The Foreign Veteran is a type of agent in Fall of the Samurai.
Description[]
In Fall of the Samurai foreign veterans are British, American or French nationals who have entered the country in order to supervise troop recruitment, train, and equip the armies of the Emperor or the Shogunate. Generally apolitical, veterans are only interested in the money that the escalating conflict can bring them, and will work for either side if the price is right, even carrying out sabotage missions if paid to do so. Foreign veterans can be recruited via the foreign quarters of the port building chain. If placed in a friendly town foreign veterans reduce recruitment costs simply by their presence. In addition, they are also able to harass enemy armies, reducing their morale and causing attrition, and can challenge other agents to single combat, which will result in the death or dishonour of the losing party. Foreign veterans are both vulnerable to geisha and unable to act against them.
General Information[]
Foreign agents are trained from trading ports for 500 gold each, making them the only agents that cannot be accessed immediately as trading ports require research to build. Up to five can be recruited initially, but up to eight can be recruited depending on the experience level of the Chief of Staff officer in the player's cabinet. Both the Satsuma and the Saga begin the campaign with a foreign agent.
Foreign veterans can engage generals and other agents in single combat, effectively similar to the assassination option of Shinobi. However, foreign agents cannot assassinate geisha and are highly vulnerable to being enchanted by geisha. Foreign veterans can also harass armies, dealing some casualties. This is similar to sabotaging or distracting armies by shinobi or geisha respectively, but it does not prevent armies from moving. The amount of casualties caused by harassing is improved by personal skills foreign veterans can invest in as they level up.
Unique to foreign veterans is their ability to train and improve troops. Foreign veterans placed in towns cause a reduction in recruitment costs. When placed in a province outside of a town, they provide a smaller discount. When placed in armies, foreign veterans gradually increase each unit's experience each turn. Modern units gain experience much more rapidly than traditional units. Finally, foreign veterans can improve the accuracy, reload rate, ammunition, and melee attack of armies they're stationed in thanks to skills they can invest points in as they level up.
Unlike other agents, who have three unique portraits that change as they level up, foreign veterans randomly spawn as British, French, or American agents, each with a distinctive appearance and different lines of dialogue, for a total of nine unique portraits. This is all cosmetic, however, and all foreign veterans are functionally identical.