Military Advisors
An Agitator diplomat mission that sends officers to an arming faction abroad. While they stay, the faction trains its brigades faster and more cheaply, and can train one more at a time.
Military advisors are foreign officers sent to train and organize an armed opposition movement abroad. In game terms it is an Agitator diplomat mission aimed at a faction in another country, and the strongest form of Foreign Backing short of going to war yourself.
Why factions train brigades
Political factions keep their own arms and manpower, separate from the country's. When a faction is agitated enough, it trains infantry, armour and artillery, always filling whichever type it has least of. These brigades do not appear on the map while the faction is peaceful: they strengthen its coup attempts, and the faction's detail panel lists them alongside its training queue. If the faction rises up, every trained unit becomes a real brigade of the new rebel state, alongside militia raised from the faction's manpower. Units still in training stay with the faction.
Advisors make this build-up faster and cheaper, which is why a patron sends them to a movement it expects to fight.
Sending advisors
The mission needs:
- a diplomat with the Military Advisors talent, which in the Agitator branch follows the arms support talent;
- a target faction in another country (advisors never go to your own factions);
- a faction that is not a political party, already arming, with at least 50% agitation;
- no non-interference pact with the target country.
Advisors are one of the directions a diplomat can choose when backing a faction (see Diplomatic Missions), typically as support escalates from propaganda and funding to arms once a movement takes up weapons. The mission runs indefinitely, a month at a time, earning the diplomat Agitator experience, until it is recalled or cancelled.
What advisors do
While the advisors stay, the faction's brigade training improves in three ways:
| Effect | Base | Changed by |
|---|---|---|
| Training speed | +50% | A well-connected diplomat raises it by 30%, up to a cap of +100%. |
| Arms and manpower cost | −25% | A disciplined faction raises the saving by 20%; a corrupt one cuts it to 60% of the base. The saving is capped at 40%. |
| Training slots | +1 | The faction can have one more brigade in training at a time. |
Only the strongest advisors mission on a faction counts. Several countries may post advisors to the same movement, but their help does not stack. The help ends the moment the advisors leave; brigades already trained or in training keep what they were given.
The bonus is shown in the faction's detail panel only to the country sending the advisors.
Detection and consequences
Advisors are a foreign interference operation like any other backing mission. At home, the target government sees unnamed foreign backers at work and can answer with faction surveillance, financial audits, network disruption and counter-agent work, which can name the sponsor (see Espionage). A faction that rises up with foreign-trained brigades can turn a local dispute into a civil war, and a patron that armed it may find itself drawn into the resulting crisis.