For all love, go away and stay away!

It's not a particularly big issue, but it wouldn't go amiss if the AI is prevented from spamming diplomatic overtures. Especially because the offers are never tempting.

"No Monsieur, I will not sell you Flanders for 800 Florins."
"No Monsieur, I won't do it for a plug bayonet technology either."
"Monsieur, I don't think 801 Florins will cut it either."
Gah!

And it's always the same faction too. Anyone playing as the United Provinces will recognize the unrelenting nature of France's persistence. My first UP campaign I tried to roleplay a bit. You know, curbing my expansionist tendencies with an eye to war being bad?
Twenty turns of that and I was marching on Paris just to shut them up. Aaaargh!

It seems the AI factions have hardcoded provinces that they really really like.

The Prussians want Poland and the Spaniards want either Venice or Savoy. I guess they need certain provinces to win, just like us. It gets very annoying after a while but its better than them breaking alliances to get it. I mean I'm the strongest nation in the game and everyone else knows it. I prefer that then having them attempt to attack me and lose, unless they made a coalition against me, that would be very interesting.

I've played well over 300 turns of campaigns, and I've never received a request for a region from any faction.

All on VH/H or VH/VH.

yeah, on my Spanish campaign, the UP offer me 540 every turn for Flanders. Once they offered me Cyalon (sp?) as a trade, then it was back to the 540 every turn lol.

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Originally Posted by Elmar Bijlsma

"No Monsieur, I will not sell you Flanders for 800 Florins."
"No Monsieur, I won't do it for a plug bayonet technology either."
"Monsieur, I don't think 801 Florins will cut it either."
Gah!

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Lol, it does get very annoying. Discoman brings up a good point though. Its better to have nations spam requests than to suicidaly declare war to get the target regions. You can see that the diplomacy in TW is evolving. You dont need to march diplomats all over the map, AI nations seem to be less stuborn, you can trade tech and territories, and you can make counter-offers and demands in proposals. Maybe a future patch or mod could even improve diplomacy a little.

They're less stubbon, but they're still quick to go to war, and they still march all over my land with a single unit of militia.

In 5 turns of the Austrian campaign i played today, Poland-Lithuania declared war on me 5 times, and accepted a peace treaty 5 times.

Saxony declared war the first time with their ally Poland and refused, absolutely refused to make peace, even when i took a province from Poland and offered it to them they outright refused, saying i had insulted them, despite the fact that THEY had declared war on ME, and i had refrained from making any aggressions upon them, and them on me, anyway, after 5 turns of offering land, money and technology for peace, i gave up.

And destroyed them. :smash:

I haven't played enough yet, but maybe the .org should make up some lists of things to show CA that need fixing and patching, diplomacy being one of them. With the new features, diplomacy could be really cool.

The AI for me has never once left a city unguarded, and as a result has no real field army. So they send out worthless militia units.

In my last game as France, Britain really seemed to want Quebec, and kept offering Jamaica, Maine, and various technologies in exchange for it.

Yeah, Britain needs that to get the 13 colonies.

Oh, and Quebec has four build slots, too.

As GB, France AND Spain spammed me left and right with offers for the Cherokee Territories. Every turn, it was one or the other asking for it. Then France traded Newfoundland, Infantry Square tech, military access, and 1000 florins away for the closest Huron province, which I had just recently conquered. This was on M/M. I gave it to them, since I had a sizable army sitting there and I figured I'd declare war soon. The Austrians saved me the trouble and declared war the same turn. I opted in, gaining Newfoundland AND my old territory back. :laugh4:

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"No Monsieur, I will not sell you Flanders for 800 Florins."
"No Monsieur, I won't do it for a plug bayonet technology either."
"Monsieur, I don't think 801 Florins will cut it either.

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That made my day (even though it's only 0.20am).

Playing the UP this ruined a lot of the game play because every turn of my campaign I had almost the same request from GB, France, Austria and the Ottoman Empire. They always wanted to buy my most profitable regions. Well buying is the right term. I had to pay 10000 plus a very rich region for a worthless tech. Oh yeah.

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Originally Posted by Discoman

The Prussians want Poland and the Spaniards want either Venice or Savoy. I guess they need certain provinces to win, just like us. It gets very annoying after a while but its better than them breaking alliances to get it. I mean I'm the strongest nation in the game and everyone else knows it. I prefer that then having them attempt to attack me and lose, unless they made a coalition against me, that would be very interesting.

