Diplomatic Missions

A mission is one assignment for one diplomat, aimed at a country, a region, a faction or a flashpoint. Missions are grouped by the diplomat's three branches: Diplomacy (Ambassador), Espionage (Spymaster) and Agitation (Agitator). Some are open to any diplomat; many are unlocked by talents.

Sending a diplomat

An action bar along the bottom of the map has three buttons, Diplomacy, Espionage and Agitation. Choosing one shows that branch's missions as cards; missions no one can take stay visible but dimmed, with the reason in their tooltip. Choosing a mission turns the map into a target picker, switching to the map mode that fits the target (see Map Modes):

• Country missions use the political map, colouring every country by whether the mission can go there.
• Faction missions pick a country, then one of its factions from a row of cards showing influence, agitation, government backing and the foreign backing you know about.
• Region missions use the regions map; eligible regions are green, blocked ones hatched.
• Crisis missions use the flashpoints map.

The preview then shows the objective, expected interval, milestones, costs and the eligible diplomats, and only Start commits. The same panel opens from a country's Diplomacy tab, a region's view, a faction's detail and a dispute on the crisis screen.

How a mission runs

Each cycle ends with one result drawn from the mission's events: progress, a stall, a setback, an opportunity, a complication or discovery. Finite operations work toward 100 progress, usually gaining 22 for ordinary progress and 35 for an opportunity, and losing 8 on a setback, so a typical operation needs five to seven productive cycles. Two milestones along the way demand a decision. Maintenance missions, such as infiltration, faction support and regional agitation, have no end and keep paying out each cycle.

After a productive cycle there is a 20% chance of a signature incident, one of the mission's own pair of dilemmas, weighted by the target's real circumstances (harvest and exam seasons, corrupt or sectarian factions, foreign backers, the host's counterintelligence). Each one holds the mission until answered and offers a genuine trade-off in political capital, prestige, time, exposure, the diplomat's stamina, or a faction's influence and agitation. A wildcat strike can be backed for support and unrest, or settled for calm; a junior officers' plot can be reported, or kept as a private dossier.

Domestic campaigns wear diplomats out: Agitator maintenance work at home can exhaust its diplomat for 45 days and Ambassador domestic work for 60, more often at a faster tempo, and 50% more often for a Firebrand. Missions say whether they may be cancelled; target loss, persona non grata or an empty arms stockpile end them with a stated reason.

Families and directions

Most Agitation work is offered as a family: one card for a goal, whose method is decided in the field. The diplomat spends a month scouting, then reports up to three suitable directions, weighted by the target (an urban region favours strike committees, a devastated one relief committees, an agitated faction arms):

A running direction can be sent back with Look for another approach, which is how support for a faction escalates, from propaganda to arms once it takes up weapons.

Region missions

Twelve missions target a region. Abroad, its host is the country holding most of its population; work in your own regions is never discovered. A country runs at most one Agitator mission in any one region.

• Regional campaigns organize a foreign region for your ruling ideology, where a party of that ideology exists. Each productive result organizes 12% of the region's provinces and adds party attraction, up to 20 points. At 30% you choose a legal front or underground cells; at 75% you spend the network to found a regional party branch, call a general strike, or hand the network over to later separatist work.
• Party Organizing does the same at home, and Counter-Agitation dismantles a rival ideology's network in your own regions.
• Autonomy Campaign presses a foreign host to grant a region self-government; refusing brings two years of higher Unrest.
• Cultivate Separatists raises the agitation of separatist movements, which can turn into an insurgency.
• Broadcasting Station beams your ideology into a region within 900 km of territory you or your bloc hold, more weakly (up to 12 points) but with no one posted, no embassy needed and no risk of discovery.
• Reconstruction Aid pays 2% of a war-damaged region's annual GDP per delivery and repairs 3 points of Devastation, warming the host by up to 25 opinion.
• Partisan Network organizes partisans in an enemy's region in wartime, cutting supply there by a quarter and later by 40%.

Domestic political work

• Party Machine turns 6 political capital per productive cycle into permanent influence for your ruling party, tapering off as it nears 60%.
• Cross-Party Accord wins over an opposition party; completion grants 40 political capital.
• Mediation, Ceasefire Brokerage (a 90-day stand-down that blocks coups and uprisings), Cultural Bridge, Military Liaison with the armed forces and Backchannel Contacts with opposition or outlawed factions work on the Factions of your own country.
• Election Organization adds capped campaign support for a party in an approaching election (see Elections).

Missions on flashpoints

Diplomats can also be sent to a live dispute: Good Offices and Shuttle Diplomacy to cool it, Canvass the Powers and a Security Council Delegation to win support, Manufacture Incident and Undermine Talks to heat it, and an International Campaign to sway the great powers. See Stand-offs and Flashpoints.

Other missions

The Ambassador's eight Goodwill Missions undertakings, the short Deliver Insult mission (about two weeks, recording a fifteen-point grievance), and the Spymaster's infiltration and operations in Espionage complete the catalog. Faction funding, propaganda, arms and advisors abroad are covered in Foreign Backing and Military Advisors.