mysterious leaders

[francfort]

In wargames information incompleteness is cool. It's realistic, and favors strategic thinking over optimisation, by adding uncertainty to computations (one could argue it complexifies them, but i think the point still stands); last but not least, it's fun (but that is subjective).

Shadow Empire does it right (albeit spies are to my opinion overpowered to the point of being broken) with warfare, but not with people. I think you shouldn't know everything about your leaders at first sight.

Here is what i suggest:
-some info is known: age, seniority, profile tendencies (or could there be some hidden ones?), features (again, secret cult or affiliation?..).
-the rest is approximated and refined with time and effort (HR bps and XP; XP only for stats), with more or less difficulty (e.g. relation is really easy to evaluate, loyalty isn't; egoism and ambition make leaders over or under-evaluate their ability).
-everything is expressed in a non-numerical way (e.g. 'at least good', 'between poor and average'; color code indicates veracity probability)
-when playing a recruitment stratagem, the leader's quality and assessment level are function of some aspects of the related organisation (e.g. civilisation level for Civilian; average experience for Military).
-cost of tech/stratagems/everything actually, is a bit randomised to discourage assessing a leader from his output.

Vic, will you marry me?