Does anyone think that popcenter loyalty impacts how effective the local militia are at thwarting enemy agents?
Jeremy
Yes, I do. And I believe it is stated that way in some of the agent orders: ex. 690, “The amount stolen is not restricted to the amount of gold that the population centre can produce in a turn, and is based on the following factors: the amount of gold in the reserves of the nation stolen from; the amount of gold the population centre generated as a product that turn; the size, loyalty and fortifications of the population centre”. So that’s the amount stolen which is affected, but I also think the success rate and results of failure (spotted, captured, killed) are influenced by the degree of PC loyalty.
That might account too for how it historically seems harder to do agent orders in enemy capitals. Capitals tend to have very high loyalties. It may have nothing at all to do with the the popcenter being a capital.
I’ve heard and can’t confirm there are a series of modifiers when trying to operate in a hex: is there an enemy pop center, what’s the size of the pc, what’s the loyalty, what level are the fortifications, is it the capital, and is it hidden? Capitals also tend to have the highest level of fortifications, so that might have been adding to the difficulty.
Hidden capitals are very dangerous to operate in. Loyalty definitely affects the chance of a report of a foreign character.