[SUB MOD IDEA] Agents

[Callicles]

Hello all. I thought of an idea recently that may or may not be possible, but wanted to share in case others can make this idea better or help see it come to life.

While a lot of players seem to dislike agents, I think they add a lot of flavor to the game. And the DEI's use of governors/magistrates is excellent. Here are my questions in no particular order.

1. Is it possible to add more agent types instead of just Spy, Governor, and Champion?

2. Is it possible to give agents political party affiliations and / or have them show up on the faction party screen?

3. Is it possible to give agents more than one "stance" like generals? (i.e., when you deploy your spy in enemy territory you can choose between Steal Food, Steal Gold, etc.)

4. Is it possible to recruit agents from the same recruitment pool as generals? This could be a neat feature for roleplay and character development - you assign one of your faction leader's children as a Champion?

If some of what I've asked about above is possible, I've day-dreamed some new or alternate agent types that could be interesting.

New Agent Type Ideas:

• Mercenary Recruiter. You are Rome, but you'd like the option to recruit Galatian Mercenaries. You send your Mercenary Recruiter to Galatia, deploy him and, after a few turns, you can start recruiting the mercenaries in Galatia in your Capital (probably only your Capital). But if your Mercenary Recruiter is killed or is undeployed, you lose the ability to recruit those Mercenaries in your Capital. If we have multiple stances for agents, I think this would be interesting as an alternate stance for the Champion character. If deployed in your own province, decreased recruitment cost for mercenaries in that province.
  
• Merchant. You need copper. You send your merchant to a region that is producing copper, deploy him, and, after a few turns you get copper. Alternatively, the presence of a Merchant deployed in a province might increase the chances of successfully negotiating a trade agreement? If you deploy in your own province, it increases commerce and trade values, and makes it more likely that politicians spawn with economic traits.
  
• Envoy. You are having difficulty getting your neighbor to agree to your diplomatic proposals. You send your Envoy to their Capital, deploy them and slowly, over time, the neighbor's impression of you improves (could be similar to the second Merchant idea, described above). If you deploy in your own province, increase public order / decrease banditry.
  
• Priest/Priestess. Something culture or religion related?
  
• Courtesan. Something intrigue or loyalty related?
  

Just some thoughts. Not sure if any of this is possible, but thought I would offer it up as an idea that maybe someone can run with.

Cheers!

[Jake Armitage]

generally speaking... most of the things you wanna do are doable
but...
you'll need to add those things from scratch, which means spawning new UI interfaces and interact with them through lua scripting (which is not impossible to do but require learning quite many "low-level" stuff)
there is no other way but you can accomplish most of the things you are describing (also, I'm not entirely sure about everything you described, answering you conceptually)
also...
everything you'll enact through a new spawned UI (a button so to assign a specific role to an agent for example) will desync MultiPlayer, meaning that all those things are 100% not MP compatible

[Callicles]

Thanks! Do you think it would be easier to add different agent types or give existing agents additional "stances?"

[Jake Armitage]

you can't actually add more agent types.
but you can build something so that player need to decide what kind of agent type he would like to have.
which would be basically similar to "stances", with the difference that types would be fixed as soon as you pick, while stances would give you the possibility to have multiple choices depending on situation
or you may have both, type + stances
where every type might have its own stances

ui hex + lua permits you to change/improve tons of things
not always, not everything, but much more than we'll probably ever do

[Callicles]

Thanks, as always, for your encouragement. I'll play around and see what I can do.