[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#5555) logic of city-bribing + lose gold if bribe fails

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, Genevieve Gracian wrote:
> The idea is that the cost for bribing a city can be lost for the attacker
> even when the bribe fails. That brings some questions on how works exactly
> a city-bribing.
...
> 3/ proposition about what becomes gold of the unlucky attacker:
>
> A 3 values "bribegold" option which can reflect those cases:
>
> 1 gold is kept by the attacker
> -> diplchance applies on reachability
> 2 gold goes to attacked nation (with application of corruption rate);
> -> diplchance applies on final act, actor is/are (a) public person(s)
> 3 gold is lost for everyone;
> -> diplchance applies on final act, actor are local armed people

I think option 2 here violates the principle of least surprise, since the
attacked party will often get gold seeminly out of nowhere. This is
because many players don't read notices (there are too many of them, they
just scroll by too fast, players don't know how to use the notices
dialog).

We have already increased bribe cost in cvs, and there is a patch to make
diplomats spend one movement point for each enemy diplomat snuffed out.
If/when both these changes are implemented, I think we should evaluate
whether this is enough to balance diplomats.

  - Per