The Emissary: More than Just an Economic Tool

Abstract:

This article will begin by touching briefly on the more obvious benefits of making emissaries. Towards the end of the article, however, I hope to shed light on some of the less commonly used emissary abilities, and perhaps to convince some players to hire emissaries past the point of merely surviving economically.

Introduction:

Population Centers: Emissaries are the quickest way to improve the number and size of your population centers.

Wealth: Emissaries have more to do with wealth than any other characters class.

Armies: By using emissaries to create an economically powerful nation, you can support unbelievable numbers of troops.

Characters: Most worthwhile emissary orders give a skill increase of 1 to 10 points, making emissaries competitive for building a string character base. Additionally, an economically powerful nation is sure to always be able to hire characters as soon as they become available, and will also be able to hire as many multi-classed characters as desired, adding to the potential for character growth.

Additionally, emissaries can help with some of the individual victory conditions. They can transfer, influence away, or rebuild population centers which your nation covets. Also, emissaries can place mountain camps for those nations wishing to hoard mithril.

Finally, remember that nations are eliminated from play either by bankruptcy or by losing their last remaining major town or city (not counting those players who give up and quit). Rarely, if ever, does a nation get eliminated from play because all of its characters are dead or held captive. Emissaries can help you to make sure that you will neither go bankrupt nor run out of major towns and cities. They can also be used to help make your enemies go bankrupt and run out of major towns and cities (by influencing away their holdings).

I think you will see that emissaries are beneficial regardless of whether you are in the game to win as an individual, to win as a team, or just to have fun!

Which nations should hire emissaries? When? How many?

Still other nations hire armies for free (Fire King, Cardolan) and have the possibility of creating and improving countless population centers all over the world in very strategic, unexpected places (e.g., off-map hexes one turn's march from an opponent's capital). At these locations, these nations can hire and recruit armies very effectively at no initial cost (other nations can do this too, at the slight cost of hiring an army). In my opinion, it is criminally negligent for either of these two nations to not be a powerful emissary nation.

And, of course, all nations can benefit from economic growth, but some need it more desperately than others (Eothraim, Dragon Lord, Woodmen).

Even nations which need to focus on other characters, such as the many Dark Servant nations with agent-making advantages, should consider making emissaries early in the game. Emissaries are powerful additions to agent companies (see "Double Agents" below). Agents with extra orders can also issue "Scout Population Center" (a miscellaneous order), alerting your (or your ally's) emissaries to enemy population centers with low loyalties. If you make 40 point agents but don't start with any, make sure you have one agent at the start, but consider hiring the rest of your initial characters as emissaries. Then on turn six when you've trained an agent up to 40, focus mainly on agents thereafter.

Another reason for making your emissaries early is because this is the best time to train them into productive characters. Most other characters can train themselves up just as easily in the early or late game. However, the best way to train up an emissary is to place camps every turn for a 1 to 10 skill increase, which also obviously benefits your economy when it is most needed, early in the game (and continues to support your economy throughout the game). Later in the game camps may become increasingly difficult to make, to the point that a newly hired 30 (or even 40) point emissary would not become productive for a long time and would be a waste of resources.

The two nations which can create 40 emissaries (Northmen, Quiet Avenger) would of course be wise to create one emissary at first, and get that emissary up to 40 points by turn six when more characters become available. Meanwhile, other needed characters can be made, such as 3 agents for the Quiet Avenger (who starts with plenty of command and mage skill, but could use more agents to benefit from the double scouting).

Multi-classed emissaries can also be beneficial. Emissary/commanders perform well as company commanders for either agent or emissary companies. They could train themselves up by recruiting and improving loyalties at the same time, graduating to placing camps and improving population centers, then eventually to commanding a company as skills increase.

Emissary/mages can accomplish similar emissary orders while doing mage activities as well. Also, if they are in a company, they can perform mage duties and place camps at the same time. Emissary/agents can be extremely effective, although they make take a long unproductive while to train up to an adequate level. See the section on double agents.

Camp Placement:

If you don't like gambling, the surest (and most conservative) remedy would be to improve your population center loyalties (an automatic skill increase of 1 to 5) until the emissary rank is in the high 30s or so, using the spare order for capital orders or whatever. A good "middle of the road" approach would be to have half of your new emissaries out trying to make camps, and half of them getting the sure increase by improving loyalties. Whichever of your camp-placing fail for a couple of turns can be replaced by the emissaries who have trained themselves up the safe way, and the unlucky emissaries can go back to your capital to improve its loyalty and get back on track.

