Reputation - has anyone ever had better than Very Trustworthy

I know their are higher ranks but I have never seen them. Has anyone else? I know its VERY VERY easy to get Very Untrustworthy though.

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Originally Posted by Budwise

I know their are higher ranks but I have never seen them. Has anyone else? I know its VERY VERY easy to get Very Untrustworthy though.

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"Immaculate" is not impossible but be consequent during play. Don´t declare war especially towards factions of the same faith as you. Only occupy settlements. Never stroll around another factions territory. Lauch sucessful crusades/ jihads every 10 turns. The higher your rep gets the easier it is to get "prefect" relations with everyone.

Played a game as the Turks a while back. My rep is immaculate, I´m allied with everyone except the Egyptians (still want to take them out). I´ve prefect relations with everyone, even the Pope. He still declare crusades on me but no one joins, he he! I´ve been at peace for over 70 years. Waiting and building up for the hordes arrival at the moment.

I have been doing my best to keep high relations this time. I haven't declared war nor done anything you have mentioned. However, my ranking is really slow to advance higher than Reliable.

I was allied with the pope with a perfect rating (playing a muslim faction) and most other factions and he called a crusade toward Jerusalem and now I am at war with everyone. Also, before the crusade being called almost everyone was reliable ranking or very reliable, at worst Mixed. Now, nobody has anything higher than mixed and most are untrustworthy.

I've gotten to Very Reliable before.

Usually as a northern/western european faction... So I have only a couple neighbors to make peace with and no Muslims or orthodox factions who hate me. Then I act like I am afraid of the world and bribe everyone until their treasury bursts.

Bascially, you have to be a total pushover/suck-up to everyone.

Not my style. Once I got their trust, I broke their spines over my knee and trampled over their remains. I don't mess around. I went from being beloved ally of all Europe to despised and feared ruler of the whole world in only a few short years of bloody conquest. Oh, the massacre...

One bit of advice... don't trust anyone. The nicer people are, the more suspicious you should be. Approach every situation with caution and never lower your defenses. When it applies to this game anyway... which isn't too far off from real life.

Don't believe me? Look at the businessmen and politicians. Life is nothing but constant war to them. That is why they are in power. They made war on you and won, and you didn't even realize it.

That last post is exactly what I mean, you have to be a pushover to even be reliable. I'm not complaining because it kinda makes sense. I was just wondering though if anyone ever got higher. I am trying to be my best this time and not be a tyrant but so far, its been very slow to expand. I do own the Holy Lands though at this time.

I got "Dubious" or something like that.. How good is that?!

Dubious = bad.
I played English and took control over the Isles with nothing but occupies, i did it so fast the Scottish didn´t manage to take anything and i allied them.
I also took Rennes and Bordeaux and allied French.
When scottish attacked me they got eventually excommunicated since i was only they could ever attack. So i took Edinburgh too...
In France i was doing good, Allied Portugese and Spanish, Italian factions and HRE. Around turn 50 I was reliable and also held Jerusalem, Acre and Gaza (Jerusalem and Acre = crusades and Gaza by attack after taking Jerusalem)
Ceasefired with Egyptians and allied later, they still hold it.
At turn 50 i should control all France and so on, but i played slow and i have been reliable since turn 47... See how long it lasts.

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Originally Posted by Budwise

I have been doing my best to keep high relations this time. I haven't declared war nor done anything you have mentioned. However, my ranking is really slow to advance higher than Reliable.

I was allied with the pope with a perfect rating (playing a muslim faction) and most other factions and he called a crusade toward Jerusalem and now I am at war with everyone. Also, before the crusade being called almost everyone was reliable ranking or very reliable, at worst Mixed. Now, nobody has anything higher than mixed and most are untrustworthy.

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Best impact to your ranking is launching jihads and sucessfully taking the target which you don´t have to keep, just give it away to someone you need to be at peace with for trade, buffer zone etc. You´ll be able to launch jihads every 10 turns so your rep will climb steadily as long as you don´t do the other bad things I told you about earlier.
One neat trick that works pretty well is to pay everyone tribute for a long period of time. Offer them 100fl/ turn for 100 turns. Usually the´ll never attack you then.

On vh I never got above reliable. The normalisation is really hard on you.
I have a nice game with about 10 allies atm so maybe I can manage it, but it's hard:

The normalisation for allies is 1/400 to 1.0 while there's a normalisation of 1/200 to 0.0 in general each turn and 1/800 to -1.0 for each war.
This translate to a change (if you don't do anything) of:

a=a*199/200 at FactionTurnStart

a=1/400 - a/400 for each ally

a=-1/800 + a/800 for each opponent

Let's calculate the ally formula:
Let a be your global standing at turn start and n the number of allies
Our function is: f: R->R: a |-> a*(1-1/400)+1/400
So f(a)=a*399/400 + 1/400
Plugging this in recursively, gives us f^2(a)=a*(399/400)^2+399/400^2+1/400

Doing that a bit more often, we arrive at:
a*(399/400)^n + sum k _from 0 to n-1_ (1/400*(399/400)^k)

The sum term is the same for each a and only depends on n, and is nearly linear for small n (it's about n*1/400 because 399/400 is very close to 1)

For those more deeply interested, here's a little table with the first 11 values:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

n	sum
1	2.5e-3
2	4.99e-3
3	7.48e-3
4	9.96e-3
5	1.243e-2
6	1.490e-2
7	1.737e-2
8	1.983e-2
9	2.223e-2
10	2.472e-2
11	2.716e-2

The rest term obviously depends on a, so if we assume a start of turn value of 0, a number of allies of 10, with no enemies, we arrive at a rough turn gain of a bit less than 1/40, or 0.0245
The next turn, it'll be less; about 0.0240 resulting in a total of 0.0486
If I continue like this, to get to 0.25 which is the very reliable threshold if I'm not mistaken, should take about 12 turns.
However, if I break an alliance, have enemies or something it'll probably be far longer.

