Diplomacy is not a straightforward, easy to master skill. It has many levels on which you can try to influence world events in your favor. Diplomacy is a quiver full of a variety of arrows; drawing the right one at the right time allows you to build stable relations or force smaller and weaker partners to follow your will regarding third parties.
An Emissary is your extended set of ears and eyes at foreign courts. If you want to keep on top of the constantly changing political situation, you need to know who is allied to whom or who is currently plotting against you or your enemies and friends.
The Emissary can express your highest esteem for one ruler or spread rumors and besmirch another. Every now and then, a few dropped words of praise about his own people can show you in the best light. And sometimes the right word in the right ear can do much more to further your political and military plans than open war or bribes.
However, even the most loyal servant can forget his own place if he is too far from your direct control. If you see his affection for his place of residence is outweighing his loyalty to you, recall him home before he decides to accept a new master!
Now we’ll let Pavel explain the mechanic from the developer’s perspective:
Emissaries were one of the first mechanics we wanted to implement in the Age of Alexander DLC. It offered a smooth and logical way to enhance not only the existing diplomacy system but other features as well. It is an extension standing above the regular diplomacy options available to all factions in the Diplomacy window. It requires a different approach to diplomacy, less straightforward and more “personal”. And as an intentional side effect it makes the Influence resource much more important. The whole mechanic was discussed at length. It is quite an important and complex new feature, and half-baked it could create exploits. Basically, there is a new unit type that can help you shape relations of other factions toward each other – the Emissary. An Emissary is an “extension” of a Hero. Unlike Heroes they do not arise from battles, but can be appointed using a State Decision when particular conditions are met, such as the number of your cities compared to a number of Emissaries in your service, number of live factions in the game, etc. Every additional Emissary will cost more than the previous one. Heroes can freely travel through friendly countries; they are not considered an enemy by other factions as long as the countries are not in open war. They can take up quests (in the vanilla campaign) and visit foreign capital cities, and by doing so they gain experience. Once they reach 100 experience points, they can be promoted to Generals in their capitals. So far this is just a description of what Heroes can do in the vanilla mod. Emissaries in addition can be used as diplomats in foreign friendly cities, using three new actions to praise or slander other factions or insinuate their own nation. The effect of such actions is hopefully self-explanatory. When you want to improve relations between two factions, you commend one to another, and the opposite if you want their relations to deteriorate. And of course, you can lobby for yourself. It is important to note that these actions improve relationships one way only. It means that when you praise a faction A to faction B, it changes the attitude of B towards A but it has no impact on what A thinks of B. Usually, A is not even aware that any such activity is taking place (but see later on). The impact of these actions depends on number of factors:All three actions use Influence and a limited amount of Knowledge. This now makes Influence rather an important resource. Even when you are short of these resources, the Emissary could be still quite useful as his simple presence in a foreign city improves the relations between you and this faction (it automatically performs the Insinuate action in small scale, without any costs). On the other hand, every time you use the Emissary it has a minor negative impact on the relations with the faction you’re trying to persuade. Well, who would like to have an active lobbyist at his court, right? The factions who are the target of the “slander” and “praise” actions are usually unaware of this. However, no secrets can be held forever and there is a chance, increasing with the positive attitude the persuaded faction feels toward the target faction, that this covert activity is revealed. This impacts the relations between the Emissary’s owner and the target faction either positively (if “praise” action is used) or negatively (for “slander”). The Emissary can develop an affinity to other factions. Countries in which he has never spent a day are of no importance to him. However, the longer he lives in one country, the greater his affinity for the place of residence, which can have its benefits but also its pitfalls. If you want to insinuate yourself to a faction to which he feels great affinity or you praise this faction at another court, the impact of these actions will be much higher. On the other hand, the impact of slandering of such a faction would be lower. You should watch the growing affinity of your Emissary with extra care for yet another reason: The more attached he becomes, the more he is repelled by the idea of leaving his place of residence to the point when he’ll refuse to relocate and leaves your service.
- Experience of the Emissary (higher experience leads to greater impact).
- Size of the city where the Emissary dwells (the bigger the city, the higher the impact).
- Type of city, i.e. capital, regional capital, or a regular town (regional capitals receive extra impact bonus and capitals even higher).
- Affinity of the Emissary to a particular faction (more below).
- Power of the foreign faction compared to the Emissary's owner.
We hope that you find the Emissaries to be yet another useful tool for your diplomatic efforts. By influencing relations of other factions towards each other, they can shift the odds of political success in your favor so don’t underestimate their power!
Yours,
Kube Games team.