Each country may have their own set of historical leaders. These leaders are divided into five categories:

The Leader file

Each country have their own leader file. The default file can be found in .\db\leaders\leaders.xxx, where "xxx" is the country tag. It is important that the file is stored under that exact name. If saving from e.g. Notepad you might get the file saved as monarchs.xxx.txt - this will not work! To avoid this use quotation marks when entering the file name ("monarchs.xxx").

Each file can have many leaders, each leader defined in a special way. An example:

historicalleader = {
	category = monarch
	id = { type = 6 id = 09531 }
	name = "Gustav II Adolf"
	startdate = {
		          year=1611
	              }
	deathdate = {
 		          year=1632
		          month = november
		          day = 5
	              }
	rank = 0
	movement = 6
	fire = 6
	shock = 5
	siege = 1
	remark = "King"
  }

This is the leader definition of a "monarch" leader, the great Gustav II Adolf of Sweden.

Alternate leader files

It is possible to specify other leader files to use by a country. See Scenario Editing - the Country file.

Compulsory commands

Every leader definition must have these commands:

category	These are the categories mentioned above. Valid entries are: monarch, general, admiral, conquistador and explorer.
id = type	All leaders have type = 6
id = id	The leader id must be unique! Some nations have listed free id tags at the bottom of the leader file. Valid ids are up to 20000. Note that ids below 15000 are reserved for official usage by Paradox.
name	The name of the leader appearing ingame.
startdate	The date the leader appears in action. This can be specified with the year, the year and month or a full date.
deathdate	The date the leader leave battle command. This could be because he is killed, or just have withdrawn to his estate to grow roses
rank	The military rank. Discussed below.
movement	The last four commands give the abilities of the leader, and is what separates a great general from mediocracy or even crappyness :) These are also discussed below.
fire
shock
siege

Military rank

The rank of a leader is set with the "rank" statement. Highest rank always take command in battle or in sieges. In these cases the military abilities of the highest ranking officer are used to calculate the battle/siege. The only exception for this is that in a siege the highest siege value is used, even if this belongs to a lower ranking officer.

The ranks are shown in the game like this:

Monarchs should allways have rank = 0. All generic leaders have rank Colonel (land) or Commodore (naval).

Military abilities

The military abilities movement, fire and shock are ranged from 0 (no ability) to 6 (historic). Most average competent leaders have ranges 2-3 and maybe a 4. Some historic really amazing military leaders range in the 5-6 area, like Gustav II Adolf of Sweden (above) at 6/6/5, Friderich II of Brandenburg/Prussia at 6/6/6 and of course Napoleon at 6/6/6. Siege are usually graded at 0, but some leaders have 1 or 2. The true siege experts come at 3 and 4. There are only three leaders with a siegevalue of 4: Jean Parisot de la Valette, grandmaster of the Knights of St. John, Bragadin from Venezia and Vauban from France.

Optional commands