Being the bad guy

In my latest campaign playing English (VH/Medium) I have pretty much attacked everyone, I dominated France early, erradicating them and kicked the Scots out the British isles, the Scots have one province in Europe and seem happy to fight the Danes and annoy the HRE. I've warred with the danes, Milan, HRE and been excommunicated twice. Nobody will deal with me except the Turks, Egyptians and Moors. I'm eating up Milan at the moment.
I'm ignoring the Pope at every opportunity and just amassing wealth, killing inquisitors, merchants and spys.
I nip any uprising in the bud. Most of my provinces are either red or blue, even some home provinces. My king has high dread and boils on his face.
Nobody likes me ... *sobs* ...
Muhahahaha .. ok, so how do I go about making the other factions like me again once I've kicked the crap out of Milan. I would like the Danes left alone to counter any Northern aggresssion, and I don't mind keeping in with the HRE. But Spain/Portugal are next in line for a drubbing.

:skull:

Well... this is going to be a tough one ~D

IMHO the best way to do it is to give back, one by one, during several turns, everything you took by force. Lavishly add money and map info as gifts.

Repent, my son, repent, and the Kingdom of Heaven might just open the gates for you! ~D

Giving back conquered lands (to former owner) would be waste of men, time and money!
To Papacy maybe some lands such as Florence/Bologna or so to keep rep high, but nothing else! Kill them all, God (You) will recognize his own!

Just continue with your conquest until there's no one left to hate you. :laugh4:

The problem with playing with english is that you are surrounded by fellow christians. This will result the pope to be on your case on everytime you get little expancion going on. However you still might have some friends in the ordodox empires and mayby even the muslim ones.

Mayby you should take out danmark next and get hold of norway, sweden and danmark provinces. These will serve as good point of attacks against HRE and you get contact with novogrod for traiding. (Danmark is also nice centric capital position).

Other way might be to take out spain and portugal. This would give you ports to mediterraen and you could lauch naval attacks to rome. Lauching attacks to rome and then giving it back might help with the reputation. (Dont forget to brake everything in rome to prevent strong future retaliations).

If you have northern parts of italy allready, you should take the rest of it aswell. This again includes beating up the pope.

Here is another evil you can commit.
1) Recruit a diplomat
2) Send this diplomat to a faction you want to attack
3) Demand money or land from them, and say that if they refuse you'll attack them
4) Attack them regardless of what they do :laugh4:

Also if you give the Pope a tiny island in the middle of nowhere when you take Rome the Papal States won't become a horde faction but will relocate to the tiny island.

The reputation in this game seems to be very broken. Even when playing as good Spain I was untrustworthy and had terrible relations with everyone. I only fought against Muslims, excommunicated Christians (and that was mostly in crusades) and Byzantine empire (after excommunicated Millan dragged them into a battle with me). The only person who liked me was the pope, because of constant tithing. He returned the favor by always calling crusades against my neighbors.

I invariably ended up playing the bad guy as Scotland. I took out England first - I took every city on the British isles before they could, so they had to attack Denmark and then me, getting them excommunicated, allowing the Danes to take one province and for me to take Caen. Then Milan got excommunicated and a crusade was called on Rome, which I took part in, taking out all of Milan's cities on the way, basically making a navy blue line from Caen to Rome. So I give Rome back, and the HRE attacks me... even though I have massive armies down the line, allowing me to take half their cities in a single turn. The Pope is not psyched. Then France attacks me, and I send my armies back the other way and take everything but Marseille and Toulouse in a single turn, causing me to be excommunicated. So, I simply took Rome back. And now I'm going to take the whole of Europe, as long as the (way larger than normal) Hungarian empire stops me.

I'd say the best way to make people like you would be to take hostage the son and heir of every remaining faction leader and threaten to flay them alive before said faction leaders eyes if they dont do as you say.
Why hasnt this little gameplay mechanic been implimented in the TW series before? HUH?

the only way it seems to maintain a good rep is to be:

A. Not among the top ranked, especially overall
B. Never expand unless someone else is already ahead of you on that (like HRE taking over France)
C. Ally only with people whom are very unlikely to go to war with each other, and if possible, allied with each other (England(you),Spain,Byzantines,Sicily,Poland,Papal States would be a good example)


If you wanna be a truly bad guy though, i suggest getting out some good spies and assassins, and going to town on any cities (that isn't thier capitol) and bringing an army to clean up the rebels. Sell the province back to its original owners, repeat the process and make funds for your unstoppable faction killing army of assassins. Nothing is more evil then completely destroying a factions bloodline with just spies and assassins (well trained of course), then picking the carcass after every one of thier territories turn rebel :laugh4:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sheogorath

I'd say the best way to make people like you would be to take hostage the son and heir of every remaining faction leader and threaten to flay them alive before said faction leaders eyes if they dont do as you say. Why hasnt this little gameplay mechanic been implimented in the TW series before? HUH?

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Sheogorath that is by far the most effective diplomatic solution to a problm I have ever heard. Bravo!

- Phog