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Sure, they might need these provinces to win - BUT if so why didn't they go there first?!
In my Ottoman campaign I conquered Morocco - every following turn the Spainiards wanted to trade Morocco for Lombardy and Sardinia. ( Nowadays they want Mexico instead of Marocco :laugh4: )
The Spainiards have captured Portugal early in my Campaign and have up to 8 (!) full armies hanging around on the iberian peninsula - If they need Morocco, they had 50 years to grap it...:furious3:

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Originally Posted by Liberator

Sure, they might need these provinces to win - BUT if so why didn't they go there first?!
In my Ottoman campaign I conquered Morocco - every following turn the Spainiards wanted to trade Morocco for Lombardy and Sardinia. ( Nowadays they want Mexico instead of Marocco :laugh4: )
The Spainiards have captured Portugal early in my Campaign and have up to 8 (!) full armies hanging around on the iberian peninsula - If they need Morocco, they had 50 years to grap it...:furious3:

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So diplomacy hasn't really been improved at all... they've just switched AI priority on taking provinces from sending endless stacks of crap to sending endless diplomatic offers, never ending and relentless.

Naw, I think the AI was programmed to be a little too passive, and the lack of naval invasions certainly exaberates this problem.

A lack of naval invasions? Surely CA would have wanted to overuse a new feature? This thread alone is quickly putting me off buying the most recent title. I would have to sacrifice graphics a little to play it but is it worth the hassle? It does not sound like it to me.

Speaking of Armies on the Iberian peninsula there are like 10 Spanish armies sitting there on my campaign. Do they do this to everyone? Weird behaviour.

The English have maybe 20 armies standing in the West of England clustered around a port.

They have nothing to do with them, because there are no naval invasions, and they won't go to war with France, ever.

I'm playing as UP and I've had France spam me for Madrid and some cash (less than 1000). They keep offering seed planting drill and roughly 3-5 territories in the Americas.

Because of my expansion, I've had major negatives in my relations with other European nations. Almost everybody except Britain hates me. I'm playing as 18th century Netherlands and feel like 21st century America. Anyway, the countries that I'm not trading with that I share a border with are declaring war on me one by one. It was Genoa and Venice the last time.

Oh, God, that is irritating. In my current UP campaign, every three turns it seems that France wants to trade me one worthless New World province like Windward Islands for Dutch Guyana. They usually toss in 1-2 techs with the deal, but want me to cough up a bunch of cash too. Why I would trade a province worth 3 times what you're offering is beyond me, but I wish they would stop asking. Now Russia is doing the same thing, every three turns they offer some land-locked province off in the steps for Ceylon.

And speaking of techs, does else find it weird that the AI will refuse an offer to trade 6-9 techs of yours for one of theirs, but will happily sell you that tech for 20k?

I actually rather enjoy the AI's constant offers for province trades.
It lets me know that it's considering alternative methods to marching the troops in :P

Although it is slightly irritating when, for ten turns in a row, Poland attempts to buy East Prussia from me in a trade for Lithuania, then, when I BUY Lithuania from them for 80,000 Prussian Pennies, they turn around and start trying to buy Lithuania back from me.
Strange, you were so eager to get rid of it earlier. :gring:

yep like the turns don't take long enough i have to reject offers from russia, poland and the UP every turn. The diplomatic AI definately needs some tweaking when I offer 75000 florins 6 techs and two provinces for west prussia and the AI rejects it then proceeds in the next turn to offer me 1 tech and 1000 florins for east prussia somethings not right.

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Originally Posted by Zoring

Speaking of Armies on the Iberian peninsula there are like 10 Spanish armies sitting there on my campaign. Do they do this to everyone? Weird behaviour.

The English have maybe 20 armies standing in the West of England clustered around a port.

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Unfortunately this is due to path-finding issues, they have cropped up in many if not all TW games and occur when some hard-coding messes up a bit. It should right itself in a few turns, most likely they right themselves anyway.

There was a saying from M2 that you'd hear when your diplomat really messed up a deal. It was "Diplomacy has failed us this day..."

