Gathering and using intelligence

Many famous spies in the past were information gatherers, they fed intel to a brain who ordered others to act on this information.

In my game, this process of information gathering is done by "Scouts".
Mechanically, you have a certain number of faceless mooks that can be assigned to a: Army, City, Province or Notable.

While at each of these options they gather Intelligence. As is the nature of information it goes bad, so the constant generation of intelligence will be offset by the fact that it goes bad at an equal rate it can be gathered. So available intelligence will reach a critical mass based on how many scouts you have assigned.

The use for this Intel?

Its a consumable resource for your agents. When you order a mission be done the agent uses the intelligence to make the mission easier, faster or safer, depending on the details of the mission. That said I don't want intelligence to be a requirement, if there's a cage or safe as an obstacle and your agent has a good lock picking skill there'd be no point in spending intelligence on knowing where the key is or what the safe combination would be. Likewise if the agent just has good stats they'll be able to improvise on the mission and be fine.

The following is an example of the mission, this isn't concrete design just what works for illustrating how Intel is supposed to function.

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The player has 5 scouts in a province, together they're resting at 125 intelligence.
Agent Carl arrives.

The mission is to steal some documents in a castle. The fact that we know which castle has which documents was found out beforehand connected to a separate mission.

Thinking about it, what would be in an Agent's way?
Guards: They'll kill or capture your agent if allowed. Dogs would qualify here.
Locks: Really any door or window.
The layout: If you don't know which room is which, your agent will waste time searching.
Weather: If its raining the guards'll all be inside.