Leader

This is you. If you lose this unit, you lose the game. So don't.—Classic ruleset description
The Leader is a special kind of unit called a Gameloss unit. Similar to chess, losing a Gameloss unit means you lose the game. In most rulesets, Leaders do not appear by default, but as a custom settings variant you can set as an option. You can play this interesting variation by including the Leader in the starting set of units. Try /help startunits for more information.
If you kill your opponent's Leader, all his civilization just evaporates without even ruins of the cities, leaving to you only spare territory and infrastructure. Cities originally founded by other living players are returned to their founders. So taking a city where the Leader resides will leave you with this city only, and loss of opportunity to capture the other cities of the nation.
In Classic ruleset (and others), specific features of a Leader include: 
*The Leader has a SuperSpy flag. Any Diplomat or Spy will always lose a diplomatic battle against a Leader. Also, the Leader can't be bribed.
*Being an initial unit, a Leader has no home city. Even if health-loss for homeless units is turned on in the game, this does not affect any unit with the "Gameloss" flag.
*A Leader is evacuated from a sinking transport first; if there are no spare transports on the tile, he teleports to your nearest city (provided that you have one; it's one of the "EvacuateFirst" flag effects, or of "Undisbandable" flag in 2.x versions).
*The Leader is a non-military non-attacking unit who ignores ZOC and imposes no ZOC.
*If in a game with a Leader in the starting units: if a nation is split by civil war, the new splinter nation gets a Leader in its new capital.
To set a Leader (or other Gameloss unit) in a ruleset, put the role-flag "GamelossStartUnit" in the unit definition. This unit will then be assignable as a start-unit under the letter "k".
== Webperimental ruleset ==
Leaders' behaviour is changed in Webperimental ruleset where they are default starting units. Killing enemy's Leader, you get some of his citiesIf he had N\ge6 cities, the expected number is \frac{(N-5)(N-4)}{4(N-3)}, never more than N-5. The distribution is close to one with PDF p(c)\approx\frac{\ln \frac{c}{N-4}+\frac{1}{2(N-4)}-\frac{1}{2c}}{N-3} extended to 0 as p(0)=p(1)+\frac{1}{N-3}. E.g. if he had 20 cities, you have over 25% probability to get no cities and around 25% to get either 1 or 2 with the average number about 3.53., gold (a random part) and knowledge (shreds of the map and 1 to 3 (mostly 1) techs), while other cities are turning barbarian. Also, he can heal lightweight units (including himself) for 25 % health. Also, he can raze his own city.
Since v. 3.0, a Leader, if his civilization knows Map Making, can convert in a coastal city to and from the unit Leader's Yacht; this unit is slower than regular Trireme, but sees two tiles far instead of one, so it can be useful in exploring nearby isles as long as no hostile civs around can pose a treat on seas.
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TODO: describe new stuff from 3.1 rulesets
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