Quote Originally Posted by Quillan
That's really strange. I don't think I've had more than 2 cities bribed, total, in all the various campaigns I've played. I can't say why you'd be getting it constantly.
The Romans always just seem to hit a 'bribe threshold' from my perspective if I don't allow them to brutally expand like they normally do beyond their starting provinces and one rebel province they go for every single time at the start.

As the Gauls, Narbo Martius is preferred (in fact I see the Julii buy Narbo Martius one in every two games or thereabout), as the Greeks it's Thermon, as the Macedonians it's Bylazora and if I perform a German southern expansion they'll go for Iuvavum.

The problem playing as barbarian factions is that most settlements have a small enough population that the AI seems to feel it can 'get away' with it, as if I'm some kind of gibbering retard who it can fool into thinking it is playing 'perfectly legit guv'. As such if I ram so many units in a target that it thinks it might be pushing it, it just buys another place. So then I have to get into the enormously boring situation of building God damn hordes of assassins or yay, wandering one of the knuckleheaded morons about the place killing pathetic rebels by the hundred until he can actually perform the task of killing a defenceless diplomat on my own territory....and he'll die of old age soon anyway so I have to do it all over. Sorry, thought I bought a game called 'Total War'....

Simple solution? Uh....how about realism? Realism as in, "Why can't I just openly slaughter the visible agents of a faction I'm at war with?". I'm at WAR. It's the ancient world, there is no diplomatic immunity! If I don't want a Roman diplomat in my territory cause, y'know, I'm at WAR, then I send about thirty massive guys with real sharp swords and send his head back to Rome with a message saying their diplomat couldn't talk his way out of that one! Not one retard assassin to do it all sneaky like who will only walk into a guard and go "Oh! Sorry, didn't know you were there, can I kill your master?".