The AI needs to learn when Diplomacy fails and when it is time to go to war for what they want. Now clearly I'm not suggesting that they backstab you right after a diplomatic mission fails, but if you continually deny their advances there should ideally be a relations hit. This could then be a contributing factor to an alliance being severed as the player is not respecting the desires of the AI faction, ect. Of course what we have now is still an improvement over M2, but there is always room for refinement.

Nothing beats me as Poland-Lith when Prussia wanted to trade East Prussia for West Prussia. I got a sweet deal and then they kept trying to trade back later when they realised they messed up big time.

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Originally Posted by Alp Arlsan

Unfortunately this is due to path-finding issues, they have cropped up in many if not all TW games and occur when some hard-coding messes up a bit. It should right itself in a few turns, most likely they right themselves anyway.

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Unfortunatley not, they have been building up for years, the ones in Spain (which i see every turn due to trade routes) have been there for a good 80 years.

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Originally Posted by TiberiusBeskar

Nothing beats me as Poland-Lith when Prussia wanted to trade East Prussia for West Prussia. I got a sweet deal and then they kept trying to trade back later when they realised they messed up big time.

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I had the same thing. I traded East Prussia for West Prussia, and then almost immediately they wanted to trade it back. I guess they didn't realise how ugly all the women were in West Prussia :laugh4:

-It gets really annoying when the AI starts taking 5-10 minutes to finish as with Prussia I get three offer each turn and they come every few minutes so I can't really do much else than sit in front of the screen throughout that time. Instead of this stupidity you should get a negative relation modifier for each territory you hold that another nation requires, possibly one that gets bigger over time.

I've had stupid offers from the AI as well. Playing Sweden Courland declared war on me,so i promplty landed a army via the sea and crushed them. Ever since then Pland has spammed me every turn,offering various techs and east Prussia for Courland. Also if you play as America in the 4th mission,expect GB to spam you offers for Maine.

The problem isn't the offers, it is more along the lines of this.

In theory, you want the game to be a 50:50 trade rate. You want to get something equal, if not better for that province, getting a good deal as it were.

What happens in reality, the share of wealth is 10:90. In other words, whatever the offer, it only works if the offer is really in the favour of the AI. You could offer 10 techs for 1 from the AI and they will refuse, but then Sweden will want to buy 4 of your techs for 134 gold and expects you to accept.

The AI also rarely tries to banter the deal either. You have to give like 5 offers till it decides it will actually do a counter-offer.

What they should do in the game, which would be interesting. Make it so you can set if you want to sell any of your provinces or not. For example, lets say you are willing to sell Austria for a good price. You can get offers from AI's interested in it and you can set the bar at what sort of deals you want, in the style of a house prices. You say a price you would like, usually higher than you will accept, and the AI's give deals around that range, only if they are interested in doing that.

The thing that annoys me about the diplomacy spam is not the repetition (although it's tedious), it's the stupidity of the offers.

I'm ending a short Maratha campaign. I own the Indian subcontinent, and despite my plans to use Persia as a buffer they declared war and had to be punished. I gave them a peace treaty when they asked, because I don't want to rub up against the Ottomans. As a result, I own their territory up to Asfahan.

Spain, Sweden, Britain, the UP and Russia all want to buy a province from me. Do they try to get a sensible one? I might just about be prepared to part with one on my borders (although I'd take some persuading). What I'm not prepared to do is trade a province right in the middle of my territory. And yet, turn after turn they ask for Gujarat or somewhere in the heart of India. I'd have to be an idiot to agree to that.

Surely it wouldn't take much more effort to firm up the sense behind these offers?

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Originally Posted by Quillan

And speaking of techs, does else find it weird that the AI will refuse an offer to trade 6-9 techs of yours for one of theirs, but will happily sell you that tech for 20k?

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Yeah, I have noticed they will never trade tech for tech even if you offer them all of your techs for just one of theirs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Monk

The AI needs to learn when Diplomacy fails and when it is time to go to war for what they want. Now clearly I'm not suggesting that they backstab you right after a diplomatic mission fails, but if you continually deny their advances there should ideally be a relations hit. This could then be a contributing factor to an alliance being severed as the player is not respecting the desires of the AI faction, ect. Of course what we have now is still an improvement over M2, but there is always room for refinement.

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I don't think so - the player should not be punished for the stupid A.I. by a relations hit. :inquisitive:
Simply make that the A.I. can only ask for a region every, say, 10 rounds would be a relief

I wouldn't put that limit on it even, but if only the AI could learn from failures.

