Peace I Just Want Peace!!!!

Is that so much to ask? I like to play the normans, usually i conquer the byzantines. After that i like to just rest and rebuild with a new capitol at Constinople. But regardless of what i do the same thing always happens. The Venetians attack me, the germans attack me, the genoese attack me, and even the hungarians attack. All within 2 turns of each other. The first time this happened, i thought ok ill take em out one by one.:charge: get them down and they will accept a ceasefire or maybe become a vassal. but no venice does not even accept a ceasefire when there down to there last city.:wall:

Does this happen to anybody else. I like to plan my conquests slowly and deliberatly but i never get this chance.

ANybody got any suggestions cause im getting peeved. ~:mad

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Originally Posted by King Elessar

Is that so much to ask? I like to play the normans, usually i conquer the byzantines. After that i like to just rest and rebuild with a new capitol at Constinople. But regardless of what i do the same thing always happens. The Venetians attack me, the germans attack me, the genoese attack me, and even the hungarians attack. All within 2 turns of each other. The first time this happened, i thought ok ill take em out one by one.:charge: get them down and they will accept a ceasefire or maybe become a vassal. but no venice does not even accept a ceasefire when there down to there last city.:wall:

Does this happen to anybody else. I like to plan my conquests slowly and deliberatly but i never get this chance.

ANybody got any suggestions cause im getting peeved. ~:mad

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Different factions lend themselves better to different game types. If you want a slower paced game, try using a faction that starts off with more natural borders against water. England is of course the natural, as you can solidify your hold in France as you take over the various settlements in the islands, then plan your sweep through the bulk of Europe once you are well established. Spain or Portugal may work well for this too, there's water everywhere around, so it gives you an immediate goal (to own the giant land mass) with clear paths in and out. The primary thing I've found helpful in this direction is to have some foreseeable point where you'll be down to bordering few enemy factions: even if you end up at war with 5 other factions, you know where they're coming from for the most part, and don't have to try to defend 10 cities while you also build armies to continue conquering. The opposite of this is of course the infamous situation of the HRE - completely surrounded, with no natural borders in sight, and fighting invariably breaks out on all fronts. So, more of it has to do with your faction and the position they are thrust into than you may initially think.

Another suggestion would be to take note of what you are doing. If you are making moves that extend your borders with enemies, you are inviting trouble. You want to expand in such a way as to maintain or hopefully shrink your borders with enemies - it lets you focus more military might into less provinces (provinces behind the front line require little garrisoning), and makes the decision of what to grab next more obvious too. On top of that, if you are grabbing a very valuable city (like Constantinople) then be prepared for hell. It's somewhat of a choke point, and very lucrative to boot, which means if you're in it you can guarantee any AI faction that can get there is going to want it and try to take it probably. If possible, wait to take it until you've established a stout position on the side you're approaching from (that is, you want well garrisoned settlements protecting the side you approach from so that you know which direction the enemy will attack Constantinople from) and have the men to spare to garrison it against the assaults you know will be coming.

My last suggestion is to make sure you pace yourself. If you take the time to build resources, you can keep your military power at a level high enough to stave off most attacks - often the AI will evaluate your strength and actually decide not to attack if you are powerful enough at the place it wanted to attack. So it's important not to leave places that invite attacks unless you intend to be at war with whatever faction borders that city for quite a while. As you expressed it can be very difficult to make wars end, and I've found the best remedy for this is simply to stay bulked up enough on garrisons that wars don't begin in the first place.

The Egyptians might be good for you since most of the settlements in the levant are rebel and the only factions u might come into trouble with is the byzantines and the turks. Note however, a crusade is going to be called on one of your cities sooner or later and your gonna have at least a couple catholic factions declare war on you as they join the crusade

Though some factions appear to coded to attack you at least early on, I believe(and stand to be corrected) that maintaining good relations and reputation will allow you to avoid wars you don't want.

There are several threads on reputation, but things like exterminating drive it down a lot.

I don't think you can be friends with everyone for ever so choose your enemies as well as your friends, but as a catholic faction I'd suggest paying tribute( say 100x100 florins) to maintain relations with other catholics which look threatening.

You also choose the assasin/spy covert war style against your enemies rather all out blitskrieg, slower but just as much fun.

I'd also recommend Lands to Conquer mod which fixes a lot of annoyances and makes a few things more sensible and logical.

This is a mojor problem. The conditions for the AI breaking alliances must be either tilted towards constant war, or at least highly random. Reputation seems to make little or no difference in my experience.

In my current game as France, having never started a war, having never made incursions into any faction's territory unless on crusade, after making constant bribes to all neighbors, with a Reliable reputation and Amiable to Perfect realtions with all of them, my allies have all at one point or another broken our alliances and begun wars. Portugal broke our marriage alliance just to blockade my Atlantic ports (not attack, just blockade). No one will negotiate sensibly. I suspect it is related to my persistent Supreme rating on the power meter. But instead of respecting my power, keeping in mind my trustworthy reputation, and honoring our alliances, they guys ditch me and team up with dinky Milan in an ill-fated attempt to take the big guy down a notch.

The one small consolation is that the fools keep getting excommed for it, allowing me to crusade against them at will. Bizarrely enough, the only neighbor to stay peaceful is England, France's traditional worst enemy during much of the period.

The AI is scripted to commit forced invasions. It's stupid and a poor design choice, IMO, but it has been present in all TW games unfortunately. Check out this thread for a good discussion on psycho AI and possible ways to offset it:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75496

Also, you may want to delete all of the tall_poppy triggers from the descr_faction_standings file to reduce the senselessness of the AI, and to prevent the game from punishing you just for being successful (instead of the other way around, that you get rewarded by an enjoyable game).

