How to expand and maintain good diplomatic relations?

Does anybody know what triggers the negative diplomatic points for territorial expansion?
Obviously taking other nation's lands, but any ideas what and how exactly?

In 1725 in my Britain campaign I took the Canadian provinces from France, and Georgia and Cherokee Territory to adsorb the nine 13 Colonies, and finally I conquered three provinces in India.

Oh, and I have three protectorates (Mysore, Cherokee, and USA which emerged during my Indian wars in Virginia after it was taken by the Cherokee from the 13 Colonies, and then rebelled). Do protectorates count as territorial expansion?

Now my diplomatic relations with almost all nations suffer between -55 and -100 for expansion, which results in beeing on unfriendly or hostile terms with almost everybody. Only France really, really hates me with -221 for expansion, which seems pretty fair to me, as I stripped them of their possesions in Canada.

To me, my expansion after 25 years feels quite moderate and nothing to get all mad with me like all the AI buggers do... (What do they expect? It's total war, you know. Seems my comp has some serious pacifist inclinations :embarassed: )

So, if anybody happens to know something about the in-game mechanics or methods how to get less penalties for expansion (don't like to be the bad guy, hehe), feel free to post it here.

Well, the only way you expand is by taking away from other nations, hence why France hates you so much, and rightly so. The other nations don't like when you expand because you become that much more powerful than them, and it's that much harder to balance your power out. The only way to counter-balance you're power is to ally against you.

The major political theory you're bumping into is the balance of power theory. Peace is maintained when war is a bad idea. In order to make war a bad idea is if no one nation could get into a war without suffering a lot themselves. So nations ally to counter-balance each other's power.

The fact that the rest of the world is getting mad at you is their way of counter-balancing your power. Keep it up, and several will declare war on you. In real life, these nations would form alliances against you, but the ETW AI doesn't seem that smart, so you'll probably just get war declared on you by individual nations that you can easily destroy, but eventually so many nations will declare war on you that you may have your hands full.

The best way to delay this is buy them off with the $2,500 state gift. It gets you 100 happy points (-1 or so per turn). If that gift will make them significantly happy with you, try to enter into trade agreements with you. Once a trade agreement is established, you get ~ +1 happy point in your relationship each turn.

You can also start to drain away that hatred other nations have for your expansion if you stop expanding. That hatred bleeds away at ~ 2 points / turn, so long as you don't expand again.

Using a combination of static borders (no more expanding), state gifts, and trade agreements, you can start to turn around opinions about you.

Some factions don't seem to care about certain theaters. I don't recall getting any big hits against the Mughals or Maratha from conquering territory in N America or Europe, but they sure cared when I started taking territory in India.

They don't seem to care when you capture rebel territory, but I haven't done that much so it may vary.

They definitely don't care when you expand via trade/purchase. Buy all you like, you won't see any penalties there.

Diplomatic modifiers degrade over time, usually about 1 point per year, so if you wait between conquests the penalties won't get so bad.

The European Muslim nations don't seem to care about expansion anywhere, which is probably a bug.

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Originally Posted by Leodegar

Does anybody know what triggers the negative diplomatic points for territorial expansion?
Obviously taking other nation's lands, but any ideas what and how exactly?

In 1725 in my Britain campaign I took the Canadian provinces from France, and Georgia and Cherokee Territory to adsorb the nine 13 Colonies, and finally I conquered three provinces in India.

Oh, and I have three protectorates (Mysore, Cherokee, and USA which emerged during my Indian wars in Virginia after it was taken by the Cherokee from the 13 Colonies, and then rebelled). Do protectorates count as territorial expansion?

Now my diplomatic relations with almost all nations suffer between -55 and -100 for expansion, which results in beeing on unfriendly or hostile terms with almost everybody. Only France really, really hates me with -221 for expansion, which seems pretty fair to me, as I stripped them of their possesions in Canada.

To me, my expansion after 25 years feels quite moderate and nothing to get all mad with me like all the AI buggers do... (What do they expect? It's total war, you know. Seems my comp has some serious pacifist inclinations :embarassed: )

So, if anybody happens to know something about the in-game mechanics or methods how to get less penalties for expansion (don't like to be the bad guy, hehe), feel free to post it here.

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Well, once your province count is close to the grand long campaign goal, you're pretty unstoppable militarily and economically. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise other AI factions hate you. Actually, for fun end-game I would not mind -250 relationships with other AI factions as long as they acted in accordance with that -250 rating. The part that introduces boredom in the end-game is that AI factions at -250 rating DO NOT DO ANYTHING...

Part of the reason behind that passiveness might be the currently bugged inter-AI diplomacy. AI factions do not appear to be able to acquire ceasefires with other AI factions. Once they are at war, they are at war forever. So, despite everybody hating the player faction, AI is unable to form a diplomatic "anti-human" hate block because all AI factions are fighting each other...