There is definitely something wrong with the Leader Loss rules in For
the People as evidenced by the plethora of optional Leader Loss rules
submitted by players trying to fix it. I haven't seen any of them yet
that actually work. They all try to address the problem. 

Unfortunately, they only treat the symptoms, not cure the disease. So,
here is the real problem:

Oddly enough, the problem is not with the leader loss rules themselves.  
The problem is in the combat system. Hannibal and We the People give you
combat cards for each SP, plus your leaders and other mods. The more
cards you have, the easier it is to win. For the People dropped the SP's
out of the equation. (mostly) They only give you leader, fort & cav mods
etc. to compare. The SP's are only taken into account when there is a
major force discrepancy: 3:1 or worse. Because the Rebel leaders are so
much better, they always blow away the Union in battle. The SP strength
advantage of the Union almost never comes into play.

So what they did to fix this problem is to write the leader loss rules
to penalize the good Confederate leaders. The South will always beat the
North with their better leaders, but if they put enough of their leaders
together to do this, they will almost certainly lose one of them in
battle. This forces the South to disperse their good leaders around the
map in an ahistorical manner and thus make most of the battles more
uncertain. The South is given the dilemma of win the battle or save your
good leaders to juggle around. This has nothing to do with history! So,
here is the real fix:

New Combat Procedure

Both players calculate totals to determine damage done to the enemy.  
Add up your DRM's as normal except:


- do not use Force Ratio Mods
- instead add in your total SP's
- defender adds a +2 for defending  (attackers should have a harder time)
- add 1 die roll result to your total
- the -2 cav intel penalty should come off the total DRM's not your
generals rating (My personal peeve. Why should no cav hurt you if you
are a good leader but have no effect if you are bad?)

Now take your grand total and consult the following table to determine
how many casualties (SP losses) you inflicted on your enemy.

Cas     Total
0       1-5
1       6-12
2       13-16
3       17-20
4       21-23
5       24-26
6       27+


The player that caused the most casualties wins the battle. The Defender
wins in a tie.

Now, make the leader loss rules 'normal'. You can use the VG Civil War
tables or some other simple system you like. I've been using a variation
from an inter net rule:

After each battle, roll 1 die for each leader involved.

1-5  no effect
6   roll again for that leader

Second roll results.

- Less than or equal to battle rating the leader is killed.
- Equal to battle rating + 1 the leader is wounded. Put him on the
reinforcement track to enter next turn.

- Any other result has no effect.

Treat commanding generals & generals w/ battle ratings of 0 as if they
had a battle rating of 1. This makes them harder to kill.