As an aside, I believe that improving loyalties is generally a waste of time other than for the purpose of training up brand new emissaries for a couple of turns only. The only other good reason I can think of for improving loyalties is if you have a population center in danger of degrading (and don't want to deal with it by reducing your taxes).

One enjoyable part of wandering around placing camps in the wild is that you are more likely to have encounters than most other characters. This can be interesting or beneficial, but it is also sometimes deadly. I would suggest that if you have an extremely important character who happens to have emissary rank (e.g., Elrond), and you want to use the character's emissary skill for placing camps, then put the character in a company. This not only frees up an extra order for the important character (because someone else is issuing the movement orders), but it also allows another less important character in the company to step up and react to any deadly encounters in place of the important character (even if your company only has two characters).

Speaking of encounters, dragons are likely to be encountered in certain mountainous areas such as the Misty Mountains (north and south of the Dwarves' capital at 2212) and the Withered Heath (the two mountain spurs in the extreme north). I find it extremely negligent for any Dark Servant team to not occupy every single hex in these areas with camps as soon as possible. Not only can the dragons be recruited into armies, but they will also improve your loyalties, making it easy to improve these population centers later. Mountain havens are great places to build up a nation, because they are harder to reach with armies, and because many of these areas are not on anyone's map.

In most games at some point camp placement becomes nearly impossible (though it can become possible again, so try from time to time if you like). By this time, your emissaries should be trained highly enough to accomplish other things. . .

Improving Population Centers:

Improving population centers can also provide you with relatively safe places to relocate your capital in unexpected or remote areas. There are even a few areas which are unassailable by armies, navies, or both. There are also many locations that are possible, but darned inconvenient to attack with troops and even characters if the location is remote enough.

Another common but wasteful (in my opinion) tactic is that of using companies to improve population centers. This is usually done by having the lower level emissaries train themselves by boosting the loyalty of the population center, and having one of the better emissaries improve it. The idea, I think, is to make it easier to improve the population center while also training the lower level emissaries.

I think this is inefficient for several reasons. If you've made your emissaries early and trained them by making camps, they should be powerful enough to start improving population centers without having a cast of characters as assistants. The many camps you've created can all be improved. If you're eager to improve your larger population centers to towns, major towns, and cities instead of just improving camps to villages, keep these two scenarios in mind:

• You could use all of your emissaries in a company to attempt a single larger population center increase (which may or may not gain you more revenue than making several smaller increases). This would give a good training increase to one of your emissaries, and a small increase to the rest.

• Or you could have all of your emissaries raise camps to villages for a turn or two, which would increase all of their skills to where they could improve villages to towns for a turn or two. Then your emissaries are powerful enough that each and every one of them can improve population centers to major towns or cities each and every turn for the rest of the game, even if these population centers have mediocre loyalties. The benefits of patiently but aggressively building emissary skill far outweigh any benefit from trying to get ahead economically in the short run.

Influencing Enemy Population Centers:

I am also of the opinion that using emissaries alone, taking several turns to take a small population center, is not only dangerous but is a waste of time unless you know for a fact that you can succeed in a single turn and you have nothing better to do than utterly devastate your enemies by taking a camp or village away from them.

It is also wasteful to use emissaries against defunct nations to gather their holdings "before anyone else gets them" when you have active enemies nearby who are just as vulnerable to the 525 order. This is true unless you know for a fact that the defunct nation has extremely low loyalties. Personally I would love to see my enemies spend turns influencing away an inactive nation's holdings instead of attacking me.

Instead of plodding along like this, steadily wasting the resources of your nation for little gain, try having some imagination with your emissaries! If you're a Free People about to land at the Morannon (3221) with an army, don't let them predict your movements and assassinate or kidnap al your army commanders in hex 3222 (Carach Angren)! Send an emissary company to 3222 on the same turn and move right through the fortified population center (now yours) the next turn!

