins two fightrs in a turn gets a promotion. Notice that tanks can attack twice in one turn. I have had tanks go from vet to elite in one turn without losing any hit points. Its relatively easy to get a lot of elite tanks very quickly. Modern armor gets three attacks so it only gets better.

Sir, your analytical approach to strategy is always impressive, not to mention that it's nice to finally have all this leader information in one place. :goodjob:

One minor comment on gameplay mechanics:

Originally posted by SirPleb
When one of your elite units produces a leader, the game asks you for a new name for the unit. There's no need to give a name if you don't want to, you can just hit Enter.

Actually, just hitting Enter might lead to confusion, as the unit will retain its name after you upgrade it. So a Elite* Horseman will become a Veteran "Horseman" which will really be a Knight :crazyeye:

It's better to hit Escape (or "X" the popup dialog), which leaves the user-defined name of the unit blank, so that an Elite* Horseman upgrades to a veteran Knight, as expected.

Originally posted by alexman

Actually, just hitting Enter might lead to confusion, as the unit will retain its name after you upgrade it. So a Elite* Horseman will become a Veteran "Horseman" which will really be a Knight :crazyeye:

It's better to hit Escape (or "X" the popup dialog), which leaves the user-defined name of the unit blank, so that an Elite* Horseman upgrades to a veteran Knight, as expected.

Thanks for the tip this has been driving me crazy lately. I keep retreating veteran Knights to be upgraded to Cavalry when they are already Cavalry.

Originally posted by alexman
It's better to hit Escape (or "X" the popup dialog), which leaves the user-defined name of the unit blank, so that an Elite* Horseman upgrades to a veteran Knight, as expected.
Thanks Alexman! Like Svar, this has bugged me. Don't know how I missed the possibility that Escape would get around it, should have thought of that.

I've updated the article to suggest using Escape, and also added Yndy's note about the odds for leaders while defending. I haven't tried to incorporate the rest of the good advice others have posted here, that would take more surgery :)

Excellent article SirPleb!!

A great article, SirPleb. i would only add a few words on getting leaders when you are not invading anyone :)

war is great if someone else declared it :). you get reverse war weariness so your people are happier, and you rival is nice enough to "deliver" you a number of military units for upgrading veterans and testing your elites. with this in mind...
Make sure that you have a sufficient offensive army to instantly destroy any incoming units. i prefer to use horsemen/knights/cavalry because you can attack, and then bring them back to town in the same turn, so that they take only 1 turn to heal completely.
see where the ai tries to invade from. you can manipulate this by stationing troops around a town/inside a town, but the idea basically is to manipulate it into attacking a certain border town with open terrain.
once you have the set up it should be fairly straight forward - attack the defensive units with veterans, the offensive with elites, if you happen to have too many elites you can attack defensive units with them too. you shouldn't need too many replacements since you are attacking non-fortified units on 10% defensive bonus terrain.
a few comments: it helps very much if the units the ai sents have a lower defense than your offence, so try to either direct the tech development to offensive units or pillage/take over the strategic resources :)

EDIT: using cataputs/cannons/artillery may greatly increase your chances of winning, which means that you will lose less units -> more elite victories -> more leaders

This is great! Leader production has been a real sore spot with me for a long time, and a weak part of my game (one of many). Already in the first three paragraphs I see hints that are going to help a lot. Thanks!

The best civ for leader producing could be added. I have to say it's between Rome and Japan. Both millitaristic and both UUs have best offence as well as best defence. So leave the UUs on the front line, they can defend first, then attack again. I found myself having huge amount of leaders with these two civs.

Another great write up! I can't wait to get home and start a new game to see if I have a green-thumb for leader farming!

Some notes that weren't mentioned...

Only land-based military units can generate leaders. Not ships, not aircraft, not artillery, not non-combat units.

The most important factor in getting Leaders is NEVER WASTE AN ELITE. NEVER send an elite into an attack where it won't have an overwhelming advantage. Every elite that you lose means 4 or 8 chances for Leaders lost in getting another veteran to promote. Hear that? Two lost elite units, and you've effectively lost one Leader.

