An interesting investment - the power of bribes

[TEP]

I'm currently on my first campaign - as Julii. Since the Prologue was my entire TW experience, Med/Med seemed a reasonable difficulty.
Having conquered about 5 provinces, I moved east into Illyria and took Segestica. Salona was held by the Brutii, and because I felt that it would round off my lands nicely, and with a view to the inevitable Civil War, I decided to try my hand at bribing.

I bought Salona for about 12.000 - I had ~30.000 so OK.
Next turn, the Senate ordered me to return Salona to the Brutii within 10 turns. As a principle, i try to complete the Senate missions, but I wasn't going to let it go easy. I did the math, and was somewhat surprised:
10 turns of taxes (high/very high) ~5.000 (more actually, since this excludes Salonas share of the military upkeep, and I had only a small garrison there)
Nearly 8.000 from the Brutii when I sold Salona back to them ( I tried for a long term deal of 200 for 50 turns, but when they countered with this one off sum , I took it.)
Nearly 1.000 for the buildings in Salona. (Told you I wasn't going to let it go easy.)
1.000 from the Senate for completing the mission.
In addition, I transferred 2 units of peasants - all I could recruit - to my capital.
Result: A decent return on my "investment" plus I got points with the Senate and hampered my rivals the Brutii.

Encouraged by my success, I tried to bribe some Brutii units as well, and found them ridiculously cheap. I now buy all the Roman units I can get my hands on - they are cheap and don't cost me population - but it feels like an exploit. It seems that you can completely incapacitate your rival factions in this way, getting tons of cheap units in the process.

For those of you who managed to get here without falling asleep: thank you for reading, and please comment.

[desdichado]

Tep,

I think most people that like a challenge limit or stop altogether bribing. I have not bribed a single army after learning how stupidly cheap it is. AI has enough problems without this.

Shame as seems a step back from MTW in this area! hopefully easy to fix with a patch or mod.

[Owen]

Interesting analysis. I think it's overly simple, but the conclusions would be the same.

On the one hand, you have compared bribing cities with just leaving the money sat in your treasury. You should have either compared it with the alternative uses of your money (either building armies and conquering cities or building infrastructure) or used a discount rate (at a guess something like 5% or so).

That said, you haven't attached any value to the damage caused to your competitors, so I would expect the analysis to still be ultimately positive.

Given how cheap it seems, I think I will be bribing a load of Scipii African armies and cities when the civil war finally starts. I expect that to be cheaper than the building and maintenance cost I'd have to pay to form my own there.

[Akka]

It's common knowledge, that bribing is insanely powerful, and ridiculously cheap. You can get entire armies for a fraction of their price, instantly and without losing population.

Expect it to be SERIOUSLY toned down into the patch.

[Siris]

Yea, its always too high but fine at the start, some guys whine about it, then they go and tone it down in the next patch, and make it freaking hard to bribe anymore. Frankely we just need to keep it the way it is, stop moaning, and have fun!

[TEP]

Thanks for the comments, guys!

I realise my analysis is just a rough estimate. I did it mainly to see what my personal rule of fulfilling Senate missions would run me, and I was satified that I came out ahead.
I really wanted that province - it has gold and stuff as well, on top of its strategic importance, so any decent investment analysis would have favored keeping it (and telling the Senate to go fly a kite).
Still, I can always bribe it again.
This is my very first campaign, so nothing is common knowledge to me yet, though I had seen in these forums that people found bribes to be too powerful.
I still couldn't believe my eyes when I bribed a unit of Hastati for less (I think) than it costs to train - that is just ridiculous. I agree that it needs to be toned down some, but I also agree with Siris that it shouldn't be too much.

I will invent some "house rules" about bribes in addition to my self imposed Senate policies. All in all, as my first campaign progresses, I am finding the going a bit too easy for what is supposed to be Medium difficulty, so probably more "house rules" are forthcoming.

As far as I can see, most people on these forums play on hard/v. hard difficulty. I might try that, at least for the campaign, but I really don't like the AI "cheating", and I understood that Medium is where things are evenly balanced. Is this correct?

[Akka]

Considering the insane amount of money you can get in the game (I usually count my denarii by millions), it'll be hard to make bribes TOO expensives...

[Doug-Thompson]

One thing I like about bribing: It brings the game to a swift conclusion.

Face it: The interesting portion of the game is the opening moves and on through big battles in mid-game. After that, we're all trying to administer empires while conquering the required 50 provinces, including Rome.

Some folks like administration, but they don't really get the option. If they play a Roman faction, the Senate keeps giving them missions that get them into wars. If they're not Roman, they are usually fighting against Romans who have missions from the Senate that get them into wars. The game's pacing is much more action-oriented than M:TW.

Once your empire's established and you're rich enough, you can bribe your way to victory. That's fine by me, but I wish the game had some "Glorious Achievment:"-type options for players who want that sort of thing.