Diplomatic question

[Eukatae]

Hi there, I have a question or two that I am certain someone around here knows.
First off if my questions sounds like I have not read the Manual, I have not, I took it to work with me to read at lunch and left it in a cab, and haven’t seen it since.

How I control, or handle, diplomatic situations. After that First period where everyone wants an alliance, then one of these factions attacks me, other alliances follow suite and attack a turn or two later, How do I get cease fire and alliance agreements again? I have tried pulling back, attacking aggressively, sending emissaries, princesses, etc, always to be refused. I have been trying to play Germans starting in early period on the 3rd difficulty setting; fighting 5 factions at once after 20 years of build up is tough:)

Any advice on developing my generals, Getting Promotions, Good battlefield virtues?

What is affected by the difficulty levels?

Is it possible to strengthen alliances so more factions will side with me in a war, only faction I have had side with me to date is the papacy?

Is it possible to Make and place specific heroes when creating a custom campaign? I want to create a campaign starting with Saladin ousting the crusaders. I would like to place Saladin and later Suleiman, and of course European heroes as well.

What makes an heir become an heir no longer, i.e. when a prince looses the title prince and becomes a normal general?


Thanks for any replys and have fun stormin' the castle.

[khurjan]

sadly only way to stop war is to give ai such a beating that once you almost at capturing final province it will offer you ceasefire

[jrexchandler]

That's not true.

Last night I was at war with the Spanish and the Germans (as the English) and after several years, in which I lost one of my original provinces, took two from the Spanish and one from the Germans, they both accepted ceasefires on the same turn.

They also had plenty of land left.

Their response to you're offer of alliance/ceasfire is based on their/your allies, influence rating, and situation.

I don't understand why people say that diplomacy is broken. Start a new game and do not ally with ANYONE. See how long it is before you are attacked on all fronts (less than 10 years most likely). Now, compare that to the games in which you have been allied with factions close to your own.

Being allied with other factions reduces the chance that they will attack you, and lengthens the time before they do.

Also by breaking an alliance, the king's influence rating drops (he's not a man of his word) which lower's the world's respect for him. Also, all his generals' loyalty will go down along with the loyalty of his people. (Increasing the chances of revolts/civil wars/outside attacks).

The diplomacy system is clearly not broken. But, it could be updated. Being able to end an alliance without war would be nice. But, you should never be able to move your troops through an allies land. That never happened in the middle ages. The chance of the army foraging/pillaging your subjects would be too great.

The only time that this really happened was during the crusade marches. (Which is reflected in the game) And that even require oaths of good behavior and good-will hostages to be kept until the army was out of the ally's land.

Sorry to turn this into a rant, but clearly the diplomacy function isn't broken.

Rex

[Naagi]

Have you tried sending chocolates? No just kidding, once they start getting all mad at you its kind of hard to get back in their favor. Sending princesses to marry them is a good way but doesnt work very often it seems. HRE has a very strong army to start with I believe so they may get upset with you for that alone. I've only tried one catholic faction and was to cautious to attack anyone so it did not go well. I'm better at the muslims and orthodoxs.

Cant help ya with the hero placement thing, check with the dungeon on this.

As for the princes losing titles, usually when your king dies the eldest prince takes over. When he marries and starts having heirs himself, his brothers become lords or something instead of prince, as they are no longer in line for the king.

Naagi

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[SmokWawelski]

Quote[/b] ]Last night I was at war with the Spanish and the Germans (as the English) and after several years, in which I lost one of my original provinces, took two from the Spanish and one from the Germans, they both accepted ceasefires on the same turn.

Have you checked what they had in these lands? If this situation was in the later part of the game, it usualy indicates that these provinces are lo on troops or even without any armies at all. At some point you can march through AI provinces with minimal resistance, if you break through the front line... Good tactics to raid the enemie's most vulnerable privinces too...