If you already have a Leader that you are saving, simply do not attack with any more elite units at all. Use only veterans, since every enemy unit presents a chance to upgrade to another elite.

Elite* units that can't be upgraded (cavalry, mech inf, armors) are great candidates to load into armies.

When you are setting up defensive positions to end your turn, leave elite units unfortified and covered by fortified veterans. A fortified healthy elite will be selected as the defender before a fortified healthy veteran (of the same defensive value), but a fortified vet will be selected as the defender ahead of an unfortified elite. You don't want your elite units vulnerable on defense, and letting veterans absorb two attacks for auto-promotion is an excellent way to get elites (two enemy units to get a promotion instead of 4 or 8.)


The exact unit promotion chances are:

Conscript->Regular: 1/2 for non-militaristic, 1/1 (every time) for militaristic
Regular->Veteran: 1/4 (non-mil) and 1/2 (mil)
Veteran->Elite: 1/8 (non-mil) and 1/4 (mil)

All those chances are halved against barbarians. Multiple victories in one turn is still an automatic promotion against barbs.

Elite* units that can't be upgraded (cavalry, mech inf, armors) are great candidates to load into armies.

Good point, I was just going to mention that. The only slightly annoying thing is the elite* that generated that leader can't join the army that turn.

I always join elites* and veterans into armies, never elites that haven't generated a leader yet (like I've seen one person recommend). The veterans inside the army can still get promoted to elites.

I always do exactly the same thing. Loading elites who haven't generated a leader into an army is just a waste, IMHO.

I'd like to add my experiences from my last game as they apply to leader creation. I played India on a standard monarch level map. As India I was peaceful for most of the first age. The only units I built were horsemen. I built walls in my towns and had a failry dense build. By the time I reached Chivalry, I had about 20 horseman that I upgraded to War Elephnats and 7 or 8 catapults. The War Elephants were all veteran, having been built in barracks.

About this time, my neighbors the mongols came spoiling for a fight. They didnt have Chiavlry or the Mongol UU yet. They attacked into my lands with Longbows, Med Med inf, Pikes and swords. Either I was real good or real lucky, but I hardly lost a battle as my Elephants pounded them into the dirt. Before long, half of my elephant force was elite, and I had 4 or 5 leaders.

I think the moral is that knight class units have the first best chance of making leaders beacuase of their relative power and speed. Also, it might help if the wars are fought on your lands initially because you have greater movement ability and chance of retreat to survive.

Originally posted by Darkness
I always do exactly the same thing. Loading elites who haven't generated a leader into an army is just a waste, IMHO.

I'm the one who has recommended loading elites into armies that haven't generated leaders but I only do it with MA when I have lots of them because you can make an elite MA in a single turn. In fact I think I have had a veteran MA go from veteran to elite and generate a leader all in a single turn. The reason for the elite MA army is to defeat fotrtifed MI without losing any MA. Losing units raises your WW and I have rarely ever lost an elite MA army so it keeps your WW down.

T-hawk, thanks for the additional info! It is good to know the exact odds on promotions, I didn't know them before now.

originally posted by T-hawk:
When you are setting up defensive positions to end your turn, leave elite units unfortified and covered by fortified veterans. A fortified healthy elite will be selected as the defender before a fortified healthy veteran (of the same defensive value), but a fortified vet will be selected as the defender ahead of an unfortified elite. You don't want your elite units vulnerable on defense, and letting veterans absorb two attacks for auto-promotion is an excellent way to get elites (two enemy units to get a promotion instead of 4 or 8.)


In this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1240499#post1240499) has been a discussion about the preferred defending unit of a mixed stack. The suggested rules and fomulas might help deciding whether to fortify the elite unit(s) or not. If the elite will defend anyway, it's of course better to have the fortify bonus (plus there's hope for a GL at 1:32 respectively 1:24 odds then).



originally posted by Bamspeedy:

-replying to "join elite* units to armies"-

Good point, I was just going to mention that. The only slightly annoying thing is the elite* that generated that leader can't join the army that turn.

