Yeah, showing what actions do who leads to not being able to feint to other member of the council, to not be able to do secret actions, and to not being able to do intrigues properly.

Bad politics are reflected when you lose ground. This is a war, not a country. If you do it wrong, you lose the war. If the council lose the war, they are fired. That simple.

Also, we are assuming that all actions will be done by the game UI. Probably there will be a "consensus" actions, which are done by the UI, and the rest are done outside of it, probably even outside of the game. If we look at games with mechanics like this, like eRepublic, there were actions, which were not visible because the sake of transparency, but because "declaring a war" or "printing money" were visible because had a direct effect on the world, while swift attacks, secret operations and all the intrigue were done on IRC and other conversations.

This whole fucking thread is the reason there shouldn't be a council. This is a game about 4 factions fighting, made by the company that made Ice Age games, stop talking about adding politics we don't need it. Some times I doubt wether people want this game to be good.

The current plan by the developers is not that the council gives 'orders' as such, but that they have the ability to set major objectives for the faction. Nothing is finalised yet, but the thinking is that the lower steps of leadership; faction leaders (ie, Space Wolf, Dark Angel) and squad leaders (ie, the 6 people in a group) will also have the ability to set objectives, but different ones at a lower level.

So anyone can ignore the objectives being set, and do your own thing. No problem. The council (and other leaders, lets not forget) have no way to force people to unify into achieving the greater goals. Which is the right way to do it.

However, achieving them - particularly the 'big' council ones - will have a socking great in-game reward to the entire race. So there'll be a reason to support the council (or whoever is co-ordinating the war efforts).

Actually there was race objectives per continent, said in the twitch ama, compleating the objectives will gave that race a bonus or something.

Its not necessarily the fault of the council if the war is lost. Especially because population balancing is very unlikely - so anything tied to winning the overall campaign by territory held may always be impossible for the Eldar. However, they may still achieve all of the high level objectives set by the council - which really should be what the council are being "judged" on; did we achieve what they set out to achieve, and was what they set out to achieve ambitious enough?

Ultimately, leaders alone don't determine the success of a PvP faction (although, granted, they are often a huge influence), and I'm always slightly cautious of the view that says leaders who fail at any point should be removed.

I've led PvP war groups before, and worked with those who led the entire race. Things go wrong. Sh*t happens when you're out on the battlefield - the other side often has good leaders and there are times when you get outplayed. You can pursue a strategy which makes perfect sense at the time, and which with hindsight turns out to be a disaster, once you know what the enemy were doing (which, of course, you generally don't at the time).

Replacing your leaders is only worthwhile if you have a major problem with a specific leader (ie, sodded off to Argentina for three weeks, told no-one), or if you have a really good leader waiting in the wings that wants to get access to whatever UI tools the council have that would make their job easier. We shouldn't be looking to punish leaders for not winning every campaign, all the time - I don't think that's a realistic expectation of how the game will go, or of how much personal influence they will have in a world being contested by 3 other factions.

Okay, that's slightly more detail than I was aware of - but the point still stands. The council set the big objectives, and while they might have some additional extras that help co-ordinate efforts to achieve them, they're not explicitly ordering the race around. Although its also very likely that council member = major war leader of the race, because that makes intuitive sense.

Obviously my point isn't getting through...
We don't need a 'war council', they offer no benefits, all it will lead to is arguing and putting a lot of people off the game. There are alot of other ways to go about this, but having 3 random people no one actually knows, order everyone to do something, decide whether they can wear terminator armor or use a tank or not, will be the downfall of this game. Just have..... Guild leaders or party leaders extra ui on their maps or whatever to give pings to people in their guild/party. Playing alone? Join someones guild/party, dont want to... DONT HAVE TO, just lone wolf it like a boss. This kinda stuff is so simple yet you all are talking about putting politics in the game. IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR! does anyone know what the means anymore? NO GODDAMN TIME FOR POLITICS, GO KILL SOME HERETICS!

Actually war is as full of politics as it gets and in most pieces of 40k literature there is as much poiltics as there is fighting.
I agree with the fact that direct orders should come from guild/platoon leaders, but having a higher level of leadership decide the overall strategy adds a layer of depth to the game and gives guilds a way to compete.
And there is nothing different at this command layer that forces you to take their orders, if you don't want to follow the councils directives, just ignore them.