"Trade me Dutch Guyana, I'll give you Improved Grenades and 100 gold."
"Go to hell! It's worth far more than that!"
"Ok, I'll give you Improved Grenades, Flying Shuttle, Fire By Rank, and 10,000 gold, plus I'll toss in the Windward Islands."
"Still not worth it. No."
"How about if I give you all 7 of the techs I currently have but you do not, Windward Islands, Lower Louisiana, and 10,000 gold?"

It keeps coming back with offers not worth any more than the initial one. Perhaps if I'm hard pressed or in dire need of money, but if I'm listed as Terrifying on power and Spectacular on wealth, I'm probably not desperate for help, so I'm not going to trade it away for nothing.

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Originally Posted by pevergreen

I've played well over 300 turns of campaigns, and I've never received a request for a region from any faction.

All on VH/H or VH/VH.

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I cannot believe that.

Yep, there needs to be some inherent valuation system. As for the minimum trade business, that'll probably be too much micro for the player.

Just have a sensible valuation and force the AI to increase the value of their offer by at least 30% if they want to try again within say 10 turns.

Quillan, how are those not good deals for a single territory? Yes, it has gold mines, but the population is measly, you get up-to-date on tech, and 10000 ETW-bucks!

I think one of the problems is that the player simply doesn't lose, at least not us hardened veterans of TW. IRL, nations would trade around territories quite often, especially after marginally won war, which we don't really have. As for the frequency of these offers, the AI should have decided a set amount that they wish to escalate the deal with, instead of several very similar offers.

A Sweden, I had knocked off Denmark, Poland-Lithuania, and some of the crappy little places in Germany, plus Kiev and Moscow. Every single turn for at least 25 turns the Prussians made a measly offer for one of the German territories, and the Ottomans made a pathetic offer for one bordering them. Every bloody turn!!!

There needs to be a "Piss off I don't want to talk to you, dammit!" button. :furious3:

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Originally Posted by A Very Super Market

Quillan, how are those not good deals for a single territory? Yes, it has gold mines, but the population is measly, you get up-to-date on tech, and 10000 ETW-bucks!

I think one of the problems is that the player simply doesn't lose, at least not us hardened veterans of TW. IRL, nations would trade around territories quite often, especially after marginally won war, which we don't really have. As for the frequency of these offers, the AI should have decided a set amount that they wish to escalate the deal with, instead of several very similar offers.

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The last offer would be a decent deal for a territory, but unfortunately I never get that offer. Let's use this from my current campaign to give you an idea. A while back I wanted to purchase New Andalusia from Spain; it's one of my victory conditions, seems like it could be fairly valuable since it has a gem mine and two ports in it too. I offered 100k plus a couple of techs to Spain for it; they responded with a counter offer wanting those same techs plus 142000 gold. I had, at the time, 142085 gold in my treasury, but I took the counter offer since I was making about 40k profit per turn. At the time I bought it, the region wealth of New Andalusia was about 2500 gold. The gem mine was fully improved but the plantation was not, the town was a school and only one port was developed (and it was a fishery). Since that time, I tore down the school and built a smiths workshop (upgraded now to a steam engine factory), the fishery got replaced by a global trading company, the other port also developed into a global trading company, the plantation up to a coffee warehouse, and all buildings in Caracas have upgraded to max. The region is now worth about 8000 in wealth and still climbing.

About every 3 turns, Spain wants it back. The last few offers have been like this: they want New Andalusia and 10k gold. They'll offer me a military alliance, military access for 10 turns, and Threshing Machine. That's it. No matter if I turn it down or come up with a counter offer that I would accept but they decline, three turns later they come back with the exact same offer. I declined it before, my situation has not suddenly gotten much worse, so guess what? It's still a no!

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Originally Posted by Dayve

They're less stubbon, but they're still quick to go to war, and they still march all over my land with a single unit of militia.

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I actually like the fact that, due to the extra towns feature, the AI can conduct raids. It seems to fit the era and theaters quite nicely. That said, they are too easily exterminated :eyebrows: -- I've consistently been able to march a stack from St. Petersburg to Moscow and occupy it in 6 months (during Winter!) -- something neither Napoleon, a century later, nor Guderian, the century after, were able to accomplish! :laugh4: