Ok. You're the one with hands-on experience on this.

If the cards are not discarded at random, I think the suggestion of using a certain amount of face value points (for example 7) is worth a try, instead of a certain number of cards. It's much more likely you could buy off the crowd revolting with gems, than with ochre I'd say.

Not if they are hungry and there is no food!

I've tried putting a a requirement on it... the card simply was never (not once) bought. Ask Craig Bartell.

One basic general question: Why is the Civil War pay-off via trade cards limited to a theocracy? Many a monarch in history has squelched a rebellion by agreeing to the demands of the peasantry or the lower class - hence the German Peasants' War of 1525 (albeit in Early Modern Europe and not of ancient history; however, the principle applies nonetheless), in which disenfranchised and over-taxed "commoners" rose up to force concessions of their lords and prelates, many of whom "paid them off" in order to restore order. Potentially any government should be allowed to pay off its dissidents, have they the appropriate resources, and enough of them.

K J K Dalamant