@Slayer Anderson I have a small question about advisors and recruiting them from our SL pool.
Would the advisor we chose for a position influence choices available? In a similar way to how our Learning advisor gave research trees?
For example would Euphy as a Stewardship advisor offer more/better hearts and minds projects due to her experience with such work? And as a Diplomacy advisor shift our options more towards peaceful relations and trying to build bridges?
Or Kaguya as a Diplomatic advisor give us more/better options with Japan and China due to her contacts? And as a Stewardship more contracts that deal with Knightmare development or research due to her mission to Britannia being about that?
Or Milly as a Stewardship advisor bringing in options for building Knightmare production/development facilities to our lands and more cooperation from the Ashfords?
This is mostly because people seem to be really focused on their stats (which except for Milly are on the high side) when discussing recruiting them as advisors.
Are Stats The Only Thing That Matters? - I think this is a fairly accurate translation of the above paragraph.
To a certain extent,
yes, stats are really important. Beyond the mechanical advantage that the bigger number gives you, it's supposed to be representative of a given individual's abilities in the selected field.
On the other hand,
yes, there is a flavor aspect to any given advisor. While a lot of people like to use Jeagar as an example here, I'm actually going to use Jeanne instead, to give the other side of the story.
Jeanne
isn't very special when it comes down to the details. Yes, she's a good pilot. Yes, she's had officer training and understands the nuts and bolts of how an army functions. Outside of her particular personal skill in the pilot's seat, she's not particularly 'special.' That isn't to say that she's not good at her job, she's
very competent, she just doesn't offer much in the way of unique advantages, though developing her has fixed some of those problems. In particular, using her to grab both Naval and Aerial training at the same time (when I would have dropped one of them the next turn if the other had been taken), has given her a certain amount of skill to develop army, naval, and air force options at the same time. That's something which would have been rather difficult without that trait. Jeanne's primary area of competence was the army and she's always going to be just a little better at that area.
However, because you've developed her the way you have and because of the way the CKII system is structured, that's going to get lost in the shuffle a little bit. Her numerical bonus is going to apply on any action you have her oversee, so it will appear that she's uniformally good at all military options when, in-character, she substitutes hard work for raw talent in naval and aerial doctrine.
So how do I compensate for this aspect of the game as the QM?
Well, Jeanne's land-based warfare options are always going to be just a
little bit better than her naval options or aerial ones. The fact that you've got an admiral now helps a lot, though, it makes your naval options just about on par with your army ones. Air force still suffers, though... unless and until a crit happens and you suddenly have enough planes to formally install Gino as the head of an organized branch of your armed forces.
So, to summarize my answer to the original question now that I've explained how things work...
Kaguya as a Diplomacy Advisor: Her actions will always be a little better in the far east. This isn't because she's better at diplomacy in Japan/China, it's because she knows how to pick her battles. People will listen to her more than in Britannia. That said, she's still very high up the chain and nobles will talk to her out of necessity.
Kaguya as a Stewardship Advisor: She'll be better at making money than building stuff. Japan is fully developed and while they're good at maintaining what they've got, Kaguya's more involved on the financial side of things. She won't be incompetent or anything at infrastructure, but...
Euphie as a Diplomacy Advisor: Euphie won't actually be all that much
better at talking to the nobles of Britannia than Kaguya would be. Sure, they'll more readily pay attention to what she says, but that doesn't mean they'll actually listen to her or go along with her ideal. She's an odd duck in the empire. Euphie's 'specialty' will be de-escalation, actions that lead towards peace... or at least not-war. She won't be
bad at negotiating military alliances,
especially since you're fighting unabashed pirates, it just won't be what she likes to do. She might be able to talk some of them into being less horrible, you never know. If there's anyone Euphie can get away with smashing the hammer of human kindness into, it'll be the piratical rogue states of Australia. Way fewer political repercussions there.
Euphie as a Stewardship Advisor: Evidently, Euphie's good at doing people-projects. Hospitals, roads, that type of thing. Civilian infrastructure options will be a bit better. Euphie will still know how to build a military base, she is Cornelia's sister after all, it just won't be her focus. She won't refuse to organize building anything you tell her needs to be built either, even if it's basically a giant defensive murder-box. Again, the fact that you're fighting pirates helps here.
Milly as a Diplomacy Advisor: Hey, you want someone who the nobility will actually listen to? That's Milly. She'll have more Britannian-based diplomacy actions, on average. It's her zone of competence. Give her a bit of time and she'll study up on foreign cultures enough to be able to hold her own.
Milly as a Stewardship Advisor: War. Milly will receive better options to build war material and stuff. She's not necessarily happy that what she's good at will be used to kill droves of people, but... it's what she's good at. She's got connections with the military too, from being one of the main KMF producers, so a lot of her financial actions will be military-themed too.
Overall, yes there will be some affect based on which advisor you slot for which spot, but it won't be crippling. On the other hand, it will really just be a slight bonus to a specific area of competence. Theoretically, if you want to
specialize in a given area, it might be a good idea to pursue someone specifically for a given slot.
.
