yes, i get the occaisonal army wandering or standing around in my territory. usually, i can either bribe them or they simply go away. however, it IS annoying that one can use a diplomatic solution of 'hey, you bloody invader, you have NO military access rights! didnt you see the no hunting, fishing or tresspassing signs we posted at the borders?'. this is the ONE missing diplomatic function that is REALLY needed!

i also find it a bit annoying that i cant offer bribes at times. this is usually when there is a family member in the offending army/unit. i suppose one of their v&v's is honesty or something, so the choice to 'bribe' doesnt come up. i'd have preferred that the option showed and when attempted i just got some indignant response, but, oh well.

i also find i annoying that i cant choose how many units will remain active when i attempt to bribe. the game just says captain so and so will join your faction and one other unit. the rest will return to wherever. what a strange thing to do. and it seems quite random how many units will remain and how many will disband. on cities, when bribing the entire city, ALL units disband! hey, wait a minute, i NEED those guys to quell the unrest created by turning over the city! and trust me, i've lost several cities on the next turn by rebelling cities. if i've got the money, let me buy at least some city militia to keep the populace under control during the bribe. i mean, come on; we all know the city is going to be ill at ease over new ownership and we shld be able to at least bribe a few peasants to keep order for a turn or two.

as for keeing out new wandering armies, i've found that forts at the choke points do a pretty good job. the armies i've seen heading for my territory come up to the forts, have a look around, mabye stay for a turn or two and then wander away again. i do have one carthaginian army that's been hanging around corduba for ages, but he's the army that got kicked out of the city when i bought it and he seems pretty much attached to staying there. it's also got a family member in it, so i cant bribe him gone. i did manage to get him to move a bit when i broke an alliance with numidia when carthage and numidia went to war together, but i forced the peace by re-allying with numidia and the carthaginian army in my territory decided all was cool and took up residence again. so, being a good diplomat, i let him sit there and park a diplomat next to him and that army is now my 'embassy' with carthage. when you get lemons, make lemonade, i guess :)

meanwhile, i've been cheating like crazy, giving myself money, population, new buildings and attempting to 'create_unit'. havent figured out how to do that last one yet. the whole idea here is to set up a game using the cheats to get spain how i want it and i was just too lazy to mod all the files i would need to do this. so, i just started over and used the cheat codes to get things in order. i've got all the cities in spain and couple remote provinces i bought and increased the size of Numantia, the central city and made it my capital, so i'm about ready to 'play fair' now.

i dont play a great deal every day, so all this is taking a bit of time to set up. the world is mostly at peace with the romans being constantly at war with greece and carthage, as normal and a few other wars going on for a short time here and there. the julii did try to take one of my remote provinces, but i bought out the armies and they then accepted a ceasefire. amazing what a little money can do :)

K.