:hmm:
You mean that's practically so, because movement is used up?
I thought I had occasionally joined a fresh cav* with 2mp left to the created army (out of that same cav*) and even attacked with the army in the same turn.

Yes Grille, you're right for fast units. I was thinking of my infantry variant. Only used musketmen,riflemen, and infantry in that game. Generated 78 leaders and had 40 active armies.

78 GLs... :eek:
I will have this number on my mind next time when the RNG denies me a GL (that's where the luck went to...)

Seriously, I'd guess this high number would probably mean that you came very close to 78*12 elite victories.

But for the time being, I hide in a bunker. :D
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/cover.gif

SirPleb, how do you think the new Science Great Leaders in Conquests will affect Leader farming? Aside from the fact that Germans become very good at it...

Originally posted by moni
SirPleb, how do you think the new Science Great Leaders in Conquests will affect Leader farming? Aside from the fact that Germans become very good at it...
Sorry Moni, I don't know, I know little about Conquests yet.

hi :à)

Thx for nice advice for creating those leaders. It sounded good so I try it and have a lot more leaders =à)

I want to add something, a contrepoint. I keep elites attacks units obsolets a little time before they are too obsolete, usually 2 upgrades for them in one "shot" (if IA are in the same tech advance).
But for elites defensives units i continue to upgrade them. The chances to have a leader when defending are too low for the risk to lose it vs contemporary attacks units. Near all leaders i have had come from attacking.

(Gratz for your 78 leaders:cool: ;) )

Very interesting article. Definitely gave me some ideas to implement in future games.

A minor statistical note could be that a long streak of elite wins without leaders does not raise the chance of producing a leader with the next elite win. After 79 no-leader wins the chance of producing a leader is still 1/16 whereas ex ante there is a chance of 1/170 of a run of 80.

The point being that people should not expect a leader after a long run of failures.

Wow, It took me a whole lot of words to make a minor point. Hopefully it makes sense. Will try to be more brief in the future....

One area not to be underestimated in GL Farming is Barbarian battles.............a good way to promote your units to elite.

An advantage vanilla CIV has over PTW is that barbarians adjacent to one of your units (Barbarian "Camp" sentries excluded) will attack you no matter what the odds!

This fact is particularly useful at lower game levels (where barbarians are weaker)...........for example, your regular "exploring" early-game Warrior enters a GH and unleashes a horde of 3 barbarians.....under vanilla CIV, if your warrior survives the forthcoming barbarian attack, it is guaranteed to be an elite unit! ;)

(Under PTW, the 2nd and/or 3rd barbarians may NOT attack!)

Thanks for taking the time to write the GL article SirPleb.....Glad to see it made the War Academy. :goodjob: :goodjob:

As always, your writing style is clear, concise and on-target.

Originally posted by SirPleb

3) Rush a Forbidden Palace (or a new Palace if Forbidden Palace has already been built near the original capital) with a leader.

I would just give a small warning on this one. . .

In GOTM 21, I tried this tactic. However, since I knew there was a lot more combat to be had that round and wanted to increase my chances of another leader, I used the leader immediately to rush the Forbidden Palace. Because I took over a lot of territory after the leader was generated and then used, the cost of the Forbidden Palace increased.

My understanding (post-GOTM 21) is that the cost of the Forbidden Palace being dependent on your territory and population. If those go up, the cost for it will go up.

The way a leader works for rushing improvements is it reduces the cost of an item to 1 shield at the time it is used. So if you change your mind and switch to something more costly or if the cost increases you will still need to produce those shields.

It was very discouraging to find this out the hard way.

So my recommendation if you are planning to do this option is to save the leader for the whole round and just accept that you will not produce additional leaders that turn.

forged

PS. Great article and comments. Thanks for the posts! :)
PPS. And yes, I'm still slightly bitter about finding it out the hard way. ;)

Originally posted by forged
So my recommendation if you are planning to do this option is to save the leader for the whole round and just accept that you will not produce additional leaders that turn.That's interesting news about the Forbidden Palace.........however, if you're building ANY other Wonder, presumably the price in shields is fixed.........so there's no reason to forgo the chance of getting another Leader by waiting until the end of the turn?
(Since you can only have ONE GL at a time.)

forged,
you're sure you rushed the Forbidden Palace and not the Palace?
I thought FP cost is fixed in an unmodded game (maybe that GOTM had some tweak here??).

