[Freeciv] Re: autodiplomats

[John Wheeler <jdwheeler42@xxxxxxxxx>]

Personally, I'm not really happy with the
democracy/diplomat balance in the other way. 
Specifically, a little extra unhappiness does not
balance the complete immunity to bribery that
democracy gives.  I think it should be nearly
impossible to fight an offensive war as a democracy,
if they can't be bribed at all.

That said, bribery is sickening easy.  (I frequently
wait until I can have several transports full of spies
before I begin my world conquest phase.)  As far as I
can tell, bribing units never fails -- I think it
would be entirely appropriate if there be a chance
that a unit being bribed will attack the diplomat
instead (say, base 10% chance if the government of the
bribed is anarchy, x2 for despotism, x3 for Monarchy,
x4 Communism, x5 for Repulic, x9 for Democracy; and x2
if the supporting city is happy, /2 if unhappy.) 
These factors could also be used for costs for bribing
cities, and perhaps (10 - X) could be used for the
bribing government.  (Naturally, if desired these
could be server variables.)  I also miss the option
Civ2 had of paying 2x to subvert a city to avoid an
incident.  And I do agree with the idea of losing the
money whether the bribery is successful or not.  So,
if a city that now costs 1000 gold to bribe would go
to 126000 for a monarchy to bribe a happy city in a
democracy, or 15000 for communists to bribe an unhappy
city in a republic.

However, I do think it should be fairly easy to bribe
back a city that's just been conquered, so maybe /50
if the city was originally yours -- since there is a
message about "liberating" a city when you take it
back, I assume that there is some way this is kept
track of.

++JohnWheeler

P.S.  Since despotism and Democracy both begin with
'D', I'm using capital letters to represent the ones
that have to be researched.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com