The leadership thing is completely understandable. It would be way to easy for say a mage to get a huge leadership as would it be for a knight to get an enormous one early on. I think random goodies is just fine.

If the bonus types are fixed, it'll be harder to unbalance the game, which is a plus in my book. And since gold isn't a hard limit on the number of troops you can have, leadership is clearly preferable. If you had to pay upkeep for your troops, then that choice might've been a more interesting one.

Well, that link gives me an "Error 404" page (and in Russian!).