Noob Questions: Leaders and Models

[CaptBeefheart]

This is a great game which I am slowly picking up. I'm in a "beginning" match and am doing fine overall. But it's clear I could be doing better.

My first problem is I have a dire leader shortage. Two of four brigades have no leaders and four of the councils have no leaders. I did manage to put three leaders into the three captured cities, so there's that. I saw somewhere you can fire the secretary and use that person as a leader and a new secretary will pop up. I did that once, but to me that's not a good long-term strategy. Anyway, I've gotten maybe one mercenary leader and two junior leaders by strategem. That's it. Some advice as to how to attract more leaders would be great.

The other issue I have is I've researched some military techs but I was only offered the option to create models a couple of times early on, and then nothing. Thus, I created a new buggy and new guards models with slightly better specs. I haven't been given the option to create more models. I'm obviously missing something here as I'm well into the game and my forces are pretty stagnant in terms of quality.

One more tiny point: When it says the brothel (or other facility you find randomly) will provide X benefit if it's connected to a city, does it have have to be connected by an actual road?

Cheers,
CB

[ramnblam]

Get your interior council manned at the very minimum, with a decent budget and bump up the priority on Human Resources. This should get you some leader cards in a few turns.

So the military council discovers technology and researches it making it available to your model council to use. The model council discovers models that you don't already have at the start of game for example light tanks, think of this as the technology. You can see what type of models have been discovered and are discoverable in the Management tab > Types. Once the model technology has been discovered, you can then direct your council to design a variant of that model to your spec. So you want a light tank with, this big of a gun, this thickness of armour and with this engine. Once that process is complete you can now produce that variant with manpower, ip and metal from the raise formation tab.

All hex perks do not have to be connected by road to your cities, the zone they are located in just gets what bonus they're giving. Only assets that you or the private sector construct like metal mines need to be connected by road and given enough logistic points to produce.

[CaptBeefheart]

Ramnblam: Many thanks. Very helpful. I didn't have a leader for the interior council.

I'll mess with the model system this evening.

Cheers,
CB

[ramnblam]

No worries mate. The game is pretty intimidating at first but once you start to learn the intricacies and how things fit together, well it's 6am and your eyes are bleeding.

[Raagun]

Check out DasTactics guides on youtube.
After watching them I can play this game quite competent. You can start just by watching rule of thumb parts first to get grip.
Also check manual: I know it is huge, but after watching linked guides you can just search topics under question while you play.

[zgrssd]

Leaders:
The Primary producer of Leader Stratagems is the Interior Council, area "Human Resources".
However the Supreme Command council can generate a subset (Juniors and Mercs only, however). As it can with all other Stratagem generating councils.

Uncofirmed reports say, the Secretatry relations is also playing a role.

Models:
Call up your Model Design Council guy via Reports -> Cabinet. It is possible you (almost) defunded him by accident, for course. Make sure you get the status from Reports -> Empire Overview.

[LordAldrich]

Ironically I was just giving this advice in another thread: I really think the Interior and Model Design councils are the two most important councils for the early game, they're usually my first picks.

Interior gets you lots of leaders including ones that aren't trash, so that you can staff your other councils. When you set their budget, crank "Human Resources" up to max and zero out the others. You don't need tax/tariff/economic cards, you need the "Recruit Military" and "Recruit Senior" cards. You can adjust it again later.

Model Council gets you light tanks and artillery, which utterly stomp minor regime troops. Howitzers are base level tech, so you do NOT need the Military Research council. I set their budget to 100% "model design" and 0% "model discovery", because all the points from design automatically overflow into discovery if you're not designing anything. Then just set them to "no design" until you invent Light Tanks or Artillery, then quickly design a model for those types.

[CaptBeefheart]

Thanks again to all. I've dabbled in the manual and read relevant sections as I've stumbled on things. However, a bit of strategic advice here and there helps a lot for beginners.

The forum over at War In the Pacific: Admiral's Edition is very friendly to beginners (I have tried to help on occasion) and I figured it would be the same over here. I wasn't wrong.

Cheers,
CB

[ramnblam]

ORIGINAL: LordAldrich

Ironically I was just giving this advice in another thread: I really think the Interior and Model Design councils are the two most important councils for the early game, they're usually my first picks.

Interior gets you lots of leaders including ones that aren't trash, so that you can staff your other councils. When you set their budget, crank "Human Resources" up to max and zero out the others. You don't need tax/tariff/economic cards, you need the "Recruit Military" and "Recruit Senior" cards. You can adjust it again later.

Model Council gets you light tanks and artillery, which utterly stomp minor regime troops. Howitzers are base level tech, so you do NOT need the Military Research council. I set their budget to 100% "model design" and 0% "model discovery", because all the points from design automatically overflow into discovery if you're not designing anything. Then just set them to "no design" until you invent Light Tanks or Artillery, then quickly design a model for those types.

This is esspecially good advice, when playing on harder difficulties or epic speed. I play epic speed and the orthodox council choices people usually go will mean you wait forever to get upgraded units, getting armoured upgraded buggies and improved infantry is so important.