Bribes

[techumseh]

Has anyone done any research into why bribing a city may cost more or less? Why a city full of units can sometimes be bribed for less than the cost of an indivdual unit inside it? I've learned that if you make a unit unbribable in ToT, it has no effect if the unit is in a city; you can still bribe a city full of "unbribable" units.

What I'm most interested in is how you can raise the price to bribe a city as high as possible. Making it totally unbribable by making the civ a democracy is not an option. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

[ravagon]

You are fond of the tough ones aren't you?

Quantitatively I couldn't give you an answer but there are generalizations.

(1) Type of government - Not entirely sure of the order here but the bribe price seems to increase drastically the more advanced your government is ie: Republic higher than Monarchy etc.
Fundamentalism in particular seems to have a particularly high bribe cost - not entirely sure why (Fanatic religious zealot nutcases maybe? ).

(2) City size - larger cities = much higher bribe cost. Again not sure if the scaling is linear or not as I haven't done that much testing.

(3) Happiness - wrt bribe price; rioting cities < happy cities < WLTKD cities (?) (I'm assuming this last as I'm not entirely sure certain cities I've bribed have actually been in WLTKD ).

(4) Presence of units in city makes absolutely no difference whatsoever save for affecting the above happiness levels in particular government types.

So I guess your ideal situation would have a large fundy city celebrating. I think the highest bribe cost I've encountered in this sort of situation has been about 15000 (but again it may not've been celebrating... ).

[techumseh]

Thanks, that's helpful. The only factor I was sure of was unrest, which the manual states cuts the bribe cost in half.

I was disappointed to learn that unbribable units couldn't save a city from being bribed in ToT.

Any idea if a higher tech level (as opposed to a higher form of government) has any effect?

[ravagon]

I don't think it does but I couldn't be 100% sure. In most cases higher tech levels are associated with late games and as such its a little hard to tell as the cities are generally larger and the governments more advanced at that stage which (by supposition) could simply eclipse any visible effect due to the target civ having more techs...

[Eyn]

with democracy, cities (and units) can't be bribe

[Thoth]

The distance to the nearest palace also has an effect on bribe price. If the Civ is large, you could use several palaces to keep the price high.

Courthouses also raise the price (about 50% I believe).

[Thoddy]

some other factors:

-Treasury of city owner
Bribing costs directly depends on Treasury.
-civil disorder halves the price
(so destroy temple/cathedral/colosseum first) until c. d. bribe
-starting point of bribing unit:
H



123
4C5
678


H Capital
C bribed city

1-8 starting point of diplomat
8-cheapest bribe
1-most expensive bribe

-diplomat/spy/veteran vet spy has cheapest bribe
-Communism increases cost significantly



each diplomat in city prevents bribing in some cases - dipl (if I remember right about 30% somewhere in manual?)
spy and vet spys has better chances

[William Keenan]

Below is the formula, in all its glorious complexity, to bribe a city, be it Barbarian or otherwise.

Cost to Incite Revolt = Size * Wealth * Proximity

Size = City Size (from 0 to 35).
Wealth = 1 + Treasury/1000
Treasury = gold in the treasury of the civ that currently owns the city.
Proximity = 1000/(Distance+3)
Distance = squares between dip/spy and the capital of the owning civ. Distance is never greater then 16 and subject to several modifiers.

The Cost to Incite Revolt is modified by following (these modifiers are cumulative):

Spy incites a revolt 5/6 the price.
Veteran Spy incites the revolt 2/3 the price.
Disorder in the city, 1/2 price.
No Units in the city, 1/2 price.
Previous Owner of the city, 1/2 price.

The following improvements affect bribery:

Palace improvement makes the city unbribable.
Courthouse improvement halves the Distance (rounded down).

The following governments affect bribery:

Democracy grants a civilization immunity to bribery.
Communism. When the bribibing civilization operates under Communism the maximum Distance is reduced to ten.

[Boco]

Distance = squares between dip/spy and the capital of the owning civ. Distance is never greater then 16 and subject to several modifiers.

WK, this is good stuff! Is there a (partial) list of distance modifiers?

Boco can't read! Can't seem to delete comment either.