Anti-Bribery Techniques

Anyone know of any way (other than assassinating diplomats) to keep rival and rebel diplomats from bribing cities and characters away?

I'm having a lot of trouble with this on one campaign. I thought keeping my own diplomat in the city would keep them from being bribed, but that doesn't seem to work all the time. Any other ideas?

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In my BI/Franks/M-M campaign I see a rival diplomat hanging around my large town, doing his negot. animation etc. but nothing happens. Probably having spies in the town makes their work harder. I tend to rest one in every settlement 'cept forts.
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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

Anyone know of any way (other than assassinating diplomats) to keep rival and rebel diplomats from bribing cities and characters away?

I'm having a lot of trouble with this on one campaign. I thought keeping my own diplomat in the city would keep them from being bribed, but that doesn't seem to work all the time. Any other ideas?

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Put a spy or diplomat in each of your settlements (RTW anyway), this ends nearly all of the bribery activity, except around Rome from what I've seen. When you start taking out the big Roman cities, the AI goes wild trying to bribe settlements back. I prefer using spies in the settlements, as they also seem to stop enemy spies from killing loyalty, and assassins from sabotaging for the most part. I don't think diplomats are as effective at stopping bribes (afterall, the diplomats themselves get bribed.) I keep a family member with decent loyalty in bribe prone areas.

Return the favor. Train your own diplomats, have them bribe the other factions' diplomats, and then use your new army of diplos to bribe the hell out of everyone :deal:

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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

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In my BI/Franks/M-M campaign I see a rival diplomat hanging around my large town, doing his negot. animation etc. but nothing happens. Probably having spies in the town makes their work harder. I tend to rest one in every settlement 'cept forts.
.

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Your ob´s are correct Mouzafphaerre. Spies will thwart most bribery attempts. This is whhy I always have a spy in each of my armies and haven´t lost one yet!

I did lose a city recently with a diplomat in it (to another faction), but I think it was because there was a 20% decrease in the amount it costs to bribe the character inside the city. I'll just have to keep diplomats in more towns I think.

Thanks guys for confirming some of this.

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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

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In my BI/Franks/M-M campaign I see a rival diplomat hanging around my large town, doing his negot. animation etc. but nothing happens.
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This is typically a precursor to war. I remember in my campaigns pre-BI, whenever an ally or neutral diplomat started to get his scroll out and do nothing outside my settlements, they'd end up declaring war within a few turns.

But anyway, as everyone has said already, having more agents in the city or army will help prevent bribery attempts to be successful. I think it adds a considerable amount of money to the bribery cost, and that's often enough for the AI to forget about trying.

Unfortunately, you sometimes get AI factions become insanely rich, with enough money to bribe anything they want. In one game I played the Julii had treasury of millions of denarii.