About the Amazons

[Maltz]

Hello: The Amazons are mysterious female-warrior culture of this time period. RTW put them in a strange far-away kingdom on the north edge of the map. They are visible when you play as Scythia. Your north town borders the Amazons (as Rebel). There is a gold mine on the strategy map. To get there you need to cross a large swamp, going into the forest & crossing a river. Starting from the closest town it will take a good 5-year march.

I sometimes find bribing "owned" towns super expansive. When I played as the Brutii some Persian towns also asked me for 200k. I guess high bribe price is usually because:

(1) Garrison size: proportional to their size + quality. Family members boost the cost of bribing like 5 times.

(2) Current buildings: apparantly you have to buy not only the lands, but also the houses. For well-developed towns I get 200k offerings, or no offering at all probably because I don't have enough cash...(? or it is their capital) So I suppose later in the game few towns are really buyable - unless the players are also millionairs. Perhaps population counts, too?

(3) Presence of spy: In one case I found 2 spies raised the price from 10k to 70k. If I agree I also bought the spies over.

(4) Presence of diplomat: I don't remember any example. Maybe they don't even make a difference...? I am not sure.

(5) Difficulty level: When I replayed the tutorial everything was so cheap to bribe, about half-price or less as I had In VH difficulty. In VH a typical, 1000-men, 4-building, 3-garrison rebel town costs about 6k to bribe. I have not compared with the other difficulties, though.

I think I was indeed lucky to bring a HA-heavy army. I guess HA is the solution so many things - they are almost invincible on the field!