Going back to the XCom games --
I seem to recall some characters promoting inordinately quickly.
It made me feel happy, and gave me a sense that it was keeping the troops a bit calmer as well (to have an admiral somewhere in the hierarchy).
In combat they seemed particularly stable (fewer panic moments), but if the admiral died then all hell broke loose (which was pretty realistic)
I also worked out that quotas for promotions were somehow linked to the overall number of troops, yet also to the relative ranks of personnel in each base.
Meaning that when my combat guys hit mid-level ranks I'd shuffle them out to other bases to become pen-pushers (they still had the benefit of training rooms) and they'd still slowly climb the higher level rungs, and my newbies would fill the vacated combat ranks and benefit from protective cover in combat from the experts - pretty much the way it would work in real life. The newbies then climbed the rungs rapidly because of increasing combat experience.
I enjoyed this aspect of micromanagement, and the sense of achievement I got from winding up with two admirals was... pretty nice
It also incentivized me to go beyond two bases (why not?) -- and by the endgame I had hit something like 5 or 6 active squads.
