Use of Diplomats: RTW

In my opinion, CA has done a good job improving the diplomacy aspect of the game relative to what it used to be in STW/MTW.

So far, i've spotted the following great uses of diplomats:

1. making money for you in the early game: sell maps to rebels/minor factions that you know, won't attack you... (i guess, they can sell this info further to your real enemies though...). just wondering: do we start to make more money once we have discovered more of the map? anyway, this seems to be a GREAT money maker when you need it the most...

2. making money for your once you have an army in enemies territory but do not have enough to really destroy him: ask for tribute (each turn)! :cheers:

3. bribing foreign heirs: if you see another faction's family member with good traits (will need a spy to discover that): bribe him to join your forces... you get a decent general/administrator and his fomer army disappears...

4. clearing up small pieces of foreign armies: just bribe their captains and the armies disappear: it's cheap and effective...

5. opening up trade routes (self explanatory).

6. allying, requesting military access, etc.

7. making money selling provinces that you cannot afford to hold at the time (for example, after finishing a senate mission to some distant province, kill the populace and sell the remains to some barbarian faction...)

8. buying/bribing whole cities...

anything else that i have not noticed?

~:handball:

Tamur just released a great guide to diplomacy over in the Colosseum section.

Yes, just noticed Tamur's great guide to diplomacy. It seems comprehensive: great job, Tamur!

Nonetheless, I tried using the diplomat protection tactic suggested in the guide: i.e., select a spy and right click on the diplomat to have the spy follow him: it didn't work, sob, sob. :( and i cannot post in the colloseum section about it yet.

Was just digging through the threads here for something I lost (such a familiar activity at my age) and saw this... yes, that was wrong info I had received! You can't have a diplomat and a spy travel together unless they're both with an army unit.

I revised that on the 6th, but earlier versions of the guide said you could. :tomato:

That's what I get for publishing a piece of unchecked info...

I think bribing is a little overpowered though. For example: In the campaign as the brutii you can basically get so rich you don't have to fight a whole lot anymore.

That's the reason I try to resist the bribing temptation. In my previous campaign I did bribe and I ended up only fighting sieges and none of the normal battles.

And fighting the units is sometimes cheaper then bribing. Consider this. A few 100 bucks for bribing a unit consisting (for example) of 5 spearmen/ against taking a few horsemen (which you probably have laying around doing nothing somewhere) outflanking them and then destroying them.

It gets you experience, the unit gets experience, you'll be so much more satisfied ~D

Bribing might be a bit to good with a few fractions but in real life didnt these things happen quiet a lot you bought of the enemy with lots of gold...at least know that in later periods of rome and byzantium bribing was nearly as common as fighting...

yep - common because it was expensive to waste troops on a battle that was already won, and bribing supplied people to guard the area too