The Tavern

hi.
Sentence using Google Translator. I hope to understand.
When Gozag appeared, I, the bribe branch of his power that was very exciting.
Beogh and Nemelex Xobeh without it getting colleagues to meet the wishes of the people want him.
I LIKE THAT. THANK.
but...
They require too much gold. Contract period and come back too soon. (NO.1 picture)
I think this is good, but this deal went unreasonable. and worse was the tyranny.

hey, How to use this power did I misunderstand?
This is a disappointing joke. very disappointing.

I suggest a change.
that,
A - I pay a deposit to a colleague, lowers the level pay.
1d30 + {colleague HD x [colleague HD - The total number of contracts with him(Limit is 10 or more)]}
It employs the beginning prevents strong targets.
B - Contract is to be extended several times higher, the longer the period of extension. bagic is 300turn. and, own 1 extension each + 15~30%turn(turn Limit is 2000 or less)
When the time is nearing a contract extension, [No.2] picture. siver mark is contract extension time is When less than 30%. gole mark is 15%.

I do not want to wish to all.
However, on the basis of this method, i want he was useful after.
Other suggestions are always welcome.
Thank reading.

Is a "Bribe Enemy" ability stepping too much on Ely's toes? Because it would definitely be a cool Gozag ability that would extend what I think is kind of an anemic ability set.

Maybe his views have changed since then (very old comment), but if you check out the dev wiki page on Gozag, dpeg was against having bribe enemy work more like enslavement or pacification, and he gives several good/compelling reasons for this:



https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:propose:gold

I think the basic idea of bribe branch as a strategic choice is fine, it just needs to be tweaked, as my experiences with it on a Gozag dude (whom I eventually ascended) were underwhelming. Ditto with call merchant.

A general thread for feedback on Gozag can be found here, by the way:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12313

(It is fine for a separate thread on Gozag's bribe ability, but if you have thoughts on other non-Bribe Branch stuff regarding Gozag, please post them in the general feedback thread.)

Bribe reduces branch inhabitants by x%, removing potential XP. If x% was low, bribe has y% chance of giving a perma-ally per branch floor, like Mercenary Card, no upkeep.

Bribe branch is kind of strange right now. In my Gozag game, I bribed 2 branches (Shoals then Vaults) with extremely different results. Shoals barely had anyone bribed - my count was 2 mermaids and 1 siren turned ally, 1 mermaid 1 merfolk and 1 impaler turned neutral. And that was it. The Bribe status light was still white color in Shoals after I left with the rune. I even took the time to fully explore each level (hoping for more merfolk to generate, ha).

It was very different in Vaults. Every other warden, convoker, or preserver is willing to be bribed it seems. (A quick glance at the code confirms this - Vaults residents *are* more susceptible. But orcs and demons are even more so.) So I ended up with a different problem. I started bribing on Vaults:1 and ended up exhausting the bribe fund by Vaults:4. It's too bad because I wanted to see how bribe affects the ambush party on V:5. Also, it seemed to me that turning neutral is a more desirable result than turning ally! Neutrals don't leave the level so they still fight/interfere with opponents (the difference I guess is you don't get XP). Allies do that too but on the other hand periodically pester you for money, but honestly the Vault allies at least aren't strong enough to be worth keeping around, so I ended up just killing them when they get uppity.

So I guess one big problem with Bribe Branch is that it depends so much on spoilery information. It's not clear to me why a merfolk impaler is a '2' in terms of bribe susceptibility while an orc warlord is a '5'. Ok, so in general tougher enemies are more bribable, but then why do Shoals and Zot top out at '3' while most other branches are '4' and some even top out at '5'? Smacks of flavor over gameplay.

With that said, in my experience Bribe Branch did work in Vaults. Mostly because dangerous pack enemies get broken up once a few members get bribed. Even though humans in Vaults are generally among the weaker inhabitants, they do nasty support stuff (convoking, might, sealing) so taking some out with money is still good. They're not very useful as allies though, IMO.

Suggestions to improve Bribe Branch:
1. Place information about susceptibility of each branch somewhere (maybe ^ screen, maybe on the prompt before bribing). Maybe this is already there but I just missed it?
2. Bribes turn enemies neutral only. Perma ally play is already available from other gods, and your merc asking for more money is just annoying. Neutral monsters who hang around the level promotes a different sort of gameplay than what you'd get from Beogh/Yred or from Ely, IMO. To compensate, possibly make the effect stronger.
3. Some monsters as allies are quite buggy - like siren ally which still keeps distance from you! Suggestion 2 would take care of this though.

Edit: maybe more balancing of branches is necessary. Deciding whether to bribe a branch should be an interesting decision - but as it stands for sure I'm not going to bribe Shoals again! Even raising their susceptibility scores might not be enough - there are just so fewer merfolk in Shoals than say orcs in the Mines.

There are no mechanics yet for supporting players who want to have freedom to pick and choose their permanent allies unfortunately. Gozag's bribe branch god power is pretty cool - much more interesting then random undead minions from Yred or the ever-so-useless suicidal orc priests/sorcs from beogh (sorry, don't feel like being shoehorned into having warlords as my only permanent allies that don't instantly die in depths+). I think this sort of mercenary/permanent ally play should be encouraged and really spices up the game.

By the way... all of the xp lost from friendly/allied monsters via bribe branch + the xp halved from allies taking it is a pretty significant handicap. We should all keep that in mind going forward.

its only with me that bribed sirens behave in a very weird way? they still try to keep distance from you, and will not go downstairs.
edit:
I disagree. there is too much XP in the game anyway.

This comment reminded me of a thread I had been meaning to post in GDD, and now have: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12888

Since it is closely related to some of the other issues raised here, I wanted to cross-reference that new thread here. I think it may be convenient for devs to have players relate experiences with bad interactions with allies in a single thread, since I imagine many of those will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

I posted on the other thread about the problems with bribe branch enemies before, but I'd like to make my own suggestion here.

How about Gozag allowing you to put a bounty on a creature?
This would turn everything hostile against it rather than make it an ally. It would be single target, and probably very expensive, but could be smite targeted.

It could allow targeting uniques, but also be very loud (firestorm style) which would attract everyone over to the target (and you). I can see this being useful throughout, but it's expensive nature would mean that you wouldn't be able to do it on every second dragon you see.

I