Captain "Leadership" Bonus

[Dante Silverfire]

First of all, I was just looking over one of my characters who has a captain leadership bonus of +15 and I got to wondering what that actually means if anything. I feel like it was vaguely told to me before what it kind of does but didn't receive much of an answer and have forgotten since then either way.

So can anyone tell me what game mechanics wise this does to help your unit? (Are we allowed to know, or is this another hidden mechanic?)
Like how does it affect my unit in battle, and is it really worth trying to keep up a good captain.

Secondly, I thought I'd include a poll to see what the highest bonuses everyone has from captains at this point are. Merely as an interesting side point to get an idea. If you have a really high number at least comment on your vote to let us know what it is.

[De-Legro]

It improves their performance in combat, by how much though I'm not sure anyone has really crunched the numbers. To do so you would probably also need to track your leadership skill carefully, since it also affects combat performance, but most importantly there are several random parameters which apparently can greatly effect combat, which make quantifying the other effects from observation extremely difficult.

[Tom]

It's not supposed to be top-secret. I basically adds to your own leadership skill. There's a few other effects as well, I think.

[Indirik]

My current best is only a 4. In the past I have had it as high as 13 or 14...

[Lorgan]

My highest was an 8... but that's ages ago. I often change unit types when other types become better to use so I never have captain with an exceptionally high skill. My highest now is a 5 but he started as a 4...

[Dante Silverfire]

It's not supposed to be top-secret. I basically adds to your own leadership skill. There's a few other effects as well, I think.

But what does your own leadership skill do?

The only useful thing I know that leadership skill does is allow Marshals to choose more marshal settings. For some reason though, I think that this bonus may not count for that effect?

[Tom]

But what does your own leadership skill do?

Various things, including combat bonus, but I can't remember the exact details without looking it up.

[Shizzle]

I suppose it minimizes panicked flight and stuff like that. Perhaps morale penalties in certain circumstances as well (civil work, training)

[fodder]

can always just replace it with words instead of numbers. doesn't mean much either way in the giant scheme of thing. i mean... obviously it does something, but the number itself doesn't mean much, unless you know all the formulae, etc

[Shizzle]

can always just replace it with words instead of numbers. doesn't mean much either way in the giant scheme of thing. i mean... obviously it does something, but the number itself doesn't mean much, unless you know all the formulae, etc

Yeah. I wouldn't mind some kind of ranking system or honorific titles. Maybe something could be devised on ranks within the military, for each unit type separately. The RP idea would be that your realm's academy grants your captain a higher title when he levels up?

Or a more basic idea could be implemented, where the captain gets an adjective/perk that changes when he gets a higher level... The +X system is kind of ..abstract and mechanical.

[fodder]

eh. a simple descriptive green/experienced/veteran or some such will do.

[Zakilevo]

I have one at 10 and the other at 11. I once had a 19 -archer- but I changed the unit type. Wish we had an option to transfer our captain over but doubt that will happen.

[Shizzle]

I have one at 10 and the other at 11. I once had a 19 -archer- but I changed the unit type. Wish we had an option to transfer our captain over but doubt that will happen.

How good would an archer captain be on a horse?

[Tom]

I have one at 10 and the other at 11. I once had a 19 -archer- but I changed the unit type. Wish we had an option to transfer our captain over but doubt that will happen.

It absolutely will never happen. The captain was introduced as an incentive to keep your unit around even if it's badly beaten up, instead of dumping and re-recruiting at the earliest convenient opportunity.

[Dante Silverfire]

How good would an archer captain be on a horse?

Well assuming he was a very good archer, you'd have the best horse archers this side of Mongolia...