Barbarian Diplomacy

I started my first game as the Goths, on normal/normal. I've got the latest patch as well (1.6).

3rd turn, a Horde moves into my territory.

In response, I made an alliance with the Eastern Roman Empire (my neighbors to the south).

Furthermore, I managed to make an alliance with the Horde itself, as I had an additional diplomat. I was quite relieved about this, and thought since the Horde was right on the border with my neighbors to the east, they might think them a better target.

Well, the Horde immediately broke my alliance next turn and defeated my army handily on the field.

The Eastern Empire units left my territory.

Next turn, I sued for peace, and achieved a ceasefire by paying tribute.

During the action phase, the Horde broke its ceasefire with me and attacked me again.

The Eastern Empire was no where to be found.

So, my questions are, what does an alliance do? What does a ceasefire do? Anything? If I haven't already been invaded, would an alliance have done anything to prevent the Horde from invading my territory and perhaps another's?

Somehow, I doubt it does anything.

On a related note, what do trade rights do? I was trading with my Eastern Empire neighbor before signing any trade rights treaty, and then when I signed it, I thought I might have access to other cities in their territory, but it was just the same one as before?

Thanks, sorry if I have been unclear. I want to like the game.

An alliance does will, nothing as far as I experienced. Though, allied armie can reenforce yours if their are nearby.

Ceasefire brings the status natural between 2 factions.

Trade Rights 'increase' the outcome of trade to the provinces of the faction that you sign with.

Iv found that giving military access to a neighbor can greatly help you out, but only if that neighbor is powerfull and your close to a enemy.

I was playing the saxons, and gave a military access to the romans, they immediately sent all their forces (Which were guarding his country) to my front, and provided a little garrison against the vandals.

The problem with RTW diplomacy is that the AI re-evaluates its position relative to other factions every single turn. This means that if it sees an advantage in attacking you on turn one, it will do so. If on turn two you propose a ceasefire/alliance with it that trumps its evaluation for war, then the ceasefire/alliance will be accepted. Then on turn three, if nothing else has changed it looks at the situation again and sees the same advantage to attacking, since the ceasefire/alliance is now providing it with nothing.

I would suspect that the AI would be less likely to break a ceasefire/alliance if you were giving it sufficient yearly tribute, but since I never do that I cannot say that for sure. A diplomatic end to a war is more likely to be successful if you have the potential for strong trade with the nation AND if you get trading rights along with the ceasefire. The AI then sees losing this income as a downside to attacking you the next turn and may sometimes be swayed by this. However, since horded factions have no towns to generate income this has no impact on them. As such, hordes will pretty much attack anything they think they can beat and ignore anything they think they can't. Diplomacy with them thus seems rather futile.

At least, that's my take on it.

I have paid tribute to barbarian factions just to get them off my back for a little while, e.g as the WRE the Goths were massing on the frontier of my provinces in the northern Balkans. I would have been unable to stop them from conquering them had I not offered them tribute to keep them quiet, something like 500d every turn for 5 turns.

Usually it just buys you a little bit of time, but its far from a long term solution, the AI has absolutely no concept of what is best for it, it would rather attack a wealthy province which is trading heavily with it (thus profiting both parties) than have a strong economy by staying at peac

Diplomacy is a real problem in RTW, you just cant trust the AI for 1 turn, so it makes diplomacy almost totally pointless, the only decent results you can get are with *civilised* factions, on RTW the Greeks for example tend to be loyal and easy to talk to, the Gauls though just never want to make peace no matter what.

Thanks for the feedback. Much of what was said above seems totally aligned to what I had (and am still) experienced.

It's a shame that such a good game as this falls flat on the diplomacy component. Great options, but perhaps poor execution.

That said, I had fun playing M:TW, which had a poorer diplomacy system.

Here's looking forward to the next iteration of the diplomacy model from CA.

Please do model somewhat more concrete alliances. Realpolitik was much in the future.

yea hippocrites don't have very good diplomacy do they?