Enhanced Local Aristocrats, Part 3

You will be able to turn controlled aristocrats into double agents in the next version of Anamnesis.

After you've given away a loan for free to an aristocrat requesting it, you'll get one of three new commands after inviting him or her over to your base. You'll be able to make unaffiliated aristocrats pledge their votes to you while affiliated ones, depending on their kind, will be able to either sabotage their lobby reducing its power by 0.1 each week or talk in your behalf, earning you 0.1 favours per week. The exact name of these actions will vary from one aristocrat to another for flavour's sake, with some aristocrats, for example, spying on the enemy while you will be able to make others embarrass themselves in order to hurt the lobby's reputation.

A hidden variable chosen at the time of the aristocrat's creation will determine how long said aristocrat will carry out these commands before requiring new input or simply giving up. You might be lucky and get a basically autonomous double agent, but you will more often become stuck with witless individuals requiring constant invitations and guidance, thus gobbling up your character's time.

The costs of invitations will now also vary depending on the aristocrat's current Merit. Instead of the current flat rate of 10 Arkhe per invitation, the cost will be five times the aristocrat's Merit. Really powerful ones will thus be costlier to keep close, but on the other hand those out of their luck will be virtually free to talk to.

Lastly, aristocrats can now ask under certain conditions for loans to pay for a medical procedure to extend their life, which will give you a greater direct power over who lives and who doesn't. You will be able to block almost all such attempts if you are rich and powerful enough, but shaping the colony in that way will be a very long game to play.


This whole double agent thing is admittedly rather basic for now. I've been trying several approaches these past weeks but this seemed the most convincing one. As always, there will be room for improvement and tweaking in the future.