Anyways, pdescobar has posted a formula which helps to overlook the Palace cost:
It's here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=909828#post909828)
You can figure how many cities you could still capture/build until the next 100-shield increment kicks in. If you'd expect an increment in that turn, avoid elite attacks until Palace cost rised up, then rush the Palace and try to harvest the next GL.

EMan, you are right about the other wonders (as far as I know).


Originally posted by Grille
forged,
you're sure you rushed the Forbidden Palace and not the Palace?
I thought FP cost is fixed in an unmodded game (maybe that GOTM had some tweak here??).

Anyways, pdescobar has posted a formula which helps to overlook the Palace cost:
It's here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=909828#post909828)
You can figure how many cities you could still capture/build until the next 100-shield increment kicks in. If you'd expect an increment in that turn, avoid elite attacks until Palace cost rised up, then rush the Palace and try to harvest the next GL.


Thanks for the link. As far as the rest goes ... DOH!

I just reread spoiler 3 for GOTM 21 (which is where I posted my recounting of the events). It was the Palace. :wallbash:

It was pointed out to me the culture differences between a Palace and a Forbidden Palace. (The latter is worth more culturally.) After having it for a 1000 years, the culture rating doubles. So I decided in that game to build the forbidden palace early and move the palace later. Well ... I tried moving it with a leader to bad results. (Ultimately, I still won the game though.)

forged

Originally posted by Lopex
Beware the giant Space Hamster
Welcome to CivFanatics Lopex! It was an honor to see your first CivFanatics post here.

And EMan, thanks!

I have played 3 games now where the following has happened.

An opponent has a leader. I make many successful elite attacks without generating a leader. The opponents leader dies or is used, and on the next turn I generate 1 or more leaders.

Is it an absolute fact that you only cannot generate a leader when you already have one yourself? I wonder if leader generation is possible if another leader exists at all, irrespective of the civ that generated it.

Just one post to say that someone has generated a leader when another civ already has one in existence will put this to bed for me. :)

That's quite interesting, mad-bax. I was once had similar thoughts.


Just one post to say that someone has generated a leader when another civ already has one in existence will put this to bed for me.

No problem, look at this thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=990186#post990186)
Both Gen's and my pic show 2 GLs on F3. I possibly even have the save file from that old game which offers the ability to generate a GL while the ai has one at the same time - in case anyone doesn't "trust" those pics.

I just wanted to mention that I recently made a second GL from an Elite* Cavalry unit. I was quite frankly, amazed, since I remember reading this article. Anyway, you can discard that myth, at least in the Vanilla version. It's probably just a highly unlikely statistical probability that you'll keep the same unit alive long enough to get lucky with it twice.

Update: Looks like I'm mistaken!

What version of vanilla Civ are you playing with?

1.29f I believe.

I have a hard time believing this because the whole reason Firaxis added the * distinction to the Elite units in a patch was so that you know which units can produce a leader and which cannot.

Either it's a bug, or more likely, the unit that produced your leader was not an Elite* unit.

The version number will appear at the bottom left hand corner of the Civ Main Menu.

The reason I ask is that earlier versions of Civ (viz. pre-1.29f) MAY have been able to accommodate 2 or more GL's at the same time.

I know it had already produced one because it was already named. It might be a bug, I guess, since I don't claim to have superior knowledge of the game. Are we sure that's why Firaxis put the asterisk there?

P.S. It's 1.29f

Oh, and they weren't at the same time, they were hundreds of years apart.

Originally posted by Rdog
I know it had already produced one because it was already named. It might be a bug, I guess, since I don't claim to have superior knowledge of the game. Are we sure that's why Firaxis put the asterisk there?

