France

[easytarget]

When playing as France is there any way you can maintain an alliance with England or is it a waste of time? Or I should say simply a temporary solution at the outset of the campaign used to prep for invading the island?

I want to know if I have a diplomatic option of ally with them and HRE and focus south on Spain and Portugal or whether I do in fact have to remove England (and Scotland for that matter) from the picture because no matter what one does they are going to break treaties and attack you regardless.

[druzhina]

When playing as France is there any way you can maintain an alliance with England or is it a waste of time? Or I should say simply a temporary solution at the outset of the campaign used to prep for invading the island?

I want to know if I have a diplomatic option of ally with them and HRE and focus south on Spain and Portugal or whether I do in fact have to remove England (and Scotland for that matter) from the picture because no matter what one does they are going to break treaties and attack you regardless.

Yes, you have that option. Try it and see.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

[Gregoshi]

In my HRE campaign, France left me alone for a long time. It was only in the latter stages of the campaign that they became aggressive towards me. I'd imagine it might be possible for the reverse to be true as well.

[easytarget]

Well, I decided there was no way England was going to leave me alone given they are stuck in Caen at the beginning of the campaign, so I didn't really give much thought to truly forming an alliance with them. I've not yet gone to war with them either.

Which brings me to something I do have a bit of an issue with, the HRE at turn 25 have just put one of my castles under siege. This is the same HRE I formed an alliance with by marriage, something I was sort of under the impression was supposed to last for a bit, but apparently all this talk about how these are stronger alliances is all talk. In one turn, and with me checking diplomacy relations every turn for the specific purposes of seeing whether my allies are going to turn on me, I went from good relations and alliances with HRE and Milan to HRE basically blowing off an alliance by marriage and Milan breaking our alliance because of HRE doing so.

This has led me to conclude that diplomacy in MTW2 is as much bullshit as it is in every TW w/ the exception ironically enough of S2. I formed alliances in S2 I maintained through to a Long Campaign victory, yes, post RD all the way to the end. Here, I can't get 25 turns into a campaign and I'm at war with what should be a blood alliance, I mean I've still got a general showing up in my family tree from the freaking HRE.

I find this in short, beyond stupid.

[Gregoshi]

Are you playing vanilla, Stainless Steel or another mod?

[easytarget]

This is plain ole vanilla. And I'm not expecting such an alliance to last forever mind you, just a short to medium term so I have enough time to execute a strategy based off it.

When I send the Princess I start the game with to a Nation to form an alliance I'm making a decision the game should respect otherwise it makes the entire mechanic pointless and draws into question whether I should bother with diplomacy at all.

I find this disappointing. And it's the whole reason I started this thread. If no one in the immediate vicinity of France is going to abide by treaties I won't bother assuming they are worth the trouble to initiate and I'll ignore this part of the game.

[Gregoshi]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Often, it is just the suddenness of the change in attitude that is annoying. To go from trusted ally to being at war with the snap of a finger doesn't seem right.

In my HRE campaign, I had kind of the opposite problem with the Moors. They'd attack me and a few turns later ask for peace. Then a few years later they'd attack me again and then again ask for peace a few turns later. I must have fought about ten "wars" with the Moors.

[easytarget]

Yeah, you at least expect it to erode over time, and it certainly doesn't feel right when in 25 turns it's gone, especially based on a marriage alliance. And in your example I've run across that too, both in MTW2 and R2, it's like something triggers/untriggers over and over.

I wonder in my case whether sharing a border increases the likelihood the alliance won't hold. I've got one also with byzants, and share no border with them, might see if that one lasts. barring other circumstances of course that might affect it.

And I just had another thought, I might try a French campaign where I start by working to kick the English out of Caen and then send a diplomat to the island to sue for peace, if they take it, might be able to get an alliance working since we'd no longer share a border (assuming that theory holds any water).

[Gregoshi]

Worth a try. I'd imagine sharing a border would increase the likelihood of war due to overlapping spheres of influence. I tried what you did with getting (or trying to get) alliances with which I share no borders. It seemed to help until my expansion made us neighbors. I had an okay alliance with the Russians until I knocked out Poland. And come to think of it, Hungary was one of my first, if not the first, ally in the first few turns of the game and they remain loyal throughout the whole campaign. So it seems like it is possible, but I imagine the odds may be stacked more heavily in favour of war rather than peace in these cases.

[easytarget]

Yeah, it does appear I'm in for war with most everyone, with just brief breaks in between. I realize that's the nature of the game, but I'm still a bit disappointed I guess because I have a hard time not comparing the diplomacy to Shogun 2. I'm not saying there's anything all that magical about Shogun 2, but then I am saying that in S2, FOTS and ROTS I managed to keep alliances together for long stretches and the same for vassals. It most definitely added an additional level of complexity and nuance to the campaign and more options as to how to execute it.

I'll keep running through MTW2 campaigns seeing if I can find the pattern, I certainly found one in S2. I suspect one will emerge here as well, just so far I'm missing it.

[Gregoshi]

One of the problems with computer games is not knowing the internal logic programmed into it. When something unexpected happens you have to wonder "is it a bug?" or "what internal game logic caused that to happen?". If you were playing a board game, you could consult the rules to determine the outcome of a situation. We don't have that luxury in pc gaming. Human nature being what it is, we automatically assume it is a @&^#$ bug! And that is why computer games can be so frustrating.

