The one time that I know paying the extra cows matters is when you are recruiting only outside the clan. At standard rates you won't always get all the weaponthanes that you are looking for. This is probably situational, but it hasn't happened to me often enough for me to understand if there are certain factors affecting this, or if it is random. I have almost always played a balanced clan (I tried a peace clan once, but eventually had to change to balanced as we were just being beat up too badly), so I don't know if the clan type changes any of this, but I'd imagine recruiting could be harder in a peace clan and easier in a war clan.
There is the one event where some weaponthanes start trashing your neighbor's market, and I think that is triggered off of you recruiting outside the clan (sometimes you recruit idiots). I'm not sure whether it matters whether or not you offer the extra cow worth of goods.
Later on in the game, when I can usually afford it, I generally offer the extra cow worth of goods. I figure it can't hurt.
--Bryan
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