Dignitaries

These to different jobs on your planets. They can be birth rate increasers and populate planets way faster, or they can decrease birth rate, and take your planets down to nothing. That's the most important thing. Don't put dignitaries onto a planet that has many colonists or your asking for a birth rate reducer to mess you up. However, if you get a birth rate increaser, it can be a big time saver, and they don't change jobs once they've got them unless you tell them to, so no worries about it switching to a birth rate reducer.

They can also be spy hunters, production builders, credit boosters, ect. They may also embezzle credits. They only do this before the select a job though, and having spies on your planet helps decrease the likely hood of this. They really don't give away that much though.

In short, they're best early in the game. Later on, managing 50 planets' worth of dignitaries (250 of 'em), making sure they do what you want, and so on can be just too much. I don't use them once I really get going, but they help a lot in the beginning.

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