city bribe question

Smash · December 10, 1999, 05:07

Does homing my defenders from other cities have any effect on the ghastly act of city bribing?
ie-if I have 3 defenders from 3 different cities defending a city,is there any effect to the briber?

finbar · December 10, 1999, 05:58

Unlikely, I think. The equation for calculating the cost of bribing a city includes treasury balance, distance from capital, and city size. The only modifier in terms of units (city defenders) seems to be the fact that an undefended city cuts the purchase price in half. Apart from that, there's no other reference to units in the equation.

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finbar
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BlackJack · December 10, 1999, 15:43

I thought there was a third consideration in bribery cost - city improvements???

Sten Sture · December 10, 1999, 16:23

From http://ltswww.epfl.ch/~winkler/civ2.html

Calc is ((Foreign gold + 1000)/(Dip or spy to Foreign Capital distance+3))x city size

Mods: (with corrections as noted below)
Disorder *50%
Undefended *50%
Founded by Your Civ *50%
Spy *5/6 or Vet Spy *2/3
(an undefended city in disorder that you originally founded can be bribed back by your vet spy for 8.333% of its calculated cost)

Courthouse reduces distance to half actual
Commie distance <11
Destroyed palace distance = 32

[This message has been edited by Sten Sture (edited December 13, 1999).]

Aaron Burr · December 10, 1999, 17:16

Minor clarification of Sten's excellent summary:

Instead of 'used to be your city - 50%'

it should be,
'city was founded by you -50%'

In other words, you don't get a discount if you capture a city, lose it, and bribe it back.

Smash · December 10, 1999, 21:39

Hmmm..I don't think I get this.Lets see

I have 5oo gold and the city is 10 squares away.Size 6.Does that mean-1500 + 10 x 6.Thats over 9000 gold.That can't be right.

SandMonkey · December 11, 1999, 00:45

Smash -

I think you had a mathmatical error.

[(500+1000)/(10+3)]*6

aprox. 115.38 * 6

692.30....

so a civ with 500 gold with a size 6 city 10 squares away from the cap would cost you 692 gold, theoretically, if i have figured it out right.

Now that i look at your answer again, you just simply missed some of the operations. First, you have to divide the first group by the second group, not add. Then once you get that total you have to multiply that by 6.
[This message has been edited by SandMonkey (edited December 10, 1999).]

Smash · December 11, 1999, 07:39

Thnx-been awhile since algebra class

Sarxis · December 12, 1999, 06:18

There is also one more point to this calculation: the side of the city that your bribing unit (spy, diplomat) is standing on can make a big difference. In other words, always try to move your bribing unit to a side of the city that is farthest from the capital- the difference in cost can be quite high. Here is a link taken from here http://members.xoom.com/wilsong/civ2strategy2.html http://members.xoom.com/wilsong/images/incitecost.jpg

Sten Sture · December 13, 1999, 19:01

Excellent points all!

I'll repeat it if you didn't get it from Anunikoba's clear post and the handy link - the "distance" is dip to captital not city to capital.

Xin Yu · December 13, 1999, 19:27

Wow, according to the formula, if I bribe a city which was mine, and it is in disorder, and it has no unit, then the amount is discounted by -150% and I can earn money from bribing!

Sten Sture · December 13, 1999, 19:59

Xin - hahaha!

Please correct your notes to read * 50% not -50%

(*50%*50%*50%) = 12.5%

This reminds me of the old stock question: if your stock goes up 100% then down 50% how much did you make? (zero)

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If you can not think of a really good reason why you should build something other than a caravan, build a caravan. - jpk

Xin Yu · December 13, 1999, 20:12

Sten: Thanks for answering my message so quickly. I have a real question though. According to my experience from checking the saved files (I actually checked the binary codes), if you lose a city then your civ becomes the previous owner of the city. This means

a) if you lose a city to civ A, then it loses it again to civ B, your bribing price from civ B will not be halved (civ A will become the previous owner of the city).

b) if you get a city from another civ, then lose it, then the bribing price should be halved.

And I doubt that after certain number of turns the previous owner previlage will be gone.

Sten Sture · December 13, 1999, 20:16

That makes sense to me Xin, it would be hard for the program to keep track of the original founder. (welcome to the west coast, we are in afternoon work mode!)

Xin Yu · December 13, 1999, 20:38

Suppose Chinese destroyed Roman, then occupied English's capital. The English empire splitted into two--English and Russia. Now will the English be able to bribe Russian cities for half price? Will the Russian be able to bribe Chinese cities (which were occupied Roman cities--same color) for half price? I think the answer to the second question is (ridicularly) yes, but I'm not sure about the first.