Diplomacy Without Force-Diplomacy

So I'm playing as the Arverni right now. Most of Gaul has come under my control, the Aedui have been defeated, and my required North Italian provinces have been obtained. This doesn't, unfortunately, change the fact that Rome still has many more resources to put out stack after stack to siege my cities (Segesta, Mediloanum and the one in Veneto). I keep pushing them back there, but that border is occupying my resources. The Sweboz have expanded to my borders and their building up and molesting me on their own terms. This puts me on a precarious defensive position which I'm not altogether comfortable with.

My question is: How do you go about securing peace with Rome without using a mod?

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Originally Posted by Saldunz

So I'm playing as the Arverni right now. Most of Gaul has come under my control, the Aedui have been defeated, and my required North Italian provinces have been obtained. This doesn't, unfortunately, change the fact that Rome still has many more resources to put out stack after stack to siege my cities (Segesta, Mediloanum and the one in Veneto). I keep pushing them back there, but that border is occupying my resources. The Sweboz have expanded to my borders and their building up and molesting me on their own terms. This puts me on a precarious defensive position which I'm not altogether comfortable with.

My question is: How do you go about securing peace with Rome without using a mod?

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my only real use for FD is to make protectorates and force extortnionary tribute...

my advice is to cede some unimportant border town, a good tribute, and a down payment that makes you look rich. hopefully, they will accept. hopefully.

then you can try to ask for an alliance.:beam:

You could try "gift"ing a border town to another faction, like Epiros, and create a buffer area, you can get factions to fight each this way. Offer the city AND a cash tribute around (1000-3000) as a gift and they will usually accept. Be sure save your game and destroy the government in the city beforehand as this might cause crashes.

Well, seeing as how I need all three of those border-towns to secure my victory conditions, I'll try and push through to take their Bononia and use it as a bartering chip. The only problem with that is trying to do that without losing my own three besieged border-towns.

The bright side to this is that they never seem to besiege my towns with anything more than a half-full stack. Of course, I never have anything more than a small garrison as I can't afford the upkeep. I've just had this one full stack patrolling the North Italian border repeling these sieges one by one. Another full stack is permanently on the north side of the Alps fighting off the Germans.

Since I'm using Alex-EB, I wonder if the Romans are just retraining their units every time I beat them anyway. If so, this means I'm fighting an uphill battle as they have a much larger income than me.

I would recomend going barbarian style. That is take that army you have patrolling the North Italy and go on rampage through Italy. Take roman towns, enslave population, destroy everything you can, set taxes to max and proceed to the next town. Raze all Italy like this and you will send Romans back to the stone age. After such "expedition" you will have weakened romans significantly and gained a lot of cash which you can use to push Germans back.

Peace is not a very good option in your situation as Romans will be annoying all the time. In such situation offense is the best defence as Romans will try to destroy your army and will not bother to attack your towns.

this is the tactic i would use aswell. Sack Rome. kill everything, enslave everyone. destroy everything. they use all that cash to fund a campaign against the germans. It might also be wise to capture the Isles. having both Britain and Ireland gives you alot of trade and gold. Yum yum!

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Originally Posted by Saldunz

Since I'm using Alex-EB, I wonder if the Romans are just retraining their units every time I beat them anyway. If so, this means I'm fighting an uphill battle as they have a much larger income than me.

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Yes, supposedly the AI can retrain units in Alex.exe. This was the one reason I decided to stick with RTW.exe. Retraining + massive autocalc experience = :skull:, as another poster put it.