The Ridiculousness of Bribery, or why I stopped playing TATW

**Adonnus** · October 16, 2015, 01:32 AM

About 55 turns into my High Elven campaign I experienced something truly amazing. One of my largest armies, at a pretty crucial time when I was at war with Isengard, OOTMM and Gundabad, was bribed by Grima Wormtongue. As wormy as his tongue may be it makes absolutely 0 sense that my army could be bribed by anybody, let alone an enemy - they're Elves.

Blinking out of incredulity the turn ended with OOTMM using their diplomat to, yes, bribe Imladris out of my hands. No words.

**tgoodenow** · October 16, 2015, 01:41 AM

Originally Posted by Adonnus

About 55 turns into my High Elven campaign I experienced something truly amazing. One of my largest armies, at a pretty crucial time when I was at war with Isengard, OOTMM and Gundabad, was bribed by Grima Wormtongue. As wormy as his tongue may be it makes absolutely 0 sense that my army could be bribed by anybody, let alone an enemy - they're Elves.

Blinking out of incredulity the turn ended with OOTMM using their diplomat to, yes, bribe Imladris out of my hands. No words.

Did you have a general in your stack?

**LuckyPistol** · October 16, 2015, 04:55 AM

Christ man, how broke were you!?

**Joseignacio** · October 16, 2015, 05:25 AM

This is a consequence of the bribing system in Kingdoms, used by TATW. It doesn't make sense speaking of elves because of their supposed profile, "perfect" and incorruptible and all. It's difficult to say if it would have been a good idea to amputate this function for the sake of coherence with LOTR or leave it respecting the Kingdoms design.

I have had many small (2, 3 units without leader) armies bribed, but never a full stack or even half and, of course none with a leader (I select leaders with the first filter in loyalty).

**Adonnus** · October 16, 2015, 09:56 PM

Originally Posted by Joseignacio

This is a consequence of the bribing system in Kingdoms, used by TATW. It doesn't make sense speaking of elves because of their supposed profile, "perfect" and incorruptible and all. It's difficult to say if it would have been a good idea to amputate this function for the sake of coherence with LOTR or leave it respecting the Kingdoms design.

I have had many small (2, 3 units without leader) armies bribed, but never a full stack or even half and, of course none with a leader (I select leaders with the first filter in loyalty).

I don't think there's any need for this feature anymore. The races and cultures are simply so different in Middle Earth that bribery as a tool isn't feasible. Never minding the Elven incorruptibility, which just makes the whole charade even more absurd. They got rid of traders after all.

And I didn't have a general. I did suspect that was part of the problem. My general in my large army had an untimely death, and the garrison at Rivendell was also leaderless. At any rate I don't have an earlier save since, who could have thunk it, I never suspected this would happen

**tgoodenow** · October 17, 2015, 03:10 AM

Originally Posted by Adonnus

I don't think there's any need for this feature anymore. The races and cultures are simply so different in Middle Earth that bribery as a tool isn't feasible. Never minding the Elven incorruptibility, which just makes the whole charade even more absurd. They got rid of traders after all.

And I didn't have a general. I did suspect that was part of the problem. My general in my large army had an untimely death, and the garrison at Rivendell was also leaderless. At any rate I don't have an earlier save since, who could have thunk it, I never suspected this would happen

I feel you pain man but as others said it's hardcoded. As far as for having a general for the garrison, it is always more cost effective in the long run to have someone governing the province as those governing traits add up real fast.

**riuk881** · October 16, 2015, 11:11 PM

In all my many many campaigns I've never seen a settlement bribed away from me.

**Vifarc** · October 17, 2015, 05:12 PM

Don't put only one general in a large army. You must have some backup of commandment.

**Adonnus** · October 18, 2015, 06:28 AM

Originally Posted by Vifarc

Don't put only one general in a large army. You must have some backup of commandment.

That's just as a result of Imladris being isolated from the rest of my Empire - and I used all my other generals as (very effective) constantly replenishing heavy cavalry. Money's not really a problem for me, troops are

**Joseignacio** · October 19, 2015, 02:34 AM

If you lose your general, try to have a couple of Heroic victories and you most probably will be offered to promote one from your ranks, especially if you have few of them. Heroic victories, or similar, are not what it's name implies, it just depends on how many enemies you kill and how many of your people dies, I believe, so they are not so difficult to get against low quality huge ranks of orcs, even more if you have some cavalry to increase the damage when they rout.

Riuk, I had a settlement bribed once or twice, small ones, almost undefended, anyway, that's true.

**Patronus** · October 22, 2015, 09:39 AM

Yeah bribing and elves dying kind of ruins the experience lore-wise for me. The diplomacy system as a whole has issues (no fault of the mod, but rather the game). I have had numerous incidents of allies attacking allies or even attacking me (depending on the size and location of my kingdom). I realize that these are hard coded features....isn't possible for modders to get their hands on the source code at this point? MTW 2 is no longer being updated or supported so why can't we, the end users, modify it to our liking?

**Flinn** · October 22, 2015, 11:35 AM

Hello Patronus

IIRC on Vanilla TATW alliances are almost ubreakeable (only if an Invasion is called); I'm not sure whether is it still so for the main sub-mods anyway

**Patronus** · October 23, 2015, 02:46 PM

Originally Posted by Flinn

Hello Patronus

IIRC on Vanilla TATW alliances are almost ubreakeable (only if an Invasion is called); I'm not sure whether is it still so for the main sub-mods anyway

Alliances in Vanilla TATW are definitely not unbreakable...that's why most of the faction guides advise players to refrain from capturing cities/settlements that adjacent allies are interested in.

Like I've said, I've had more than a few incidents where allies have abruptly broken off their alliances and attacked me, with no provocation on my part.

**Ngugi** · October 23, 2015, 03:08 PM

They practically are; in TATW, in difference to M2 (IIRC), no faction can attack an ally unless they send a diplomat and dissolve the alliance first, and really can't recall I ever seen that happend.
Otherwise it's only if you end up in a war with an other ally of theirs and they chose to remain allied with the other faction, or if you're allied with an evil faction that join an Invasion against you, that the alliances break, and the former AI ally can start to attack you.

If you experience treacherous allies under other circumstances, your download and/or install ought to be corrupt, because it's not supposed to be like that.
Unless you use some further submod that changed the mechanics.