Leaders more common in later eras

[chaucer]

Are leaders more common in later eras?
The last game I played it seems that I received leaders more often in from units from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th eras. This has been somewhat confirmed by the fact that in my current game I went to war with swordsmen and horsemen against Japan until they were gone. I am now at war with China and have not received a leader from any of my elite swords or horses? I now have knights and expect that I will get one there. Has anyone else seen this?

 

[BlueMonday]

You might just be on to something there; I've noticed a similar occurance. In all my games before the one I'm playing with now, wars came late and thence so did leaders, so I didn't notice it. But now I'm playing the Persians and went to war as soon as I researched iron working and built a bunch of immortals. Man, those immortals are subverting civ after civ, nearly all of them elite and NO LEADERS. I sure could use a GL right now to help me out with these dern wonders.

 

[BiatchGuy]

I've noticed that too, but I don't know if it's coincidence or design.

 

[saintides]

To bring it back to the top..

I'm curious too.

I just got done wiping out the Amercians and the Babylons, early in the game with the Persians.No leaders (I'm having bad luck with the whole leader stuff lately). I had quite a few elite units too.

I'm going after the dang French now.. hoping for at least one.

 

[alpha wolf 64]

I've wondered this often too.

 

[chaucer]

Well things are getting stranger. I now have cavalry and still no great leader. I posted in the 1.21 bugs list and put in another post to see if anyone was aware of the new patch not giving out leaders? Have any of you received a leader with the new patch?

 

[TedG]

In one game I played with the 1.21f patch I actually got two great leaders. I very rarely get GLs, though.

 

[Sanaz]

I have noticed that I have less great leaders with the new patch. Playing as military civ, with lots of war and elite units fighting, I have been able to get only one a game for three games, in the ancient era - just enough to make an army and win with it, then build Heroic Epic - then no more leaders through the modern era. I'm thinking it's just been bad luck - I usually get 2-5 per game. This has coincided with using the new patch, but three games isn't enough to know. I have gotten the ironworks every game with 1.21, with the choice of two cities to get it in each game, so good luck there (or an undocumented change)...

 

[The Last Conformist]

Personally, I've not noticed any tendency of the sort. Infact, I think I've got rather above 25% of my GLs in the Ancient Era (and kept the odd horseman army into the third millenium AD - it was great killing a Regular Rifleman unit with one!).

 

[Hurricane]

I don´t think Firaxis has changed anything. The chance of getting a leader is so small (1/16) that chance plays a very big role. Sometimes you are lucky and get lots of leaders (my record is about 20 leaders in one game), sometimes very few (last game I only got 2).

A change in the chance of getting a leader will be very hard to test, since v1.21 reseeds the PRNG of earlier versions. Else it would be easy to reload a battle in another version and see if it gives a leader or not.

 

[SirPleb]

It is very very hard to tell what is going on with Great Leaders from small samples. Even playing 10 games wouldn't give enough information to be sure of what is happening.

The problem is that the numbers involved (if everything is indeed working as it is supposed to) give a wide range of "normal" results. For example, if we haven't built the Heroic Epic, then we have:

A 6.25% chance of getting a great leader in the first battle won with an elite unit.
A 6.23% chance of not getting a great leader in 43 consecutive battles won with elite units.

Both of the above results (getting a leader right away or not getting one from 43 successive elite wins) will I think feel like exceptional events. But they aren't all that exceptional - they are likely to happen to any player within a few games.

To make matters worse, we are not dealing with really large numbers of this event, i.e. of getting leaders. It is not the same as battles which happen hundreds or thousands of times in a game. We expect to get a relatively small number of leaders. So each player's experience doesn't consist of a high enough number of leaders to start becoming average overall. It is a bit like flipping a coin once. You don't get 50-50 heads and tails, the number of flips is too small for statistical averages to come into play. The number of leaders we tend to get is too small, compared with the high unlikeliness of them (1/16) to expect a good statistical result in any given game or even in a few games.

I don't think that leaders are less likely in early eras. (A couple of recent examples: In my GOTM6 I got a leader from my second elite win, with an Elephant. Recently in the Game of Democracy a leader appeared from a win with an Immortal.) I think it is probably just chance, that it sometimes looks otherwise because there is a such a wide range of "normal" behavior for getting leaders. If there is anything which makes them more or less likely (aside from Heroic Epic) we'll have to collect an awful lot of data to know that it is so...

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Well, I am luckier than you guys then. Got 5 GLs in my early war to subdue my continent; early as in using Immortals, horse and spears.

And I only formed an Army using my 4th GL. Saved the last for future use once I have no one left to fight on my home continent. Only build the Epic after my wars.

It's all chance I'll say. In one of my SGs, we got 2 in rapid succession (used up the 1st quite fast). Go figure.

 

[JuicyCivNewbie]

I've had 7 GLs before the AD years in an early conquest tiny map deity (of course) game with a Japan horseman rush. All this was done in the ancient age. You may be tricked into thinking they are more common in later eras as you're using more units so the chance of getting a GL is higher.

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by SirPleb
For example, if we haven't built the Heroic Epic, then we have:

A 6.25% chance of getting a great leader in the first battle won with an elite unit.
A 6.23% chance of not getting a great leader in 43 consecutive battles won with elite units.

Both of the above results (getting a leader right away or not getting one from 43 successive elite wins) will I think feel like exceptional events. But they aren't all that exceptional - they are likely to happen to any player within a few games.

Thanks for the analysis! This puts my current GL drought in perspective (i.e. I should stop whining, and just play and fight!).

 

[JoseM]

Originally posted by chaucer
Are leaders more common in later eras?
The last game I played it seems that I received leaders more often in from units from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th eras. This has been somewhat confirmed by the fact that in my current game I went to war with swordsmen and horsemen against Japan until they were gone. I am now at war with China and have not received a leader from any of my elite swords or horses? I now have knights and expect that I will get one there. Has anyone else seen this?

You have to know that in early eras you have LESS units than in later eras when you have more units. So you have more chances to get a leader with more units.

 

[JoseM]

Originally posted by chaucer
Well things are getting stranger. I now have cavalry and still no great leader. I posted in the 1.21 bugs list and put in another post to see if anyone was aware of the new patch not giving out leaders? Have any of you received a leader with the new patch?

isnt a bug.. like i said in my previous post, warly wars take less units so therefore there are less battles and low posibilities of a leader, anyways i got 3 leaders in the first two eras in my game, so there is no bug. It is just that early wars take less units = less battles = low posibilities of getting a leader.

 

[damunzy]

What JoseM said. I have a lot more units in the modern age so I have never even suspected that this was a problem.

I have gotten an Army from a goody hut one time though in 1.21. A conscript Army.

 

[JoseM]

Originally posted by PaleHorse76


I have gotten an Army from a goody hut one time though in 1.21. A conscript Army.

an army from a goody hut? how could that be?

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by JoseM
an army from a goody hut? how could that be?

It's happened and reported before this patch. 1.17 I think. So, nothing new there.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Had depressing experience lately:

I had captured a Russian city, and there was one unit of Mech Inf and some four or five tanks in it when the Russians counterattacked. Despite that only one of the tanks was elite, TWO great leaders were born, but the both died before I could use them as the Russians took the city!