Matrix Games Forums

• 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!

• 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.

crimes wrote: Sun Jul 09, 2023 7:13 pm My suggestion to avoid the head-splitting late-game trouble of hunting for the attachment-target's portrait in the current interface would be to add a "summon advisor" button in the "call" screen for each leader, that when selected brings up a list of advisors to attach to that leader. Since there are, say, 5 advisors, but 60 leaders at this stage, the search becomes much simpler.

Voker57 wrote: Sat Jul 15, 2023 11:13 am It's nice that advisors now can't run around all the empire in one turn, but a shared timer on attach/detach is too much. One attach and one detach per turn would be perfect.

Voker57 wrote: Sat Jul 15, 2023 11:13 am It's nice that advisors now can't run around all the empire in one turn, but a shared timer on attach/detach is too much. One attach and one detach per turn would be perfect.

solops wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2023 1:01 pm

Voker57 wrote: Sat Jul 15, 2023 11:13 am It's nice that advisors now can't run around all the empire in one turn, but a shared timer on attach/detach is too much. One attach and one detach per turn would be perfect.

I disagree strongly for the reasons listed here
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 8#p5110588

These people have telephones, radios, vehicles, planes, trains, etc. There is no reasons they cannot shuffle dozens of high value individuals around planet wide in more than 24-72 hours. And I can see no important problems from a game-play point of view. Limiting transfers per turn is a major micro-management pain as well as being totally unrealistic.

As I said before: "The new rule turns a one turn reorganization for PP cost into a multi-turn micromanagement marathon. Let's say that for some reason I want to move two advisors around. Perhaps I a got a new advisor or leader or a new artifact that changes stats or someone got killed or whatever. It does not matter why, I just want to do it. After a careful review of my leaders and advisors I decide who goes where. Before, I just paid the PP cost to attach and detach people and transferred folks where they needed to be all at the same time (turn). Now, I have to wait, doing only one transfer action per turn. I not only have to remember who goes where, but I have to remember to actually do it, which is a questionable thing in my life with as much going on as there is in the game and real life. My desk is already cluttered. I don't need to have to keep a pad of paper with personnel transfers written on it. This kind of multi-turn personnel swap is my definition of micromanagement. In real life I am capable of writing more than one transfer memo at a time."