Diplomacy

[Gneisenau]

How about diplomacy system and d relecance in eb2? In m2tw is very bad, in a mod like bellum crucis is very important but very difficult and expensive ( money and region gifted) for mantein peace and alliance

[Ibrahim]

How about diplomacy system and d relecance in eb2? In m2tw is very bad, in a mod like bellum crucis is very important but very difficult and expensive ( money and region gifted) for mantein peace and alliance

we've actually gone ahead and begun to take steps to deal with that. to give you an idea of how well it *could* work, I had a war with Carthage play-testing Massylia, and through a series of quick moves (amphibious landing by Gades, defeat of a Carthaginian Army near Garama, alliances with Iberian tribes as counter), they quick sued for peace. It's become known as the "Garama Incident". It lasted only 1 turn.

whether it will do what you have in mind? not so sure. I best leave that to someone else more knowledgeable on the subject than myself.

[I_damian]

Getting the AI in Total War to behave in a logical way is probably impossible and I would never expect the EB team (or any other mod team) to be able to fix it. I look forward to EB2 being of the highest quality, I know it will be, but I expect diplomacy to be more-or-less absent. This wouldn't be the EB team's fault, it's just the way the Total War games are.

In Shogun 1 and Medieval 1 the AI was actually quite competent in diplomacy. They would attack you when they thought they could win, they would pounce on you when you were weak and they would accept ceasefire when they knew they were beaten. With Rome 1, however, graphics and eye candy became the primary focus of the series because graphics were now excellent, so from Rome 1 onwards the focus of the game is battles, battles and more battles. The campaign map exists solely to get you into battles and the diplomacy system is just kind of tacked-on at the end to give the illusion of something deeper.

In Rome 1 and Medieval 2 the AI will be somewhat sensible in its diplomacy for the first few years of a campaign but after that they abandon diplomacy entirely. The only condition they require to declare war on the player is "Do we share a border?". If you do share a border, they will declare war. If you share a border they will never accept peace and if they do they break that peace the very next turn. Even when you are an almighty empire and they are just 1 province and all they have is 1 unit of barbarian warband they STILL declare war every turn.

Diplomacy got better with Empire, Shogun 2 and Rome 2 but it's still fairly crappy... the AI still very often refuses to make peace when they're crushed. So yeah, don't expect too much from the diplomacy side of things and you won't be disappointed. In Rome 1 (and EB1) there's a mod called "Force Diplomacy" where you can force the AI to accept any demand (within reason) which greatly improves the game. If you don't abuse the function and you use it to create a realistic environment then it's one of the best mods ever created for Rome Total War. What I usually do with it is create buffer zones between me and a beaten enemy. You'll find the AI in Rome and Med 2 is much more sensible where diplomacy is concerned when they don't share a border with you.

[Ludens]

In Shogun 1 and Medieval 1 the AI was actually quite competent in diplomacy.

It's been a long time since I played either game, but as I recall it, the strategic A.I. wasn't particularly good in either. It's just that diplomacy was very rudimentary, so there wasn't much that could go wrong. Due to the way the campaign was set up, it was also far easier for the A.I. to assess your strength and marshal its forces. The A.I. cheated as well: if I recall correctly, it could see more of neighbouring provinces than you did. And lets not forget those games had their own set of quirks: the M:TW A.I. tended to start naval wars for no reason whatsoever. (My hypothesis is that, because ships made use of the "agent" mechanism rather than the "army" mechanism, the A.I. treated navies as it did assassins. Removing an enemy assassin was not the same as a declaring a war, so the A.I. didn't consider diplomatic status when attacking navies.)

That doesn't detract from your point that the diplomatic A.I. in R:TW (and to a lesser extent M2:TW) was very poor. I still think I had some success with the "regular tribute"-method, though. I believe the "friendship-rating" mechanism is unbalanced, and this can be countered by a token regular tribute. That way the diplomatic is at least reasonable (as opposed to the usual rabid hatred of the player), if not exactly smart.

[I_damian]

I never had any success with any of the diplomatic methods (and I read all those guides, the long ones by FrogBeastEgg and others) but none of it ever made any difference. I always play my Total War games on hard campaign, medium battle difficulty. On medium campaign difficulty the AI is more reasonable in diplomacy. Still stupid, but more reasonable. They'll accept a ceasefire when they're beaten and keep it for a while. Allies won't betray you so quickly, but medium campaign difficulty is boring - the AI doesn't recruit enough troops to be a challenge, the troops they do recruit are all skirmishers and bare-bones basic infantry (like Lugoae (sp) in the case of EB) so I have to play on hard... and just ignore diplomacy for the most part.

Like I said though, if you use the force diplomacy mod to put some distance between the border of you and your foe, like letting a province rebel, the AI is MUCH more sensible. It's as if they're programmed to be dicks if they border you but programmed to behave properly if they don't.