I'll start with a positive note to give credit where due, I really like the idea of advisors as it opens up the range of strategies and it's an idea that isn't really used in any other games.
There are two problems that my suggestion is trying to fix:
- A single advisor can largely replace a major part of many leader's role.
Let's say I have one good charisma leader. I could name him as my foreign affair director and it would not be a bad idea. However, I could instead name him as advisor and put pretty much any random leader as foreign affair councilor and it would be even better with little downsides. The advisor could be constantly attached to the foreign affair director, so he would deal with all the foreign affair business in all but name. However it does add the flexibility to attach him to governors anytime an IPR roll has to be made. Once all the rolls are done I can attach him again to the foreign affairs. The only malus is the 3 PP cost to detach/attach but let's say for meritocracy that will be making a lot of important IPR rolls for governors, this is a powerful strategy.
The same can be done with military advisors and OHQ. One advisor with 100+ to operational command rolls could potentially be assigned to every different OHQ, every turn, so that he would perform all the offensive rolls during the player turn. The only limit to this is the ability to spend PP. Late game democracy may be making about 100ish PP a turn. 100+ to rolls may sound like a very good leader, but it's actually easily achieved by turning a (good) SHQ into an advisor mid game once an even better war leader is found.
- Getting the best out of advisors require a lot of pointless micro management.
I feel that both exemples show that while advisors are a good idea, it can be exploited and can lead to detrimental gameplay behaviour, repeatedly attaching the advisor to leaders gets tedious. Of course it's possible to use self-control to not engage with uninteresting mechanics, however I think some players will do it anyway as long as it's optimal. It's even more problematic in multiplayer as not getting the best out of features may mean playing with a handicap. This can make players feel compelled to engage with mechanics perceived as uninteresting.
This also lessens the importance of leaders that are not advisors. With the OHQ exemple, it's still important to have good leaders to do the rolls during the enemy's turn but with the charisma advisor you only really need one advisor to deal with most IPR rolls!
My suggestion to fix this problem:
- Allow to attach a given advisor no more than once per turn.
When raising a new OHQ I often end up assigning inexperienced leaders to inexperienced squads. In an on going war, the first few turns for these OHQ are very bloody, facing more experienced units and leaders. Having one or two good war advisors to do the rolls until the OHQ leader gets some exp allows to smoothen the gap into a troop exp only difference. These advisors could still be swapped every few turns to advise newly recruited OHQ as they are raised, or used to get better rolls in critical zones (defending a city etc). Therefore advisors would still be important with this suggestion, however one man couldn't perform the OHQ role for an entire army on his own anymore. Similarly it would be easy to ignore occasional unrest events but large scale couldn't be controlled by one super advisor.