Hmm, I'm a bit sceptic, too...

about naming a unit twice:
If you got a GL from a horse (or knight - whatever), renamed it, upgraded it and then got a GL from that (upgraded), renamed cavalry, you'll get again the opportunity to rename the unit in vanilla.

This does not explain the already existing *, though (the * and elite status gets removed when upgrading).

Have you still an autosave (preserve random seed checked)?

Originally posted by Rdog
I know it had already produced one because it was already named.

Yes, this doesn't prove anything. As Grille says, an upgraded Elite* horseman retains its name, but becomes a veteran unit that can produce leaders if promoted.

You know what? That's probably what happened. Sorry to disseminate misinformation like that. He was most likely a knight at one time. In any event, I was very lucky.

The same unit can produce 3 great leaders if you start with a horseman. Once the horseman has produced his great leader simply wait until knights become available upgrade him then keep using him in safe situations until he is promoted to elite and has produced his second great leader. Again wait until cavalry becomes available upgrade him and repeat the knight scenario.

Good advice, thank you. I also don't think armies are worth their cost in the early game (although I'm told they're much stronger in Conquests) but that one Samurai or Cavalry army that enables Heroic Epic is also useful for taking that tough city.

army power underestimated
I'll only create one army until I have the Military Acadamy (and then pump them out as much as possible) but I think that the power of armies has been underestimated here. Even a knight-army (2MP) is powerful enough to be desirable. But you absolutely must have an army by cavalry.

If you are concerned about not being able to upgrade armies, the disband rate is 100 shields (50 shields for accelerated production). AI preferentially attacks anything but armies, so you can stack your elites on the army and place a stack of veterans next to them in a revolving door type arrangment.
Especially good for the knight class and musketeers.

M@

Just wanted to point out (If i missed it, d'oh!) that MGLs can apparently no longer rush great wonders, only SGLs can. So...

Originally posted by AlcTrv
Just wanted to point out (If i missed it, d'oh!) that MGLs can apparently no longer rush great wonders, only SGLs can. So...
Yup, and despite that leaders are more important than ever in Conquests, if you go warmongering. The armies in Conquests are much more powerful than they were before, they are now highly desirable. I plan to update this article with Conquests info not too long from now...

"Yup, and despite that leaders are more important than ever in Conquests, if you go warmongering. The armies in Conquests are much more powerful than they were before, they are now highly desirable."

They certainly are! In PTW I used my first GL to build an army just so I could build heroic epic, and then used every leader after to rush a wonder. The slow healing of armies made them damn near worthless except as seigeweapons to crack open the toughest cities. But in Conquests they're great, with the healing fixed and the added movement and blitz. Sipahi armies are particularly spectacular - four moves, which can be four attacks. Legions of legionary armies in Rise of Rome are also nice, with up to 18 hit points, but you only get two attacks from three units.

There is a rumor that an existing SGL prevents generation of MGLs (would be a bug IMO, because it is no problem the other way around).It never happened to me yet, but I also didn't win many elite battles while having a SGL until now, because in most cases I use them immediately.Can anyone confirm this or the opposite?

It's not a rumor, it's true.

You cannot get a MGL if you already have any type of leader active. There is no other restriction.

I tested this a while ago.

Thank you! Hopefully this gets fixed one day - as it is in the moment it is highly illogical...

Originally posted by alexman
It's not a rumor, it's true.

You cannot get a MGL if you already have any type of leader active. There is no other restriction.

I tested this a while ago.

That would explain it, my elite Sipahi have swallowed two empires without getting an MGL while my SGL waits to build Darwin. I hope they change that.

Yes, it's true... No MGL while having an SGL...
In my currently won game (Dutch, Emperor, Standard Map) once I have 4 GLs in one turn. AFAIR the first one was SGL (hurried Smith) the other 3 were MGL (always created army when appeared):

Where do you get screenshot assistant?

From here... In the utility programs subforum you can find tons of good stuff, including this one.

It's not a rumor, it's true.

You cannot get a MGL if you already have any type of leader active. There is no other restriction.

I tested this a while ago.

