Shadow Empire Beta is open! Join nowYou are the supreme ruler. Picture yourself as an armchair general behind a desk. Or a man in the shadows on a fancy chair, with a cat on your shoulder.
You rule by giving orders to your Leaders. Some are unseen (like the leader of non-HQ Units) but the important Leaders have a name, a portrait, statistics and a personality. And most importantly a Relation Score.
The key jobs that you’ll give to your Leaders are Director (for Councils), Governor (for Zones) and Commander (for Hqs).
No matter what Job one of your Leaders’ is doing, he/she will do his/her job better if your relation with that Leader is good.
LeadersWhen you start a new game it is a good idea to inspect what the roll of the dice gave you. Take a look at your Leaders and Factions to orient yourself on your human resources.
In the Personnel Overview report we get a quick overview of the Leaders we start out with.
First thing to note here is the Capacity Level (CAP) which gives a quick indicator how able a Leader is (or can become). But after that you should look at their Ratings. They have 3 ratings: Technical Rating (TR), Command Rating (CR) and Interpersonal Rating (IPR).
It is a good idea to determine if they are assigned to Jobs that suit them well. You’ll start with a Zone Governor, a Council Director and a SHQ Commander.
Your Zone Governor ideally has good TR and IPR.
Your Council Director only needs a high TR as he’s not out there with his feet in the mud (and your populace).
Your Commanders should have a good CR, especially your SHQ Commanders.
If I check my list all seems fine. Marlow Davis at SHQ has a CR of 62. Bella Clarke, governor of Epsilon has a TR of 36 and an IPR of 48. Finally, Ian Copernicus, Director of the Supreme Command Council, which takes care of almost everything at the start, has a reasonable TR with 34.
Ideally you’ll assign the most suitable Leader to each job. However, keep in mind that firing Leaders to make place for a new appointee can cause problems. Especially if the Leader you are firing has a high seniority rank.
AdvisorsHowever, I have noted that our Advisor Aries Bulkhead just has a really high IPR.
And if we look closer at him it is because he has an excellent Diplomacy Skill.
You have a limited number of Advisor positions, initially just one. The unique thing that you can do with an Advisor is to attach him/her to another Leader. An attached Advisor will make the same Skill Rolls as the Leader he is attached to, but if the Advisor’s roll is higher it will be used instead of the lower roll of the Leader he is advising.
This makes it almost a no-brainer to assign him to advise our Director of the Supreme Command Council since it is he who’ll be in charge of playing any diplomatic Stratagems.
Ideally you always assign your Advisor to another Leader since otherwise you’ll not be making use of him/her (and still paying them a wage!).
FactionsAnother thing you should really inspect at start of your game is what Factions are active among your Leaders.
In this case we have the Democratic Party and Martial Steel Front active. Each has its own Profile. Your relation with them will improve if you move your Regime Profile in the direction of their preferences.
A good Faction Happiness (>60) will give you an increased chance to receive Faction Stratagems from them. While a bad Faction Happiness (
But, maybe more importantly, the Leaders that are members of a Faction will be influenced a lot by their Factions Happiness in determining their Relation score with you. As a rule of thumb, a happy Faction has happy Faction members.
To get Faction Happiness up there is 3 main things that you can do:
1) Appoint their Leaders to important Jobs, and especially the kind of Jobs that their Profile likes the most. Also, it pays to take special care of their Faction Leader, he has more impact on Faction Happiness than other Leaders.
In the case of the screenshot above it might be a good idea to replace the current SHQ Commander with Acadia Cryomate from the MSF because her Faction likes to get Military jobs. If it was not for the fact that she really has no relevant skills. I am not sure I would prefer a lousy Commander to a happy Faction. But that is the kind of decision you’ll have to make yourself.
2) When they issue Demands to you. Accept them and deliver them as well.
3) When making Decisions, move your Regime Profile towards the Profile of the Faction you want to have increased Happiness.
4) Getting your Word Score up. A noble supreme leader with a high Word Score gives a big boost to the Faction Happiness of all Factions.
Ideally, you’ll try to keep all Factions happy, but if you cannot you should consider choosing which you’ll make happy and which Faction you’ll make unhappy.
Try to get as many members of the Faction that’s happy on key positions as this will guarantee Leaders with higher Relation scores.
However, circumstances might force your hand.
