Get that leadership (magazines!)

Get that leadership (Magazines!)

Leadership is one of the most important aspects of your commanders, and easily the most expensive (yes upgrading skills is expensive too, but it's a fixed cost - you will always be able to add leadership to your commanders unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars and are very economical with your leadership).  Leadership is accumulated slowly over time through the use of magazines.  It takes thousands of magazines to reach the maximum leadership, and you aren't going to get there just by using magazines on your main commander.

How Magazines Work

Each magazine has a chance to give you 2 leadership (based on the current percentage on the commander to which you are adding the leadership), or you may use 10 at a time and receive a random (even) amount of leadership plus 2 bonus leadership.  You may also choose to use 100 magazines at once, which is the same as using 10 magazines 10 times (so a random amount + 20).

Your leadership add percentage is based on the total leadership of your commander and caps out at 40% on normal days or 60% during Add Leadership Events.  For optimal results, on normal days, do not exceed 800 leadership (better yet stay at 60% leadership chance) and only add leadership beyond that during Add Leadership events.  The effectiveness of maxing your commander leadership to the point where you reach the minimum 60% chance during Add Leadership events is debated as there is inevitably some wasted leadership. Some people add until the max of 60%, some stop at 75% - usually these folks are people who spend money and/or frequently Absorb Leadership from other commanders into their main commander.  

Commanders that are used for Absorbing Leadership (we'll call them Food Commanders) should be absorbed when they reach your chosen optimal amount whether that is the 3800ish Leadership of the beginning of the 60% range during Add Leadership Event or the 2800-3000ish which is the 70-80% range during Add Leadership Events.  Note: You do not need to absorb a commander right away.  There are several reasons to wait to absorb a commander (explained below).

How Leadership Absorption Works

From the Commander screen, you go to the Upgrade Leadership screen by clicking the Upgrade button next to Leadership.  This brings up the Upgrade Leadership screen, which will have the Leadership Absorb button if the commander is S Class.

Upgrade Leadership Screen

When a commander reaches S class, that commander may absorb the leadership from other S class commanders in two ways: 

Leadership Absorb Screen

• Leadership Absorb: Absorb the commander's leadership and reset the commander (as if you never had them; you will have to get them back from the warp gate)

  

  Leadership Absorb Confirmation Screen
• Leadership Transfer: Using a Smart Transfer Chip (purchased for 18,000 Honor Medals from the World Event Shop) to transfer an amount of leadership from the commander without losing the commander and all the progress you have made on their skills.  

  

  Leadership Absorb with Smart Transfer Chip

For commanders you can get out of the Warp Gate (natural D, C, B, and A commanders), the Leadership Absorb approach is fine because you can eventually draw them from the Warp Gate and get them back to S class. The Smart Transfer Chip is perfect for trying a new main commander by taking leadership from your current main or secondary commanders.

Smart Transfer Chip

When to Absorb S Commanders into your S Class Main

For natural D and C (and some minor B) commanders you can release from the Warp Gate, you can absorb them if you do not intend to use them and you do not need them for the weekly Faction Tasks Quests.  Since there are few useful C and D commanders, you may absorb these commanders any time, though many people will wait to absorb these commanders until there is a Release 10 event where releasing 10 will gain you a chance at a special commander (like Plasma, Hoodoo, Gilly, etc.) where you can quickly and easily regain them from doing Release 10s in the Warp Gate.  Other events where releasing 350 commanders will get you rare S commander (like Echo, Full Metal, Elf, King, Moon Shadow, Reinhardt, etc.) are also perfect events around which to time absorbing Warp Gate commanders into your Main.  Most of these events are geared at spenders and can take a long time to save commander release tokens (Enter Permits) and Release 10 Tokens (Advanced Enter Permits)

Enter Permit and Advanced Enter Permit

Author Perspectives:

WildOrion's Perspective:

Unless you spend a ton of money in Ark of War (AOW) you are going to remain small for a very long time and your life will mostly consist of trying to stay shielded, keeping your resources, farming, helping your guild out and finding abandoned arks to plunder!

I'm near 6 months into the game and while I feel like I've grown a lot at a little over 1.5 million might I'm cannon fodder to a lot of players.  And I'm on a fairly new server that has a severe size restriction (you can only migrate if you are under 25 million...this is not entirely a bad thing...more on that in another post).  Right now I feel like one of the biggest things you need to do in order to become a player on your server is (a) having the right commanders and gear and (b) having commanders with a lot of leadership.  I'd argue that having the leadership is way more important than the first two but they all work together.  My largest commander at the moment is approximately 3,800 leadership. There are commanders on my server who are 200,000 plus leadership.  It takes a LOT of time, or money, to get this much leadership (and knowing what you are doing).  If you want to be a player on your planet having a commander with a lot of leadership is one of the most important things.

Lucalus' Perspective:

After a little over two years in this game, and many Benjamins wasted, I am still debating the current best practice of putting all leadership into one commander.  I don't participate in GC as often as I should, and it seems the main utility for my commanders is found in the Peak Contest, which seems to require a strong team of three commanders to alleviate the weakness inherent in a single commander.  In the Senior Division, however, it may be best to use the most leadership into a single commander (if only Stella could compete as effectively as other commanders at 129k-ish Leadership).  So I have split my leadership amongst Stella (129k), Rogers (50k), Elf (60k), Hoodoo (30k), and FullMetal (35k) for the purpose of Peak Contest.  If I had spent twice as much as I have, I might have been able to afford the troops to fill a 250k Stella, but as it stands it will be months until I have enough T9 Infantry to fill 129k much less one twice her size (if I want to continue to progress in research and skills).  With so many troops on the line, and resources being so expensive, I choose to play the turtle game - only sniping tiles to PvP - lest I lose the long hours of farming resources and the investments made thus far.  A sad way to play in my opinion, but one not likely to change the way this game goes.  7 Pirates could help by permanently doubling or tripling everyone's hospital capacity...