Bribery by non-diplomat/spies

[Cassius Critzer]

I'm working on a mod for MGE and I 've noticed that even though I typically all but remove diplomat/spies by making them very expensive and with a high amount of tech (which I work arund by preseting up embassies), that still on deity level that the AI can seemingly use lots of different units to bribe units.

There only is a legendary geisha spy and a monumental amount of hoops have to work before they are even possible to recruit because the actual courtesan/artist geisha happened way later in history.

Is there any way to turn that off using a hex edit? It's not the other tasks like sabotage or bribing a city,just occassionally units...and often ridiculously low value units (in the mod they have been ronin that the AI could make in a single turn.

In ToT, it seems like you can set a very high value or even make units immune to bribery. What typically is happening is the highest level of terrain has a very high defense value equivalent to mountain tile, and then this low level unit has a decent defensive value, plus sitting in a fortress. A human player can just put a cheap ashigaru yari in that fortress tile to prevent this, but it's doubtful the AI will stack in a fortress.

Since I'm using very expensive army units, I sure don't want an extremely powerful ARMY tobe bribed. I haven't seen that happen...yet.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

So I built extensive fortresses around cities, and currently am building a series of chains of fortresses around Kyushu to make the possibility of naval invasion to be unlikely save for certain places which are unfavorable to the attackers.

And I could make some some low level garrison units which have no movement. Thus the AI and the player begin with some units "stacked" two high like a ronin and a certain type of samurai archer or a yari samurai. So they will be unbribeable as when two exist in a fortress, they cannot be bribed, though of course cities can.

You can't recruit them. They merely are to intially set up garrisoning the fortresses that "ring" the main citadel for turn #1.

The point is to make it challlenging and having to apply tactics and strategy to overcome these defenses.

A single unit in a fortress can be bribed. The AI on the highest level frequently does this.

Therefore there will be ways that are easier to penetrate the fortresses and citadels so it actually seems like a castle siege trying to get to the "keep" through a variety of means.

The AI and the player will likely use shinobi to find such "undermanned or even empty fortresses as "this is our way in".

 

[Cassius Critzer]

If a modder prebuilds fortresses around the citadels that are logical for defense, then eventually the AI begins to use them but doesn't seem to logically build them. Then rarely have I seen more than a single unit in a fortress.

So with preset garrison troops that are stacked at least two deep, then the AI can have well defended citadels/cities that are difficult to penetrate and the fortresses are immune to bribery.

Then far later with real spies, if they don't exist, then it appears that the AI can't bribe the cities even with 100,000 gold in the treasury. Civ 2 becomes very balanced then.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Because bribing geisha occurs very late in the mod, then bribing cities becomes almost improbable due to severe expense. For an example by November 1473, just 77 turns in (and geisha will not show up until 1574 which is aproximately on turn 408, then since the AI has recruited three expensive Defender class armies and five naginata (the equivalent of 2450 samurai), then the tested city citizens demanded 188,460 koku (gold) to do so.

That is extremely high so very improbable. That number exceeds the total treasury of many clans who merely have 140,000.

So by turn 408, far more samurai armies may be inside and maybe the bribe would take 500,000 to 1,000,000.

It's a poor return on investment too so I doubt the AI elects to do so as with the slightest issues, suddenly they have no cashflow.

In the mod, even with fully maxed out infrastructure and excellent terrain upgrades, there are hard coded limits on how many shields can be generated to create new units. The better armies take at least 13-15 turns ie a unit cost of 125 which is the maximum. Undoubtably this is calculated into how much the bribe will cost versus the shield cost of units within tobe generated.

Before the creation of armies, with maxed out infrastructure and say ten units inside, bribes might cost 18,000 to 36,000.

One of my concerns was that with so much cashflow with expected treasuries, then bribery would frequently happen. NOPE as if defended, it's way too expensive. I mean you might find an undefended city lacking any armies,but if so and if you have armies, then why bribe at all...just conquer it.

A daimyo could be extremely wealthy but that was not necessarily helpful as it made him a target. It also in reality began to lower the price of rice due to massive agricultural reforms and simultaneously caused inflation. Merchants started meddling with what they considered a "koku" really was in terms of amount in size when a koku was how much people "ate" which does not really vary.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

The economists who are Civ 2 players might want to look at the Trade screen to see how much is being generated versus infrastructure costs and scientific research. Typically there is a positive 3,000 per season with three in a year (I meant to have that depicted as no winter combat but that is dificult now without recalculations to avoid a November, December, January, February season.

You can recalculate the infrastructute costs per season as normally they are very low. Since there was annual trade report per year then I could proportionately increase infrastructure maintrenance costs,but in effect science is a worse problem as it's arguably too expensive.

Regardless with such large treasuries then in later years on events I can subtract income to show some armies or units or policies being enacted.

Money should not be a headache as this mod is mostly about waging war not being an accountant to pay for it.

There really isn't a way to fix it.

If you do four seasons, then winter combat will exist. With three seasons then:
Season 1
March April May June

SEASON 2
July August Sept Oct

Season 3
November December January February

So the same problem

Any shifting then messes up season one.

You could think of it as the end of a season as the end of a season report.

March reports
July reports
November reports as November is Autumn.

Regardless that messes up season one as well.

As a modder the problematic issue is everyone likes large maps so 254 cities can be depicted, but that causes movement rate issues. And without seasons then historical movement rates are a big issue. It gets to where one tribe cannot physically move far enough to fight everyone in a realistic time frame.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Say you decided to have an Imjin War mod. Well the Japanese clans are not unified at all and so you also have only seven slots with the barbarians being hopelessly crippled.

So the Ming have a slot
Joseon dynasty
And then only five Japanese clans.
There is no guarantee that any of the Japanese clans will work together on a joint naval invasion. Likely they end up attacking each other.

So straight away you would have to split the forces into:
Ming/Joseon
Vs
Japan

This means 254 would be divided in half so 127 with a huge burden on the Japanese forces with half the arcitecture/infrastructure to invade and yet that would be very unbalanced as the Ming might not have as great units but realistically they would have far more than half.

I think armies ends up fixing bribery issues as an unexpected result.