BKA said:
@Scots: King Olav asks for a permission to build a settlement in the southern parts of Ireland.
@Morten: I think the Diplomats are a bit too powerfull in this game. Either reduce their Movement to 1, make them harder to build or more difficult to research. Just my opinion.
Again, I wonder where the viking spirit went during the first onslaught. Now vikings are asking
permission 
from someone to build new settlements??? How sad.
Already discussed the bribing issue with Gary and others in great detail. I might adjust a few things there. Generally I do believe that they are not so overpowerful as is generally believed (although they do admittedly have a huge psychological impact), and secondly, there are lots of ways to counter them.
1) The psychological effect of bribery is more potent, than its actual military value. If one wants to bribe one's way through, one quickly needs to sell out improvements, which are vitally needed, if one wants one's growing empire to prosper. It is simply way expensive and will kill one's economy in the long run. The only cheap cities that remain in the game are barbarian cities, which should be sought to be brought under the crown of one of the player civs. Combined with other military measures, diplomacy/bribery remains a devious card to play, much needed, but certainly not doable without other forces at hand.
In the new version of the game, bribing barbarian units is even more important than in this version, which will reserve a lot of viking ressources to bring barb heroes and warlords under their crowns. Bribing cities is often not worth it, without knowing for sure, that the city holds powerful units.
2) There are several ways a strong human player can counter the danger of these being employed by an enemy civ. You can't always protect yourself from devious minds, but in a frontzone, where the possibility of such schemes are likely, here's what can be done :
- Remember, stacked units cannot be bribed, whereas cities can. Do not stack or home valuable units in cities, which can not be well defended against enemy diplomats, or which doesn't have dungeons or a royal court present.
- Keep a decent military force stacked outside the city, in a fortress. Sometimes this will cause unhappiness but you can't have things both ways.
- Stacked defensive units placed before the city, can prevent emissaries and bishopss from ever approaching the city.
- Mounted units or emissaries strategically placed in the hinterland of the city will be able to counter any threat posed to it, much more effectively than sitting ducks within city walls. City walls can only be a last measure in case of a siege, they cannot be relied on in place of a well organized feudal defense structure, with strong, stacked, mounted armies in castles at strategic points.
- Build Dungeons when the appropriate tech has been researched. This presses for viking reform, since the tech in question cancels the viking raiders.
- If the threat is imminent from an enemy player, and the city threathened is important enough, a royal court can be rush-built in the city to prevent any bribery.
- Attain the government type 'Holy Empire' and switch to it, and all cities will be unbribable. In the new version, if a civ holds Aachen, Charlemagnes Legacy will allow all government types to be chosen (including Holy Empire), even without the tech being discovered. This may however require massive popularity reforms, prior to the change, as you may know.
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I wanted players to think seriously about how to counter the 'emissary' or 'bishop' issue, that's why I gave them such powerful movement. I wanted the emissaries and bishops to be a king's vital tool in uniting his rebellious domains into a strong medieval empire. Thats the function of the unit. I believe this works very well, in this regard.
What may work less well, is if they so potently scares off the viking civs from being vikings in a MP or SP game, that the christian powers have a much too easy time throwing out the vikings from their islands and continents. I don't necessarily think that this is generally the case, but I'd like to see how the game progresses to know more.
AFAICS, the viking players have totally underplayed their vast power at sea and at raiding during the first part of this game, and lost too much foothold and strong units on trying to hold on to cities, that could not be properly protected at this point. - If they had relied on proper raiding (destroyed monks for gold and looting cities for valuable improvements), they could have built up forces, while keeping their sizeable navies and potent raiding forces dominant in the seas. Instead they lose their ships and chiefs to easy bribes, stick to their treaties and agreements with their tails between their legs, and they do not profit as much as they could have from being less obedient. (and which they need to build up defenses, in order to survive the christian onslaught which follows in the last half of the game
).
