Bribing Units

[Rabbit, White]

Completely randomly I checked out the Civ1 forum (crazy I know ) and someone mentioned bribing units. I definitely remember something like this, maybe even from Civ2 as well, and am wondering if anyone has been thinking of, or is interested in, adding this to the game. It probably would be a spy action, and speaking of which...

Shifting gears slightly here - I miss the fact that in Civ3 you had a choice about how much money you want to use for spy operation, and that would affect your success rate, as well as the results sometimes (remember when you could steal tech and blame it on another country). It would be awesome if somebody looked into doing this as well. I know there is a mod that adds tech stealing but I don't think they have the "blame the other guy" option, although I haven't checked that thread in a while, maybe I should...

Anyway, I would do this myself but just not enough time

 

[The Great Apple]

I don't remember being able to blame it on other countries...

Civ 2 had some great spy functions. You could bribe cities to join you, bribe units, poison water supplies, plant nuclear devices....

The main trouble with the Civ 3 spy actions is that most were rarely used. Often the only use was to get a Civ to declare war on you, hence cancelling any treaties they had with you - you aren't considered a backstabber because they are the one cancelling the 200gpt deal by declaring war on you! I used steal tech quite a bit, and occasionally investigate city in a wonder race, but I don't think I ever used any of the others.

 

[woodelf]

in SMAC I think you could blame other factions.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Yes you could attempt to frame another faction but it lowered the chance of success.

 

[woodelf]

And I think it cost more. If a game from 99 can do I would imagine it could be done now.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

The main trouble with the Civ 3 spy actions is that most were rarely used. Often the only use was to get a Civ to declare war on you, hence cancelling any treaties they had with you - you aren't considered a backstabber because they are the one cancelling the 200gpt deal by declaring war on you! I used steal tech quite a bit, and occasionally investigate city in a wonder race, but I don't think I ever used any of the others.

That was the main reason I used spies in Civ3, and I still use it in Civ4 to steadily worsen relations although it doesn't provoke as well as it used to.

In addition to being able to bribe units, I would like very much that I could pay a hefty ransom to barbarian units to not sack my cities like you could do in Civ2.... because they are beyond frustrating the way they just burn down anything in their path now. Where's the greed, people? I want some purposeful pillaging from them... especially since it would save me a lot of pain and suffering of having to spend an additional 25 turns building a new settler to rebuild the city they just toasted...

 

[RogerBacon]

This would be pretty major SDK work, but nothing which a few people on this forum can't achieve.

I don't think it would require any SDK work. A few popups with some choices and a few other functions in Python would be enough.

Roger Bacon

 

[TheLopez]

I don't think it would require any SDK work. A few popups with some choices and a few other functions in Python would be enough.

Roger Bacon

I highly agree that there would be little to no SDK work involved...

 

[Rabbit, White]

I highly agree that there would be little to no SDK work involved...

And would the AI know how to use this properly without SDK modifications?

As for the points the TGA brought up. Well, first of all it's of course a matter of play style - I used the spy all the time for various purposes. However, there's also a matter of implementation - I mean, perhaps something was missing from the spy, maybe a bigger incentive, maybe it should've been different actions. Whatever the case is, if this is developed by the community with input from the community, there's every chance that everyone will find the spy useful.

 

[TheLopez]

And would the AI know how to use this properly without SDK modifications?

Well, I got the AI to use snipers fairly well, I don't think it should be that more difficult to make them try to bribe a unit.

 

[Padmewan]

Using a lot of smoke and mirrors, I could see how we can do it without SDK work and still have the AI use it. It would entail special units that, upon attacking, have a chance of bribing the unit rather than actually attacking it. The unit must be sufficiently strong such that the AI's calculus would result in it deciding to attack in what otherwise would seem like a suicide mission. (Perhaps give it collateral?)

There must then be some formula that would determine whether the AI would bribe or not based on how much money it has on hand. The question is what should happen if it fails this test, or fails in its bribery.

 

[NikG]

The problem with complex and advanced python requires alot of hacks, which for a true computer scientist and/or programmer would avoid at all costs, but as it is most people only have access to python and mods are more easy to combine. (Just a side note )

However if done in the SDK it wouldn't take much work. It just a new mission, then some small code when doing bribery, and some AI logic, just got pretty much every mission type you can come up with.

 

[Rabbit, White]

What I wanted to know however is, if anyone has any plans to actually implement this? From the responses it seems that there's not much interest in this, which is also ok.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I'm interested. I think a number of people are... it's finding someone to do it that's the tricky part. I'm sure someone will get to it eventually.

 

[Padmewan]

I'm sure the SMAC recreationists have it on their "to do" list. It's never really appealed to me as a core game mechanic that's high on my own list for porting to Roanoke, tho perhaps as I explore making a financial strategy more viable, I might. But the quick answer is, no immediate plans for us.