Lack of diplomacy - what am I doing wrong?

[NewJeffCT]

What am I doing wrong here? In my first two campaigns, I was always everybody’s friend. When another faction started a war with me (I rarely start wars), I would get a message from Kingdom A that “because of the outbreak of hostilities between Kingdom B and you, I have cancelled my alliance with Kingdom B, we remain your trusted ally.” And, this was with both low and high influence kings.

Now, in my last two campaigns, first as the Byzantines and then as the English, when the Sicilians, or the people of Novgorad, or the Germans, or whoever, launch an unprovoked attack on me, I get the message that “because of the outbreak of hostilities between the Sicilians and you, it forces me to cancel the alliance with you.” And, my English king currently has a 9 influence – crowns across the board. Even if I request a ceasefire from the Italians, who are down to only a few provinces, I get refused. I am currently at war with five factions, and have no alliances. My trade income has evaporated.

The same things happened in my last campaign as the Byzantines. I would have a high influence king, and then all the Catholics would start launching Crusades at me, without provocation, and I would get the message that everybody is canceling their alliances with me. Heck, early in the campaign, I let the Crusades go through my lands. But, later on, I was at war with SEVEN factions I was allied with NONE.

What am I doing wrong? All the emissaries I send out seem to be only good at bribing rebels and not at getting alliances or ceasefires. I have to wait for others to ask to be allied with me.

[econ21]

I think this is a common experience. I have come up with only two solutions:

- deterrence: the problem is others attacking you, well deterr them. Team up ships and make sure border provinces are well garrisoned.

- unconditional surrender: wipe out a faction which attacks you. The allies you lost will not come back to you while you are at war with it, but may after it is wiped out. I have lost half my allies with one declaration of war, followed by the other half with a second declaration of war. If I had finished off the first aggressor quickly, I think I could have wooed some lost allies back.

I think the other factions are a little unforgiving if you rise too far above them, a game balance thing I guess.

[cugel]

You're not doing anything wrong and there's nothing you can do about it. This is an intended game feature (despite the stupidity of it). In every game (at least if you play on expert) as soon as you become (roughly) the most powerful faction, no-one will accept any ceasefire or alliance requests, no matter how beneficial it would be to the AI. No-one will marry your princesses either or let you marry theirs. I no longer bother with diplomacy, since it is a broken feature. In the beginning of each campaign, factions will ally with you anyway, so you don't need to do anything. Later in the campaign, when you might want to end a war or form an alliance, you can't.

There have been ambivalent statements from CA about whether they're going to fix this for VI. Most likely not. We'll have to wait for Rome:TW to get diplomacy that actually works. Maybe. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

[LeeJackson]

I agree with Simon Appleton

I would also add, In my experience, the best plan is ¼ to ½ in the game try and make an alliance with the strongest player on the other side of the map (I usually play as the English so its often the Biz, or the Egyptians). Factions in between you (example HRE, Poland, Hungry) often seem reluctant to attack you since they face the possibility of having to fight a two front war. Also it usually takes awhile for you to share a border with your ally making an attack from them unlikely. This allows you to establish and count on some long distance trade routes for income. In my last game my alliance with the Biz lasted for 100+ years.

Also in the beginning of your game try and marry as many foreign princes you can. It my just be circumstantial but in my games it seems to help the royal gene pool.

[A.Saturnus]

In my experience, influence does seem to matter. A bit. In my Egyptian campaign, I fought a lot of battles for the Turkish, so my influence was always on 9. I had a lot of allies the whole time, the Spanish asked for a ceasefire the turn after sending a crusade and even the Pope rarely called for a crusade. Then my king died, influence was down to 3 and the Turkish - allies for almost 200 years - attacked me. However, the later in the game, the likelier it is to be everybodies enemy.

[andrewt]

When you get powerful, everybody is against you. It's annoying especially if you want to prolong the game to see higher tech units.