There is an exception for SGL in C3C... You can have 2 SGL at the same time.
I played a game and I had one SGL and i wanted to wait for the next wonder to rush so i kept it in city and when i researched next tech I've got myself 2nd SGL.. so i used one to rush a wonder and second to boost science.

The fact that you got two SGL at the same time, doesn't contradict the statement you quoted above. :)

The fact that you got two SGL at the same time, doesn't contradict the statement you quoted above. :)

Never said it did.... just put it as an add-on :crazyeye:

Fair enough, although that add-on was already included in the "There is no other restriction" part.

So having any leader will prevent a MGL, but neither will prevent another SGL? Wierd.

I would like to focus your attention to a possibilty that I didn't seen discussed in this thread:

Can a leader be created when an Army wins a battle ?(An army with only Elite Units inside it)

Or does the army need to be Elite?
If so what are the probabilities of an Army get to Veteran and then to Elite status?

I asked this because today I made a test.

I created a map where I would start with lots of elite units and some armies available.

I also created a city for the Mongols with 1500 Warriors in it
After a few minutes of the suicidal attacks of Warriors against a good number of Modern Armor or Mech Infantry
I would get my Victorius Unit pop-up
Which implies that I was getting the leader (I didn't see it because that would require that the 1500 completed this suicidal round which would take too long and there was no point since I establish that that map had no problem creating leaders

So I went to the next step of the experience.

I created 5 armies of 4 Elite Mech Infantry each.
After some time (I declare war put my troops in position and ended the turn) of slautering the Mongol Warriors I still didn't had one victorius unit pop-up
So after more than 1500 victories of Elite units inside an Army no Leader had been created yet,

So I assume that the Armies that we get on a regular game can't create Great Leaders.

Or am I wrong?

I think you're right....Armies CAN'T create Great Leaders. :)

Must have been a tedious experiment! AFAIK you're right armies can never produce great leaders.

Clearly, one of the masters of the game. I look forward to reading more from you. :goodjob:

Clearly, one of the masters of the game. I look forward to reading more from you. :goodjob:
Indeed, SirPleb's posts are well worth reading, all of them. Check out the Civ3 - Game of the Month (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=49) and Civ3 - Hall of Fame Discussion (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=76) forums, he plays and posts in both!

IMO i prefer to use leaders for armies, unless i could rush great library, hoover dam, or the UN. armies aren't just powerful for attacking, but the fact that ai's won't attack them can be extremely useful, especially on sid. but that's just me :) .

I would like to focus your attention to a possibilty that I didn't seen discussed in this thread:

Can a leader be created when an Army wins a battle ?(An army with only Elite Units inside it)

Or does the army need to be Elite?
If so what are the probabilities of an Army get to Veteran and then to Elite status?

I asked this because today I made a test.

I created a map where I would start with lots of elite units and some armies available.

I also created a city for the Mongols with 1500 Warriors in it
After a few minutes of the suicidal attacks of Warriors against a good number of Modern Armor or Mech Infantry
I would get my Victorius Unit pop-up
Which implies that I was getting the leader (I didn't see it because that would require that the 1500 completed this suicidal round which would take too long and there was no point since I establish that that map had no problem creating leaders

So I went to the next step of the experience.

I created 5 armies of 4 Elite Mech Infantry each.
After some time (I declare war put my troops in position and ended the turn) of slautering the Mongol Warriors I still didn't had one victorius unit pop-up
So after more than 1500 victories of Elite units inside an Army no Leader had been created yet,

So I assume that the Armies that we get on a regular game can't create Great Leaders.

Or am I wrong?

I made a somewhat similar test a while ago and I can 100% confirm that armies CANNOT generate leaders. It doesn't help that the army unit itself is elite, which BTW is impossible in the standard game since the army unit itself cannot promote.

thinking of seaborne strategy I was wondering, if it is possible to get a leader, when an elite unit from a ship (marine, berserk) attacks a stack, wins a battle and stays on the ship.

I guess it's impossible, when the ship is fully loaded, but how about the odds if there's a free space for a hero?

Any experiences?

Screenshot of the Day #74: Floating Leader (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=38896)

Wow, did not think this was possible. Thanks a lot.