AI Bribing Capital Cities!!!

[Gatekeeper]

SG[1]:

Fascinating. I'll have to use a dozen or so veteran spies and see if I can nail an SDI Defense. After all, it's so much more satisfying firing a nuclear warhead at a city than using a backpack nuke.

Gatekeeper

[finbar]

I have seen an AI capital bribed - which is to say, for example, I've seen London bribed - but I've always assumed the capital status has already been shifted elsewhere. I suspect that's probably what's happened, Gatekeeper. The AI civs are always shifting their capitals around. I remember, in one game, the Sioux moving it every second turn for about a thousand years. They started just after the game started, so I doubt they could have been under attack. Imagine carting all those desks around.

I have also always thought that neither the Palace nor SDI could be destroyed by sabotage. God knows I tried often enough when I had nothing better to do with my time.

[Gatekeeper]

Finbar:

Now that you mention, I, too, have had games where the AI moved its capital around every other turn early on in the game. Since I didn't have Marco Polo's Embassy, I suppose I wouldn't have gotten any message boxes stating the capital(s) had been moved. Nor did I have informal contact (i.e. w/o MPE ... no treaties, no map trading), so that might be another explanation for the natural capitals not being capitals (except in Egypt's case; can a capital city be bribed if it wasn't the capital at some point in time?).

Gatekeeper

[finbar]

If a city ceases to be a capital it has to be bribeable, I'd've thought. It's the Palace that renders it unbribeable. If that was the question. Do you have any saves from the game at the point when "capitals" were being bribed?

[Gatekeeper]

Finbar:

Unfortunately, I do not have any pertinent saves. The ironic thing is, I've gotten into the habit of saving every three to five turns, except for this time, when I instantly overwrote the previous save because I had to skeddadle off to work.

Gatekeeper

[finbar]

Work? Work? Work? Get your priorities straight, Gatekeeper!