Leader StratagemsYou might end up with a Leader with a low Relation score at some point. Maybe because you are not helping his/her Faction or maybe just because the Leader is too demanding. But if they are skilled or in an important Job you’ll want to increase his Relation score.
First of all, you can do this by calling your Secretary and changing Leader salaries. Higher salaries almost always help getting a Leader’s Relation score up.
But you can also play Leader Stratagems on the Leader. You’ll always get some of these, but if you want to have a lot you should create an Interior Council and invest BP in the Human Resource Task.
For example, our Governor Bella Clarke has a Relation of 70, but we want to get it even higher to get more production bonuses in her Zone.
The Medal of Merit is just one of the many Stratagems that can improve your Relation with a Leader. Don’t be shy in using them.
After giving her the Medal of Merit her Relation Score went up by +25 to a whopping 95. And as you can see this medal gives her a permanent Charisma Stat boost as well.
Leader Bonuses and SkillsA happy Leader will give you direct advantages. Above a Relation Score of 50 you’ll receive bonuses on the work the leader is doing. Below 50 you’ll receive penalties. However, keep in mind that if no Leader is assigned it acts as a relation 0 leader. So it is almost always prudent to assign Leaders.
For Governors the Relation Stat impacts Public Resource production levels with up to +25% or -25%. (but not other items like BP or Private Items)
For Commanders, the Relation Stat impacts the XP (training) and Morale increase levels.
For Directors the Relation Stat impacts the progress of their Tasks.
Above you can see how, especially in your bureaucracy, a good Relation Score gives a big bonus. But you can also see that Skills provide bonuses.
Getting the best out of your Leaders Skill Rolls means keeping their Relation Score high. A Leader with Relation Score 25 will suffer -10 on his Skill Rolls while a Leader with Relation 75 will get +10 on his Skill Rolls and Relation Score 100 will even give +20.
Skills are used all the time.
A Council Director will use Skill Rolls for the different Tasks he is assigned every round.
A Commander will use Skills almost exclusively during Combat. But the combined weight of his Skills can give huge modifiers and it is often the most capable Commander who wins the day.
And a Governor can increase production of specific Assets if he has specific Skills. The Agriculture Skill for example gives a boost to the production of Farm Assets.
Above we see an event where Governor Bella Clarke has to make a Decision. Note that if you chose option B, she will have to make a Skill Roll. It is the occurrence of these kind of events where the presence of a Governor with strong Interpersonal Rating (IPR) really counts.
ElectionsIf your political system is a Parliament or a Senate there will be regular elections. Even if your system is Politburo there will be, but there will not be much voting going on.
Elections determine how many percent of the Parliament/Senate or Politburo each Faction will control.
These elections do not bring Happiness to the Faction as such. However, they’ll decide which Faction will be in the Majority and which Faction will be in the Minority.
It is almost always the Majority Faction(s) which will make Demands on you.
There are Stratagems available to you, that you can produce through the Secret Service Council, that will allow you to tinker with the odds of them winning an election by giving them direct support.
Keep an eye on those elections and remember the Majority Faction will get a boost in the elections if your Popularity has gone up.
Getting rid of LeadersAt some point you will find yourself with Leaders that you’ll never assign to a Job, because their Skills are too low, their attitude is wrong or because they just really don't like you.
Here Stratagems come in. You can use the Interior Councils Human Resource Task to produce Stratagems that can retire Leaders (at a cost).
Also, you can use the Secret Service Council to produce an Assassinate Leader Stratagem.
It can also be effective to just wait until the Leader is so fed up that he leaves (or rebels) out of his own volition.
Leaders improve with experience
Every round Leaders will gain more experience. Especially military positions can perform miracles here. The XP (experience points) gained will be spent by the Leader on one of the Skills he has been using. Over time you’ll see the Skill Levels of your Commanders go up.
Above is an example of a Leader gaining some Skill Levels over a number of Rounds. The higher the Capability Level of the Leader the higher the Skill Level gain you’ll see over time.
Furthermore, Leaders can pick up Leader Feats over time. Through events or through Stratagems. Especially Archaeological Finds can help you find strong artefacts that can be given to your Leaders.
To finish on a negative note. Beware when your Leaders get to old and gray… they’ll have a tendency to lose Stat levels and sooner or later they will be forced to retire from your services.
