Matrix Games Forums

It seems to me that relation bonus is much more valuable in many cases than an actual skill to do the job.

If I take, say, Director of Military Research -
* a cap 1 dimwit (of whom there are plenty to choose from) that completely agrees with my regime profile can be kept close to a 100 relation and give consistent 50% relation bonus to the research task.
* a cap 4 genius (quite uncommon) that I can keep at say a stable 75 relation will have a 25% relation bonus - and will take many, many turns of improving before their skill will consistently add more than the 25% difference and starting being better.

Especially early game, it seems enthusiasm is much more valuable than actual skill at the job.

Under 20 Skill points, you can only use 5% of your Stat per skillpoint. That makes a huge difference in what you measure.
To most rolls it is also only a +10 or +20.

Also, you take High Capaity leaders for the Longterm potential, not the short term effect. Any short term effect by high relations or hgh starting skill is secondary with high capacity.

Also, you take High Capaity leaders for the Longterm potential

Early game, I might care more about the immediate benefits (shaving some turns off of research/modelling, more BP per turn etc.), before going for long term potential. So it looks like first estabilishing my regime with happy (but potentially unskilled) leaders, and only then trying to find spot replacement with high cap ones.

Also - happy leaders are immediately effective across the board (skill/tasks). Since leaders improve in the skills they use, broad based leaders (governors, supreme council director) spread their xp thinly and broadly, and take a very long time to get somewhat ok at at least a few skills. So only for very narrowly focused leaders (shq, military/modelling/applied engineering) will high cap character become proficient fast enough to compare to a bad but very happy leader - after a while.

So let's take a look at couple examples from my recent 100 turn game

Clyde is Cap 1. He's been around since turn 1 but on turn 52 he became the governor. Before that he spent his time as advisor and Internal Council Director
He's okay. Like sure he has skills and such so you can't say that he's useless or anything. But let's look at some other people


Rimmy is Cap 4. He has been Governor of my capitol since turn 1 so been around same time but as a governor way longer
He's pretty amazing and is quite easily capable of auto solving most of the zone events that hit his zone


To balance out there's Dorian. He was invited to my regime at turn 66 and was appointed as a governor on that same turn
Quite a bit less turns as a governor yet twice the skill level as Clyde


Then there's Krank. Krank was introduced to my regime on turn 66 and became SHQ leader on turn 67
I guess most people will notice how his technical skill is about the same that their Economic/Military council director's while having absolutely no skill in science nor inventor. That is a Cap 5 for you. Notice the ridiculous amount of XP stored on him since he literally cannot spend enough of it on his skills

That's interesting; I see it.