Leader

Version

This article has been verified for the current PC version (3.10) of the game.

Leaders

**Leaders**

Common leader traits

Commander traits

Official traits

Scientist traits

Paragons

A leader is a named character that leads a significant part of the Empire, as a Commander, Official or Scientist. Leaders can also be appointed to the council in addition to and concurrent with their regular assignments.  Gestalt Consciousness empires use nodes rather than council leaders. The name of a leader can be changed at any time by clicking on it.

Each leader has an ethic, determined by the overall ethics of its species' pops. It can affect pop ethics the following ways:

* If the leader is assigned to the council the empire will gain **+10%** attraction towards the leader's ethic.
* If the leader is governing a sector every planet in it that doesn't have a planet governor will gain **+25%** attraction towards the leader's ethic.
* If the leader is governing a planet it will gain **+50%** attraction towards the leader's ethic.

Leaders tend to get traits related to their current assignment.

Leaders have a Maximum Negative Traits number of 4 at base.

## Leader classes

Leaders are divided into 3 classes that determine their background, possible assignments, council positions, bonuses, experience sources and available traits.

If the  Galactic Paragons DLC is enabled, each class can be further specialized into one of four veteran classes.  Gestalt Consciousness empires cannot use council-focused veteran classes as they use nodes instead.

## Leader pool

New leaders are generally gained by recruiting them from the leader pool, which is replenished every 5 years. The leader pool starts with 3 leaders from each class, and the amount can be increased by various factors such as civics, traditions or ascension perks.
A leader can be recruited from the pool at the following cost of  Unity:

 Recruitment Cost

Leaders cost a monthly upkeep of 2  Unity per level. Leader upkeep is modified by the following:

Leaders can only be of species with  Full Citizenship rights. The chance of getting a leader of a particular species is equal to the proportion of that species in the empire's eligible population.

Once recruited, leaders can be freely and instantly assigned to different posts with no cooldown (for example, moving a governor from one planet to another sector).

Leaders may be dismissed at any time, unless they are the empire ruler. Dismissal is irreversible.

## Leader capacity

Each empire can support a limited number of leaders from each class, starting at 3 per class for most empires. Legendary Paragons and leaders with the  Eager trait at levels 1-3 are not counted towards the capacity.

Exceeding the leader capacity increases the upkeep of all leaders of that class by **10%** and reduces their experience gain by **8%**.

## Lifespan

Each leader has an age in years and has a base guaranteed  lifespan of 80 years, which can be improved by certain species traits, leader traits, and technologies. Leaders appear in the leader pool with ages between 28 - 50 years (27 - 38 years for  Lithoids; 5 - 20 years if  Clone Army origin for biological pop leaders). Hovering over a leader's age will show the leader's guaranteed lifespan and current chance to die each month.
After passing their guaranteed lifespan, leaders have a chance of dying every month. The probability is **0.2%** per year that has passed since their guaranteed lifespan. After 20 years past their guaranteed lifespan, this increases to **2%** per month.

While  Mechanical and  Machine leaders are immortal, they can still die by accident, regardless of their age. Every 10 years, there is a 5% chance that a random  Mechanical and  Machine leader will die.  Machine Intelligence empires can adopt the  Self-Preservation Protocols tradition to reduce the chance of accidents to 2.5%.

Leaders can also be killed the following ways:

* Commanders have a 10% chance to die when a ship of the largest size in the fleet is destroyed and a 2% divided by number of units chance to die each time they lose an army
* Officials can be killed by events if a planet in their sector has the  Mob Rule planet modifier
* Scientists can be killed by bad outcomes of  Archaeology Sites (~**2.9%** % chance, depends on the site)

The following modifiers affect Leader Lifespan:

### Funeral

When the empire ruler or a leader that has been present for at least 2 years and reached at least level 4 dies, there is a chance to have a funeral which gives the empire a modifier for 5 years. The chance increases with the leader's accomplishments and is guaranteed for the empire ruler. Empires have the following funeral options:

## References

1. ↑ Thus with 50 units, it is 2%/50 chance that the general dies, dev comment

**Game concepts**