By the way, theoretically I should be able to get even to Very Trustworthy which triggers at 0.6, but it'd take 43 turns without enemies or any affronts.

I don't think I've ever been better than 'Dubious' and have given up trying. The AI doesn't give a tinker's damn for it's reputation; why should I worry over mine?

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Originally Posted by Kraggenmor

I don't think I've ever been better than 'Dubious' and have given up trying. The AI doesn't give a tinker's damn for it's reputation; why should I worry over mine?

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Because a good reputation will make alliances more likely to be kept and in general make diplomacy easier and more rewarding (that is, it'll lower the cost).

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Because a good reputation will make alliances more likely to be kept and in general make diplomacy easier and more rewarding (that is, it'll lower the cost).

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I.E. The AI will wait longer before backstabbing you.

Since the end result is going to be that I wind up backstabbed regardless, I don't see any reason to spend my time, and my empire's florins, in the hopes that it backstabs me in 40 turns instead of 20.

I don't agree that you have to be a pushover to become very reliable. All you have to do, is fight a bunch of battles, and then releasing them every time.

It's possible to get Very Reliable through occupying every settlement, releasing all your prisoners, and honoring diplomacy agreements. I think the diplomacy are is where most people get in trouble. I always wait for them to attack me I rarely go on the offensive. When I do go on the offensive I attack a neutral nation or enemy nation. Generally a neutral nation that's attacked an ally, which gives me the diplomatic ability to reap the benifits of telling my ally I'll help him and gladly following through on my promise. This also give me the ability to get a piece of land from my ally or some cash in exchange for my mighty military aid. My armies are usually good and are on the borders ready to strike anyone foolish enough to break there peace with me. All while my reputation is great and not getting worse due to my policy of always keeping my word, releaseing prisoners, and occupying settlements.

And that's how I get Mikhail the Hounrable, Valdimir the Chivalrous, and Kurtisa the Saint.

I bumbed one of my old threads on this topic: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=78429

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Originally Posted by Kraggenmor

I.E. The AI will wait longer before backstabbing you.

Since the end result is going to be that I wind up backstabbed regardless, I don't see any reason to spend my time, and my empire's florins, in the hopes that it backstabs me in 40 turns instead of 20.

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No, the result will be that within 20 turns you aren't backstabbed by two factions at the same time which will be followed up by another three factions dogpiling on you because your relations and reputation go down.
If you never tried which effect it has, you shouldn't discard it so easily.

You can do without it, but if you don't blitz it's a lot harder if you don't use diplomacy.

I don't break any of the diplomacy rules either but I go from Trustworthy to Dubious when I am attacked and I go all out on them for it. At what point is it okay to eliminate a faction and not get dinged for it?

Attack them if they are Excommunicated, or perhaps if they have really bad rep and you've already got a good one (not sure on the latter)

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Originally Posted by Budwise

I don't break any of the diplomacy rules either but I go from Trustworthy to Dubious when I am attacked and I go all out on them for it. At what point is it okay to eliminate a faction and not get dinged for it?

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At no point or at all points depending on how you look at it.
You are punished for being at war with factions, you are punished for exterminating settlements or executing prisoners, but you are not punished for destroying a faction.

By the way: In my current game I'm having reputation problems because I often have to break alliances when two factions go to war, and I get a rep hit for that, which is just plain silly again... However, my only real war so far was when I've been attacked by the Milanese. After two heroic and three or four clear victories, they gave me Genoa for a peace treaty and a bit of money!
In addition to that, I have a total income of about 50000 florins while only spending 15000 or so on army maintenance (I only have two large stacks and free garrisons in cities) because the Hungarians, HRE and Byzantines are really nice thanks to generous bribes. Furthermore, the Sicilians have two stacks in the south of Bologna but don't do anything to attack (just to be sure I put one of my stacks there to fend them off should they decide to backstab me after all) and the Milanese are busy with France.
It's also interesting to note that I had a marriage alliance to France for a while when they were at war against England and Spain and kept them alive (together with the Byzantines) with gifts of roughly 10000 florins per turn. I abandoned them when they were also attacked by the Milanese and the HRE and they were soon killed. Definitely fun to play.
Before I forget to mention it though: I'm doing that with a slightly edited AI for testing purposes. It doesn't do any forced attacks like those annoying port blockades nearly as often as normally.

What is your reputation, after my post you failed to tell me yours.

So, can anyone answer the question that this thread is based on. Has anyone ever had anything higher than Very Reliable? If so, how do you get it, what difference do you have to do?

before reading this post, my reputation was dubious.

after reading this post, my reputation went up to "very reliable", but it was a pain and due to too many bugs crashing my computer, i quit, reinstall and restart (i got bored as well)

but AFTER reading askthepizzaguy's post regarding conquering, my reputations is now very untrustworthy! :sweatdrop: since i realised - what do i care about the other cyber-fractions think. its like fight-maim-burn across mediterrean on the way to middle east - i got sick of the europe theatre so went off to fight in middle east instead.

in conclusion - i think askthepizzaguy is a bad influence! :laugh4: readers beware! :beam: