I've avoided these because their (at least) starting stats suck, and not being full adventuring characters, you have no way to buff them with items etc. (although maybe spells could work, but that needs micromanaging and being in throne-room to cast spell just before project completion)
I have wondered, do the projects to improve them make them alot better, on par with real character advisors with good stats & buff items? I haven't done that, because they were just so poor to start out with... Possibly partly bad luck + due to Challenging difficulty Kingdom DCs, but chain failures by Kassil led to immediate Kingdom in failure in my 1st play-thru... I've since played with invincible Kingdom rule because it's still to easy to get to Kingdom melt-down and too hard to crawl out of that hole.
Relatedly, any opinions on Kingdom difficulty settings? I've been playing with Challenging over-all, but had started using Mod to adjust Kingdom DCs by -2 which AFAIK exactly cancels Challenging's DC boost. Although on a recent re-start I switched to setting Kingdom to Easy which I think also cancels Challenging difficulty DC boost.
Really, it's crazy the two aren't more totally independent, if you want to boost both adventure & kingdom DCs that should be discrete option, not tied at hip to game difficulty settings which already overlap re: enemy difficulty. (not sure if that stat boost one still is double-dipping on bonuses, which is bad approach IMHO even if total range of difficulty is desired, there should be better granularity and transparency to player).
Yeah... I used that 1day feature just to get around specific situations where events were piling up (multiple instance of same event expiring while you were in the middle of working on it's previous instance) and was using -2 DC which AFAIK cancelled my Challenging Diffulty's effect re: Kingdom DCs.
I'm not actually sure what Easy Kingdom setting does, although I somehow came to impression it has same -2 DC effect (cancelling Challenging difficulty in effect), but I can't actually find explicit info on what Easy Kingdom setting actually does. I used Respec on Amiri, Octavia (-> Eldritch Scoundrel Rogue) making them more optimized (adventuring + advisor role) so -2 DC from Challenging (or = to Normal AFAIK) feels 100% sufficient to me...
My problems with Rioting now have mostly been negligently spending into negative BP (which latest patch allows you to fix within 1 day by buying BP with gold, although there isn't big flashing notification you are in negative BP afaik). Really easy fix is PROMINENTLY displaying BP total at all times in Kingdom/Travel mode and any dialogue that would spend BP, and double-confirm any choice that would spend into negatives. IMHO buying BP (with gold) should also be available from anywhere in Kingdom via button adjacent to BP/Kingdom Status display, that lets you fix negative BP immediately within (new) 1 day window (as long as you have enough gold).
So do you know what Easy mode for Kingdom actually does? DC modifier?
Evil being more profitable doesn't seem surprising IMHO.
Of course, doing that may alienate potential allies who are good,
leaving you with Evil ones who may turn around and screw you over.
(not that Good ones may not also o do same thing with good intentions)