Settlement bribery idea

ArchivedUser

The conversation came up yesterday on discord about ways for settlements to economically attack each other, other than attacking caravans, and I came up with the idea of warring settlements being able to (for a large sum of money) bribe city officials of their rivals to not do what they are told, such as building another tavern instead of doing the crucial works on the walls that they were meant to be doing. Maybe with the amount of money needed to bribe the city official increasing depending on happiness of citizens within the settlement, the less content the citizens are, the more likely they take your bribe to help overthrow their current leaders. However if the citizens are happy, they may take the money and warn the city leaders of the potential upcoming attack.

I feel this could add a way for rivalling settlements to contest with each other that is friendly for non-combat oriented players.

Please feel free to make suggestions on how to improve this idea, I'm sure I haven't thought of everything :P

ArchivedUser

If I'm not mistaken, I believe Steven briefly touched on just this subject, in either a podcast, or a you tube video. I can't quite remember, it all tends to blur. :P

Any ways, the devs are allowing for lots of differing methods of conflict, as opposed to the usual "shield and sword" type. Players can monopolize limited resources, plant spies in neighboring cities, to sabotage deals, or get wind of potential future deals with far off provinces, and beat your rivals to the punch, etc etc. Or, if amenable, there's always the option of hiring mercs to do your dirty work, while keeping your hands "clean", so to speak. If you're perused the guild forum, you'd see there are already plenty of merc guils, as well as others, recruiting.

The more I listen to all the plans for this game, the more I'm amazed at the complexity of the goals Intrepid is striving for. Pretty audacious stuff, to be honest. I really wondering (and hoping) if they can pull it all off.