Dignitaries

[edyzmedieval]

What do dignitaries do actually?

From my understanding, they help out the local population in assimilating your culture, really helpful after you've conquered a province. But what else?

Every time I click on the stand idle button of a dignitary while he's in my province, my income for next turn goes either up, or down. Typically, I should do it once every 2-3 turns, because every turn would eventually lead to a drop in income.

Sooo, what do they actually do? What are the mechanics of a dignitary?

[Hooahguy]

Besides cultural, tax, and PO bonuses? Its another one of those things which still has some grey area around it.

[Bramborough]

Well, they do the same actions as other agents vs enemy armies and settlements (or rather, actions which have the same effect)...but I've usually found that they don't do quite as good a job at most of the more useful ones. Still, if you've got a swarm of agents dogpiling an enemy, dignitaries have their place in the lineup.

Camped in your own territory, they do raise income a bit. Occasionally I too have seen income go down when I deploy them, however, I'm not quite sure why that happens. Have never read this anywhere, but trial-and-error has shown me that you can only deploy one per province; they don't stack. So if you have a high-skill dignitary deployed, and then deploy a low-skill dignitary in the same province, then the game just recognizes the most recent deployment, and will cause income to go down. At least that's how it appears to me. But then, that doesn't account for every case where I've seen a small income drop instead of the expected rise, so there's some other wrinkle I'm missing.

That said, if you want to use dignitaries to increase net income, I think you get much more bang for the buck by embedding them in an army; a mid-to-high-rank dignitary can reduce troop upkeep costs pretty dramatically. Once I caught on to that, that became their primary use for me. Champs for the newer low-XP armies, then I switch over to dignitaries for upkeep reduction once the troops get a few ranks.

[edyzmedieval]

Ah, that's a good idea, cheers Bramborough. Never knew they reduce the upkeep.

The thing is - I deploy 2-3 dignitaries, upgrade them for a bit and then deploy them in different provinces. If I have one in my capital province and two others spread around, I either get a much higher income per turn (as much as 2000 denarii per turn), or either I lose a lot. It's not exactly clear to me why - overtaxing a province might lead to a drop in income if you do it again next turn, but apart from that, still no clue why you get lower income.

[Slaists]

They're also pretty decent at assassinating (and converting enemy agents). Just watch for targets with low authority.

As to keeping dignitaries in armies: upkeep reduction I think is faction specific (if we're talking about Attila here). The universal thing though is that dignitaries tend to significantly reduce army move points when embedded. So, in Attila, I'd use them that way only in armies that are not marching.

In Rome 2, they do reduce army upkeep universally and significantly. Can get the most expensive mercenaries down to regular troop upkeep and even lower.

[Bramborough]

I was talking specifically about R2. OP's use of the term "dignitary" instead of "priest" implied that to me. None of what I said applies to Attila.

I really can't speak first-hand to what an embedded Attila priest does in an army, I've never done that; always had a more pressing need for them elsewhere, in a province needing Public Order, religious influence, or (most likely) both. I've inferred from the ability descriptions that priest boost army integrity. So I guess they might be useful for a brand-new army that's still mustering, since new armies start with low integrity.

[edyzmedieval]

Yeah, I'm referring here exclusively to R2. I haven't had the chance to fire up Attila yet.

So yeah, definitely going to have a need for dignitaries from now on. Too bad they're limited.

[Slaists]

I was talking specifically about R2. OP's use of the term "dignitary" instead of "priest" implied that to me. None of what I said applies to Attila.

I really can't speak first-hand to what an embedded Attila priest does in an army, I've never done that; always had a more pressing need for them elsewhere, in a province needing Public Order, religious influence, or (most likely) both. I've inferred from the ability descriptions that priest boost army integrity. So I guess they might be useful for a brand-new army that's still mustering, since new armies start with low integrity.

Yes, I figured this must have been about R2. Some folks though still refer to Attila priests as dignitaries.

As to priests: it all depends on the priest's "primary trait" (the one on the upper left corner of their skill layout). Some of those are very handy for army management (such as +xp to recruitment; extra recruitment slots; lower upkeep, etc.)