If you are a neutral, or just gained a neutral as an enemy, chances are not everyone has downgraded with you yet. Go emissary their holdings away from them right from underneath their army! The 525 order clearly states that only armies who "consider your nation an enemy" can prevent you from influencing away their holdings.

Have your (or an ally's) agents with spare orders do "scout population center" on enemy holdings to find out where some of the easy (or difficult) targets are.

Follow a powerful agent company around from time to time, entering a hex that previously had armies recruiting in it. Suddenly your enemy not only finds himself relieved of several characters and an army, but of the population center as well (at no loss of troops to you)! This is very significant when you're faced with the task of relieving an enemy of a population center with lots of fortifications - it would take many troops and war machines (which means many resources and many character orders) to do the same thing that a good emissary company can accomplish in a turn or two. This is also sometimes the only way to remove a stubborn enemy from a population center which is placed where it can't be attacked with troops.

If you have enough combined emissary skill (or a multi-national company) you can even try this at an opponent's capital. In any case, combine your emissaries to take cities, major towns, and towns; not camps or villages.

Recruiting Double Agents:

However, double agenting has several other benefits as well. By learning what orders a character has issued, you can gain all sorts of information you weren't even looking for. You could learn the location of an enemy's capital, their best agent company, or a hidden recruiting base. You could learn a lot about an enemy's strategy, style of play, and the state of affairs in that nation. You could find out when the nation goes out of play or misses a turn. You could find out that a nation just sent all of its mounts and leather to a certain hex, that they just made 50 war machines, are about ready to repair a bridge, or that they lost all their ships at sea and you have free reign over the waters. The potential wealth of information, and what you can do with it, is unbelievable.

Another benefit of double agents is that they won't try to harm your nation. If a double-agented emissary or agent shows up where your characters or population centers are, then you can rest assured that your opponent is wasting valuable time doing little damage to you.

Double Agents: How Can I Get Me Some?

For similar reasons, I suggest putting one agent in an emissary company mainly for scouting purposes. This is both to identify potential double agent targets, and to find out if your emissaries need to refuse challenges and get out of the area. If the coast is clear, you know that they can do something else with their orders, and the company commander can do more than just refuse challenges and move the company. The agent can also scout population centers (a miscellaneous order) as you arrive, letting you know whether you can hope to get the population center on the first turn of influencing (and then move on!) or if you need to stay in the hex for more than one turn.

Transferring Population Centers:

Another example: if Cardolan and Arthedain eliminate the Witch King, why not have Northern Gondor give these nations a town or major town or two closer to Mordor so these nations can make a difference up front sometime before the fourth age!? Northern Gondor often can't hope to recruit at all of its holdings anyway, which opens these population centers up to conquest by the enemy. Better to give population centers away to allies than enemies.

A third example: the Eothraim, commonly targeted heavily by agents, could benefit from having a new capital somewhere in an unexpected place, even if the Eothraim major towns aren't in immediate danger from armies. The economic assistance could work wonders for the Eothraim as well.

Miscellaneous Benefits of Emissaries:

• If you've just driven the Haradwaith out of the game, capturing 6 cities, 4 major towns, and 5 towns from the poor player, chances are most of the remaining population centers have loyalties which are pretty low. Your emissaries might be able to pick up some decent population centers, one per turn per emissary, without loss to your armies and before your enemies can get them. However , as I stated earlier, I believe this is a waste of time unless you know the loyalties to be quite low, the location is very strategically important, or you happen to know that the Haradwaith just shipped 10,000 mounts and 20,000 leather to a certain population center (from one of your double agent reports!). Again, it is generally more efficient to spend your orders doing harm to someone who is trying to harm you in return.

• Only emissaries can bribe/recruit characters into your force. If a nation like the Dragon Lord is driven out of the game, it would be a terrible detriment to the Dark Servants if they didn't have the emissaries to pick up these massive characters.

• Emissaries are also the only ones who can raise harbors and ports. If you've blown all your harbors for protection's sake, or lost them in combat, or fear to place yourself in the path of enemy agents, but you still need to rebuild a destroyed navy, then try building a port at a population center that didn't exist at game start and is off everyone's map. No one would know, until it is too late, that the "nation without a navy" (you) was suddenly once again dominant in the seas.

• Finally, the usually worthless "Uncover Secrets" order does, once in a while, tell you something interesting - such as whether another nation is in or out of the game.