The movement of AI councilors should be executed before the player confirms the assignment of their own councilors. At least for the AI councilors that are performing missions on specific locations (as opposed to on other councilors).
At it’s best, a game design should try to make sure the data it provides to a player is informing their decisions in an interesting way. Seeing where an AI councilor is spending the next turn can make my decision whether or not to interact with them more meaningful. I might try to investigate or detain them when they are on my turf and I have a control point advantage. I might lay off when they are on their own turf to avoid the risk of my councilor getting detected or detained themself. Knowing where they were last turn doesn’t make the assignment phase more engaging because it has no bearing on the upcoming turn.
I would suggest having all the AI lock in their councilors that are performing missions against locations before the player commits their own councilors, and then let the AI assign uncommitted councilors to missions against other councilors (investigate, detain, assassinate, steal, sabotage) after the player has committed their own councilors.
Enemy Councilor Movement
Re: Enemy Councilor Movement
Maybe? This gives the player a pretty significant advantage. How would you balance it?
Re: Enemy Councilor Movement
I'd argue the opposite: Knowing where they're going gives the player full certainty about their own countermoves.
A few years back in my current game, I had an enemy agent with 23 espionage bouncing back and forth for a few rounds between my two main capitols, Bejing and Paris. I was constantly on edge about him assassinating my main advisor, who only had 5-6 security at this time, and decided that I had to make a move on assassinating the enemy agent first. Problem was, he also had 21 security and the hard target trait. Bumping that +3 intel bonus from having a turned councilor in his faction up to +5 with a successful investigation would be huge.
First turn: Enemy councilor moves back to a country his faction controls, my investigation fails and I set it to repeat.
Second turn: Enemy councilor is set to assassinate my investigator with an 86% chance of succeeding.
Shit.
Third turn: My investigator somehow manages to survive the assassination attempt and goes to ground in China. Enemy agent follows for a second attempt and I blow my best opportunity to counter-assassinate since I had +5 from intel, +6 from local control points, and another +3 from one of China's CPs.
That encounter would've been a lot less interesting had the other faction known that I was going to ground in China. And, yes, I know you said that the player should know location moves, but giving only the player prior knowledge would be incredibly unbalanced.
One possible option I could see working balance wise is creating a small confirmation phase after you end your turn where you confirm travel itineraries for all agents following enemy agents. If the travel is canceled, their mission is aborted and they spend the rest of the turn doing nothing. Problem is, this eliminates a lot of the risk of acting against enemy agents; instead of needing to invest heavily into your action in order to account for the possible +6 or even +12 point swing from control point bonuses shifting, you can get by with investing less and just abort if travel doesn't go in your favor. And that uncertainty is something I'd like to see [/i]more[/i] of, not less.