What determines unit bribe cost?

[MikeLynch]

I'm sure this has been covered in a thread somewhere, but I can't search, so:
anybody know what factor(s) come into play when the game calculates the cost to bribe a unit?

Is it just the unit's build cost, or does the game factor in the size/gov't/etc. of the original owner civ?

 

[Cactus_Jack]

i think its how close they are to there capitial. If the civ yoru are trying to bribe doesnt have a capital its much cheaper to bribe.

 

[ElephantU]

The best thread that I use is this:

Diplomats and Spies:
http://home.tiscali.cz:8080/~cz045662/civ2/dipspy.htm

This has tons of valuable info about Dips and Spies; the formulas you want are in the Bribing Units section. Note there is a big difference between bribing Barbs and other civs (as if they are maximum distance from capital and have no gold). Also, Settlers or Engineers are always doubled. The only government affected is Communism.

Some interesting discussion was also here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001488-2.html

 

[MikeLynch]

Nice.

BTW, I would also note (for posterity) that Test of Time's Advanced Unit Properties includes the Minimum Bribe Amount flag. I don't know what the numbers mean except for 0 (normal) and -1 (can't be bribed) -- anybody know? Is it the same as unit costs (#x10)?

 

[Mercator]

I'm pretty sure it's simply the minimum amount of gold required to bribe it... So if you want a unit to be bribable, but only at a high cost, you just set a high value for this.

That way you don't have to make the unit expensive to build. That was the only way to make units hard to bribe in earlier versions of civ2.

 

[la fayette]

ElephantU has given the links to detailed information and discussion (very interesting discussion between SlowThinker and La Fayette, I must say).

This is for the 'lazy bones':

Bribing Barb units is cheap: 21g for a warrior, 41g for a horseman, ... = cheaper than rushbuilding the unit (and you can get NON units if you bribe away from your own cities).

Bribing AI units is the same price as Barb units if the AI civ has no capital and no gold. But there are a 'distance to capital' effect and a 'treasury' effect, which make bribing an unit close to the capital of a wealthy civ very costly.