Favorite, Least Favorite, Most Useless Leaders

[Cuthawolf]

What it says on the tin: Who's your favorite Leader? Your least favorite? The one you think is the most Useless?

Favorite: It's a toss-up for me between the Banker and the Co-Ordinator.
Least Favorite: Warlord. I won't mince words: I HATE the Warlord. His troops are an ongoing problem, and his support is SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ LOW I regularly have to restart maps because I can't stabilize.
Most Useless: Low hanging fruit here but it's the Tank Commander. I look at him less like a Leader and more like an extra difficulty level.

[%Floister's Fish Flesh%]

favourite: general and banker
least favourite economist
most useless tank com

[Martydi]

Favourite: Banker. Do I need to explain? Honourable mentions to the general (especially if the perks in the campaign line up just right) and smuggler.

Least favourite: Warlord. ♥♥♥♥ that guy, his support increases so slowly it's almost a joke, his unique initiatives don't help at all, and the national soldiers training faster is absolutely not worth the constant money drain they introduce.

Most useless: Tank commander. He's not terrible. As long as you don't lock the tanks in some stupid corner (like I did on Azure Dam), they have their uses. That being said, I don't think it's worth missing out on bonuses offered by other leaders.

[REKTERS]

Favourite: Development Director, She's just great at stabilizing zones fast. Honourable Mention to the Smuggler, he can be OP in right conditions very easily.

Least favourite: Economists, is there any advantages or disadvantages to playing as him??? Also his ability to get a years money upfront just makes the game boring, might as well use Civil Servants.

Most useless: Tank Commander, I mean this guy feels like a know-it-all military dum dum. Like he doesn't even understand what a gorilla warfare is. In terms of gameplay he is just a big money drain without any major advantages. You must get careful driving and translators in order to not skyrocket hostility. You'd probably want the census (intel 2) or drones quite early on since tanks can't gather intel. Getting a useful national army is harder since the first two units are tanks. In addition to all this civil initiatives are more expensive! Like seriously dude, do you even want to stabilize this region!

[Magni]

Favourite: Development Director. Smuggler is a close second.
Least favourite: Civil Servant actually. I kinda find him bland and like the non-vanilla choices more. He isn't mechanically bad, just kinda boring IMO.
Most useless: Well, let's face it, the Tank Commander is LITERALLY meant to be a joke/challenge choice.

Originally posted by REKTERS:

Least favourite: Economists, is there any advantages or disadvantages to playing as him??? Also his ability to get a years money upfront just makes the game boring, might as well use Civil Servants.

Economist has great flexibility if you have the self-discipline to not spend your annual budget too quickly, in return for taking more forethought and having a bigger risk of screwing yourself over if you make mistakes. Being good with your money reserves means you'll be able to pay off events immediately, and that you can immediately drop a lot of money into counteracting sudden emergencies. Plus he can nuke his inflation level for a minor investment, which can be situationally very good.

It's less of a straight advantage or disadvantage, but more of a different playstyle.

Originally posted by Martydi:

Most useless: Tank commander. He's not terrible. As long as you don't lock the tanks in some stupid corner (like I did on Azure Dam), they have their uses. That being said, I don't think it's worth missing out on bonuses offered by other leaders.

Slight thing I think is never mentioned: If a mountain or forest region has a main road or highway going through it, building the level 1 Main Roads/Highways infrastructure initiative in it will enable tanks to enter or cross through. (Hence on Azure Dam or Mountain Pass you really want to upgrade those roads early if you're playing the TC.)

[Martydi]

Originally posted by Magni:

SLight thing I think is never mentioned: If a mountain or forest region has a main road or highway going through it, building the level 1 Main Roads/Highways infrastructure initiative in it will enable tanks to enter or cross through. (Hence on Azure Dam or Mountain Pass you really want to upgrade those roads early if you're playing the TC.)

Welp. that would have been useful to know. I spent half that game praying there would be no insurgents on the northern road, because I put all three of my tanks in the south-west corner of the map. Fortunately, they never made a second camp.