Baffled By Leader Pools

[AlexandriaWolf]

Could someone please explain to me how the leader pools work? I had the crazy idea that Pool 1 let you select which leaders you would be okay with having appear and Pool 2 would let you select the leaders you absolutely did NOT want to appear. But that's not seeming to be the case and I just have no idea how to make this work. Which is frustrating because I was really excited by this feature!

 

[Kwami]

For each pool, you can choose which leaders that you want to be in that pool. Then, you can assign a pool to each player slot. So, you can select 5 leaders for Pool #1 and then assign that pool to player #1. You can assign 10 leaders to Pool #2, then assign that pool to all of the AI players. If you do that, then the player will get one of the 5 leaders selected in Pool #1 and the AI players will each get one of the 10 leaders selected for Pool #2. You don't have to assign a pool to each slot.

 

[AlexandriaWolf]

Oh! So this isn't for single player games? Oh wait, I misunderstood. Thank you.

 

[AlexandriaWolf]

Annnd I realize I STILL don't understand how this works. Pool 1 is forcing me to choose 8 leaders, the number of leaders total I have for the game I am creating. But there are only 4 leaders I want it to choose from to be the leader I want to play. I also can't figure out how to "assign" the pools. This is for a single player game but I would want to know how to do it for multi player as well.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I've made a video to demonstrate this as it confused me at first.

 

[AlexandriaWolf]

I've made a video to demonstrate this as it confused me at first.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I would have probably never figured that out on my own! LOL Much appreciated!

 

[Linklite]

I don't understand why it's forcing me to choose as many leaders as there are spots. It seems to me that if I wanted in my game on standard (for example):

• Alexander.
• Teddy Roosevelt.
• Suleiman.
• Gilgamesh.
• Dido.
• Cleopatra
• Either Ghandi or John Curtin.

I have to manually put in the ones I definitely want (Alex to Cleo in that list) both in the leader pool and the player section, then have both Gandhi and John in the leader selection pool and have a player set as that pool. I also have to select that I don't want repeated leaders so the random pool won't select, say, Teddy and have two of him instead of Ghandi or John.

That just seems such a flaff to do, and means that I can't have, say, two Alexanders and then have the choice. It would have made so much more sense to have as many (pr, rather, as few) as I want in the pool, in this case two, and just block me from having more than that many random leaders from that pool, if I also selected to have no repeated leaders or civs.

Sometimes it feels like it humours Firaxis every now and again to take a good or requested feature and then put a spin on it to just make it overly complicated and not as good as the original idea as a prank.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Firaxis every now and again to take a good or requested feature and then put a spin on it to just make it overly complicated

I think they went for the simplest to programme, ensuring they would never run out of Leaders for slots.

 

[legalizefreedom]

You don't need to select the pool for every included civ, so there should be no number requirement for the pool itself.

If the map size needs 8 and 5 are selected in the pool, then it should just become unavailable to select for the sixth spot.

That said, I'll probably only ever use it as Pool 1 for me and Pool 2 for all the AI.

 

[Linklite]

I think they went for the simplest to programme, ensuring they would never run out of Leaders for slots.

Maybe, without looking at the code (and having a lot more experience than I do), it would be hard to know for sure, but intuitively it doesn't seem much either way. One checks for the number of players that are going to be on the map and feeds that back to the leader pool selector to insist that you have at least that many, the other checks how many leaders are in the pool and then feeds that back to the player selection screen to insist that you don't have more than that. Plus, on the Switch (your video on the PC shows a much better version) they've made it counterintuitive in the UI - it's on the map selection screen, not the player screen where you select the various civs and leaders.

Without seeing the code, it won't be possible to know if the way they did it was mandated by existing code. Ignore the frustration, though - this is a feature that I've wanted since buying the game and I got very excited when I saw it, so to see it come but in this unwieldy and counterintuitive way is a bit frustrating. Still, I'm happy that we have it.

You don't need to select the pool for every included civ, so there should be no number requirement for the pool itself.

If the map size needs 8 and 5 are selected in the pool, then it should just become unavailable to select for the sixth spot.

That said, I'll probably only ever use it as Pool 1 for me and Pool 2 for all the AI.

That was my thought as well. It's not a case of disabling certain civs, so I'm not sure why it would insist that we do it that way. Either the code is really messy behind the scenes and forcing them to do it this way, or it was rushed and no one had time to really think about what was the best way and they just ran with the first thought that came to mind.

As you said, it's not like I'd want to use it in the way that it precludes very often so I'll live, it's just a bit counterintuitive and forces you to think more about it.