[jrexchandler]

Quote[/b] ]
Have you checked what they had in these lands? If this situation was in the later part of the game, it usualy indicates that these provinces are lo on troops or even without any armies at all. At some point you can march through AI provinces with minimal resistance, if you break through the front line... Good tactics to raid the enemie's most vulnerable privinces too...

It was around 1130, so still very early in the game. They had sizable armies in all of the provinces that I could see.

My point was that diplomacy in the game does work, just that most people either don't understand it, or want it to do things that it shouldn't.

Rex

[and another thing....]

I`m new to the game and the forum so excuse me if this has either been said before or is very obvious.

To me, the diplomacy side of the game could do with being improved - there seems to be only the option of offering an alliance or marriage. Surely some other options, such as sending of troops to assist other factions in war, payment of tribute in return for not attacking a province etc could have been included in the game.

From reading the other posts, it may come with the expansion pack (hopefully). I just think that the actual battles are handled as well as possible at the moment in order to get it to run on most computers but more could be done with the strategic element of the game.

[SmokWawelski]

Quote[/b] ]To me, the diplomacy side of the game could do with being improved - there seems to be only the option of offering an alliance or marriage. Surely some other options, such as sending of troops to assist other factions in war, payment of tribute in return for not attacking a province etc could have been included in the game

Could not agree more. Military assistance, tribute or declaring war on common enemy should be included. Games like Space Empires 4 or even Civilization 3 have great diplomatic options. (I can hardly wait to see the Master of Orion 3 this month and hope that will find time to play both Moo3 and MTW http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif )

[Sjakihata]

Play Europa Universalis 2 (or 1) and then compare it with mtw. It will show that diplomacy is an unknown term in the universe of tw. That is why I do not play mtw in sp, not enough options.Tho tactical it is the best on the market.

[Gregoshi]

Hello and welcome Eukatae It has been a week for lost manuals.

MTW diplomacy is a huge leap ahead of diplomacy in STW. CA is working on it.

[khurjan]

lol i agree diplomacy in eu2 is pretty good...this is what is missing from mtw to make it the greatest balanced strategy game for this time period

[Mr. Juice]

Quote[/b] (jrexchandler @ Jan. 03 2003,14:56)]Also by breaking an alliance, the king's influence rating drops (he's not a man of his word) which lower's the world's respect for him. Also, all his generals' loyalty will go down along with the loyalty of his people. (Increasing the chances of revolts/civil wars/outside attacks).
Blast

I'm now surrounded by allies in my game, yet my army needs more territories to conquer...

Is the only way to end an alliance is to invade? I'd like to keep my king's influence and my general's loyalty...

[TheViking]

They could have left out the diplomatic from this game cus its no good at all.

If your neutral the ai attacks you
If your allied the ai attacks you

and you can never get and ceasefire, you have to terminate the/those faction/s your at war with.

[Gregoshi]

True, but the AI is more patient. In Shogun, you'd form and alliance and with most of the clans that alliance would last only a year or two. If it lasted any longer it was only because you didn't share a common border. In MTW, alliance can last 20 to 80 or more years before being broken.

Mr. Juice, use the time of peace to build up your provinces and technology.

[and another thing....]

One thing I`ve noticed about diplomacy is the difference to an emissaries proposal when made to a faction or rebels.

If you make an offer of alliance etc repeatedly to another faction(s), my diplomat always seems to end up dead within a couple of turns.

However, if you try and bribe a rebel general and don`t get anywhere the first time, keep trying and normally after 3 or 4 attempts, you are successful.

I`ve played as the Byz twice. On the first occasion, I tried to conquer every province which was ok to start with but then began to run out of troops to both invade and pacify.

On the second attempt, I tried bribes a lot more. As long as the cash is coming in (and the Byz seem quite rich once you get a trade route and some farmland set up), it is a lot easier to bribe than fight. The only downside is you seem to end up with a big army of peasants which is no good later on when it seems nearly every other faction has the potential to deal out large portions of punishment (especially the Turks).

[rasoforos]

i am surprised the number of people losing their manuals ....hmmm perhaps they should make em bigger...
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