it increases the max level with higher world panic i thought.

theres just effectively no way to get past level 5

Originally posted by Ponypony:

theres just effectively no way to get past level 5

Use your level ups better. It's better to have 4 agents that each specialize in one role/stat than to have 4 agents who are all mediocre at all of them. If you have a character who has gained five levels and select +1 intrigue each time, they will finish intrigue challenges significantly faster, which also means they'll gain xp significantly faster as well.

The highest agent I've gotten is level 12, but that was due to them being a corrupted hero with the mediator skill using influence religion for the entire game, which scaled off both their maxed lore and command stats, with an additional +3 for being a mediator. All of those combined was causing my agent to finish influencing a religion every 4 turns, which is a pretty fast stream of xp.

Stealthy is also a noteworthy trait, because it lets your agent keep doing low profile challenges without having to lay low, which also drastically increases how much xp they get over time.

I advise using corrupted heroes if they have the stats and/or specialization you need instead of generic agents. A hero's ability to specialize (ie lightbringer for shadow related challenges, doctor for disease related challenges, etc.) makes them significantly faster at doing them, which means they'll level faster too.

Most of the game's code is done in .json, so you can probably mod the xp curve if you can find it in the game files.

There is a "difficulty" adjustment when you start the game you can use to make yourself level slower or faster. Note that it also affects spread of shadow, and many other things.