A question of honour

[Long lost Caesar]

Ive never understood how the reputation system in M2TW has ever worked. And now it continues to confuse me: how can I avoid becoming an untrustworthy faction? And how can I improve my reputation? Cheers

[Zaleukos]

This is a very incomplete list:

You can improve your reputation by releasing prisoners after battles.

You can lose reputation by:
Starting wars against coreligionists.
Backstabbing your allies.
Cancelling diplomatic agreements (except for when you have to drop an ally due to a declaration of war).
Exterminating cities.
If you give a city to a faction and reconquer it from the same faction.

You get a minor hit from sacking a city, but I can usually keep my "reliable" rep at medium difficulty regardless of that.

[Barbarian]

"Untrustworthy" refers mostly on backstabbing your allies. You should never attack allied faction, if you don't want to become "Untrustworthy", you must first cancel the alliance.

[_Tristan_]

"Untrustworthy" refers mostly on backstabbing your allies. You should never attack allied faction, if you don't want to become "Untrustworthy", you must first cancel the alliance.

Even cancelling an alliance out of the blue will get a rep hit... If you ever intend to go at war with someone, either do not ally (ever !!) or force them to strike first...


Cancelling diplomatic agreements (except for when you have to drop an ally due to a declaration of war).


Same here, being forced to choose between two of your allies going to war will almost always get you a rep hit (from my own experience) which is why you should refrain from allying with parties that are sure to go to war (like Byz and Turks for exemple...)

[PseRamesses]

Ive never understood how the reputation system in M2TW has ever worked. And now it continues to confuse me: how can I avoid becoming an untrustworthy faction? And how can I improve my reputation? Cheers
A simple search for reputation on these boards will give you more info. I´ve gathered info on this topic here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=78429&highlight=Reputation

[Quickening]

Even following all of the above, Ive never gotton above "Mixed" for my reputation.

[_Tristan_]

In one campaign in the Long Road Mod, I succeeded in allying with all factions in game and got up to Trustworthy until I was forced to make choices between my allies and got down to dubious...

[lilo lol]

Never sack, never execute prisoners, never start war, never betray allies, and try to keep good relations (alliance preferably) with as many factions as possible. Also having a chivalry king seems to help.

[Hoplite7]

Does having a high rep actually do anything? I really doubt high rep outweighs the benefits of backstabbing and sacking cities...

[Askthepizzaguy]

I am currently playing a house rules campaign (Total war for Independence) and acting chivalrously has gained my reputation all the way to very reliable and given me chivalrous generals all over the place busting my cities up to maximum population.

My allies are not betraying me because we are all fighting the same unchivalrous foes. The Moors, Milanese, and the HRE are all a bunch of backstabbers and my allies are helping me fight them. Or at least not betraying me. This is important because my last attempt failed when everyone in the world stabbed me at the same time, and under my house rules, I could not execute prisoners and they kept coming and coming, over and over... there was no way to push them back without cheating.

It was a war of attrition avoided by being a chivalrous knight rather than a deranged berserker.

In practical games or against very very powerful AI, rep means nothing. Only house rules make rep mean something.

[TevashSzat]

Zaleukos has a pretty completed list.

Some things to add:

Using lots of spies and assasins does affect it IIRC
Exterminating/Ransoming(maybe)
Not helping or chosing between allies as Tristan de Castelreng said
Just plain starting a war too without provocation ie they attack you first

@Hoplite7

Higher reputation should make the AI be more eager to make diplomatic agreements with you.

[Long lost Caesar]

that, and i just like to try and be chivalrous.

[Zaleukos]

I think that being at war somehow makes the reputation stay down, and low reputation increases the risk of AI attacks.

So you might end up in a vicious circle by doing dishonourable deeds early on...

[Zaleukos]

Same here, being forced to choose between two of your allies going to war will almost always get you a rep hit (from my own experience) which is why you should refrain from allying with parties that are sure to go to war (like Byz and Turks for exemple...)

It does go down, but I got the impression that breaking an alliance that way is less costly in reputation than cancelling the alliance in the diplomacy screen (and way less costly than declaring war on your ally). When I want to attack an ally I usually try to order a crusade against them, wait for another ally to attack them, and only join the crusade only after I had to choose which alliance to keep. This seems to give a much smaller reputation hit than joining the crusade when still allied to the crusade target.

If the pope is young I also use crusades to complete the stupid "break alliance with excommed faction" missions, which otherwise are fairly costly in terms of reputation.

The difference in the first case could of course stem from the difference between the penalties for "cancelling alliance + declaring war" and "declaring war on ally".

Unfortunately it's largely guesswork on my part as I dont have a numerical value for reputation, but only the crudely discretised value in the diplomacy window...