In your princess situation, what were all the variable that went into the decision to go to war with you? Did that general or the princess die? Did her negative traits play into it? Did some other event(s), known or unknown, increase the likelihood of an attack on you? Or is it just dodgy programming?

[easytarget]

Well, you know, previously I had started one as England and had in fact gotten their general dead and it was pretty cool they took offense to that and attacked me next turn.

Here though nothing had happened in the campaign yet, I sent the Princess to the closest HRE castle the 1st turn, so she got there at like turn 3 and we had an alliance. She didn't have much in the way of any traits as I recall, really just a one heart boring Princess. I did take the closest castle held by rebels that bordered the HRE empire, hence the reason I've focused on the possibility that sharing a border is a potential trigger for hostilities.

I think you'll appreciate this, once they laid siege to my castle we were still on good relations diplomatically, and it eroded over time as I repelled them. My point being you could not predict this happening based on looking at your diplomatic relationship status, now that is where I consider this a game design issue that I can only assume they addressed in later games, because I see relationships go bad in S2 and R2 in advance of them happening, not always with much warning, but certainly not something as absurd as this where we're supposedly still on Good diplomatic relationships at the exact moment they are laying siege to my castle.

[Gregoshi]

It is just a little lovers' spat, easy.

[easytarget]

haha, no doubt

I decided to fall back to an earlier save and see if I could make this work differently. I decided to double down on HRE, they sent a princess for trade rights (can't believe I hadn't already done that w/ a diplo) so I accepted trade and married her to a faction heir, so I've now got a two marriage alliance going with the guys.

And I allied with Milan and Papal so I could forestall what seems to be a bit of an inevitable juggernaut from Milan, those guys make some money, and they appear to not only spend it on armies, those armies quickly decide to attack France at our common border. I'm not expecting that one to last so I'll need to prepare for them. The Pope though and HRE I'm going to try and keep together. One flaw with I anticipate potentially is HRE hacking off the Pope at some point, getting excom'd and the Pope say you need to ditch'em.

We shall see. No matter how it plays out, I love this game. Between this and Shogun 2 I've still got a lot of gaming left to do!!

[Gregoshi]

As HRE, Milan was a pain to deal with too. And you are right - their pockets are deep.

I like the marriage to the faction heir - that should make things a bit more solid between you and the Germans. Hope that works out for you.

You are really agitating my itch to start up another campaign. Maybe this weekend.

[easytarget]

I'll be honest, I can't stop playing this one. It's like Risk in the middle ages. Nothing is ever quite the same from one turn to the next.

I'm thinking the only way to handle Milan is either alliance and try to contain them (risky because they will probably just sit, collect stacks and attack you anyway) or alternatively attack them early in the campaign with the goal of knocking them out. I've done that as England, and while they got one stack free that sneaked off in some direction I never figured out where (possibly off the coast on the island), I booted them off the Italian peninsula where they were such a headache. That did then embroil me in battles with Venice and Sicily, there's not much way to avoid that, but the upside is Milan is managed out of the picture and neither Venice nor Sicily usually prove to be major expressionistic powers.

Hope you get the itch, I need someone to talk to about tactics and strategies.

[Incoherencel]

IIRC, there is a diplomacy bug in vanilla Medieval II that eventually causes everyone to despise you, documented here:
http://t-a-w.blogspot.ca/2009/11/why...edieval-2.html

I can't say whether or not it's been patched out since, but it may be a factor. Stainless Steel fixed this bug as well, I believe.

[Gregoshi]

Thanks for the link Incoherenced. That was quite helpful.

[easytarget]

So, just wrapped up playing another one as France (yeah, time to play someone other than France or England). This one was so much fun, kept Papal State and HRE as allies the entire campaign. Once I'd took over central Europe, and taken over all of Spain, I was faced with whether to move into Italy, take over England and spread north up against Denmark.

I decided due to an alliance at the time with Milan (those guys can be pesky) who were allied with England and Denmark that I didn't need a three font war on my hands so I took every army I had at the time and stuck'em on boats and sailed off to the middle east. I figured I might was well institute my own French led Crusade, asked the Pope to declare one on Jerusalem once I had landed and proceeded to have a nice little war with Egypt. Once I'd kicked them about for a bit they sued for peace and when I countered with vassal to my surprise they took it, this was at a point where they still held like 7 or 8 cities/castles, so this was quite the prize and pushed me w/in 3 or 4 of the total I needed for victory.

Milan attacked me after I retaliated on Denmark and England for hitting me in my homeland, so to bring matters to a close I held off Denmark and England and decided I'd wipe Milan off the map and proceeded to take them out on Italian peninsula and won the campaign taking their last island city off the coast.

Absolute blast yet again. The challenges of diplomacy with other nations, the plagues that slow you downand ruin your economy and armies, the Pope who slows you down at times w/ threats of excommunication, the Mongols and the Timurids, all told this game does a much better job of providing the player a balanced challenging game throughout the entire campaign, it's a shame they've lost their way of late in doing this sort of thing, but then the people who made MTW2 don't work at CA, so really not all that surprising.