Earlgraytay: They are the experts- but every single one of these people has their own agenda. It's not that they can't work it out amongst themselves, it's that they won't. So you have to play politics.
Like, the decision early in, where you have to choose between building the high speed rail and the country roads? Neither Symon nor Lileas is telling you the full truth there. Symon has heavy connections with the capitalist Oligarchs- if you build the high speed rail, it'll make the Oligarchs more money, so Symon is pushing it as a good idea regardless of whether or not it's a good idea. Meanwhile, Lileas is an isolationist/authoritarian socialist- she'd prefer you fix up the middle of nowhere in your own country to helping other countries or making a profit- regardless of whether that's the right call . . .
Me: Wow. I never would have independently realized that the advisors in the game tell you what benefits them personally. I’m not joking, and I’m not being sarcastic. I thought of “advisors in games tell you accurate information” like “HP meters give you accurate information”—I had them categorized as part of the gameplay mechanics, not part of the narrative mechanics. Even if I replayed the game enough times to recognize which times an advisor was flat-out wrong, I don’t think it would ever have occurred to me what the pattern is behind why they’re wrong.
There was this thing in middle school that was supposed to teach lateral thinking. The teacher would say “alright, okay, blue moon,” and then point to something, and then anyone else who said “alright, okay, blue moon” also got it correct. Anyone who just said “blue moon” and pointed to something got it incorrect. It was supposed to continue until the whole class realized how it worked, but the teacher had to give up and tell me, because I failed to understand long after everyone else got it. That’s probably related somehow to what I didn’t get about Suzerain.