I suggest that you check out Medieval: Total Peace. The next game in CA's world renowned francise, MTP promises to bring all the timesome negotiation of the medieval period to life on your computer.

Controlling one of the pathetically minor powers of europe, it is up to you to forge alliances with the ai and attempt to maintain the status quo. If you're not careful, you might have to fight someone...and that means game over!

Medieval: Total Peace - coming to a store near you.

/cynicism

On topic, i suggest you do what has already been said :yes:

Well the game is called total war, you know...

But I agree that it wouldn't hurt if the AI would behave more logic. Refusing a ceasefire after losing several settlements to a powerfull enemy just doesn't make any sense.

On the other hand, if you are warring against your fellow christians, the Pope does a good job to force both you and your enemy to cease fire for at least several turns.

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Originally Posted by AndresTheCunning

Well the game is called total war, you know...

But I agree that it wouldn't hurt if the AI would behave more logic. Refusing a ceasefire after losing several settlements to a powerfull enemy just doesn't make any sense.

On the other hand, if you are warring against your fellow christians, the Pope does a good job to force both you and your enemy to cease fire for at least several turns.

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I thought I had something to say but Andres The Cunning pretty much said it for me actually!

On a side note, the games where I have been most able to control my alliances and decisions about war/peace came when I had a pre-planned group of targets on one side and allies on the other from the outset. That may sound silly in an overly-obvious way but what I mean is that some games I don't do this; I'll ally with whoever is paying well and let the chips fall where they may in terms of who breaks what alliances and when. However in a few campaigns, I have set down a list of who to court as allies and who to target as enemy (always a few 'gray factions in between) before even recruiting my first unit. As an example, in a Danish long campaign in which I had targeted HRE, England and France as immediate enemies, I only ever offered trade rights, didn't even sell em my map. I allied with most other Christian factions but in addition to schmoozing his Holines I targeted Russia and Sicily for strong alliance and lo and behold it really did end up, for the bulk of the game, being 3 sets of allies essentially all at war with each other. Spain joined the Papal-Danish-Rus-Sicily group for a while, the rest of the Christian factions were mostly allied in another group, while oddly, the ERE joined in with the muslim factions (while they lasted anyway) for the third group. This worked similarly for me in a Russian campaign where I also targeted the Danes for alliance, and yes the pope too, and England. With the backing of my allies, the pope barely blinked as Hungary and Poland were relegated to footnotes in history while crusade after crusade were directed anywhere but near my borders. This is in contradistinction to what normally happens which is the usual chaos cited above. I'm also convinced that the best you can do is both have such a plan, stick to it, and hope luck follows because there have been a couple other campaigns where I tried the same type of scheme and had much, much less success in terms of generating a 'faithful' bloc. But it can happen, though it costs some florins to do and there does not appear to be a guaranteed path to having it work for certain.

Well the game is called total war. :) Which means if you play a Catholic faction be prepared odd wars of on and off bloodshed to avoid being excommunicated. Try to ensure that you have a few castles that are geared up to produce high quality men and machines to help you here. The alternative is massive quick attacks to wipe out nations in one go, slow to prepare but immense fun to execute.

I think the Orthadox factions fare best here reasonbly good start positions no Pope and normaly no crusades ..

T

Snoil mentions some very good points there. It is really helpful to plan who your allies are going to be from the start - it avoids you having allied countries that you end up wanting to attack later, and gives you a very clear road to follow (at least politically) throughout the campaign. That said, I have a point or two to add.

The first is that it is infinitely easier to keep allies when the following are true:

- they share no border with you
- they have bigger fish to fry

That is, borders create tension, and that tension often breaks an alliance - the computer will jump at the opportunity to invade one of your cities most of the time. The second point of course simply means it's helpful if your ally will be distracted a lot of the time - if they're busy fighting other countries, odds are they're not going to add you to their plate as well.

The other point is of course that the decision variables that tell the AI how to deal with alliances are currently disabled. They are set to values that are unattainable, so nothing you do can actually make the AI respect an alliance you have with it (for instance relations are on a -1.0 to 1.0 scale, and the threshold for a trusted relationship is set to 9.0). If you want a shot at having maintainable alliances, I strongly recommend you re-enable those variables with reasonable values. You can read about this further, and what to do if you'd like to enable the variables, here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75496

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Originally Posted by Foz

The other point is of course that the decision variables that tell the AI how to deal with alliances are currently disabled. They are set to values that are unattainable, so nothing you do can actually make the AI respect an alliance you have with it (for instance relations are on a -1.0 to 1.0 scale, and the threshold for a trusted relationship is set to 9.0). If you want a shot at having maintainable alliances, I strongly recommend you re-enable those variables with reasonable values. You can read about this further, and what to do if you'd like to enable the variables, here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75496

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Wow - that sounds like a bug almost on a par with the shield bug. Does CA know about this? It sounds like the kind of thing Lusted or whoever should be raising with Palamedes as a matter of priority.

Forget what I said - given Foz's latter post.

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Originally Posted by econ21

Wow - that sounds like a bug almost on a par with the shield bug. Does CA know about this? It sounds like the kind of thing Lusted or whoever should be raising with Palamedes as a matter of priority.

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Iirc, there was someone from CA or maybe Lusted that mentioned a huge bug that needs fixing which the community isn't yet aware of. It could well be that this is it.

Edit: I can't provide a link for that and I don't intend to spread rumours. I'm sorry if I have caused confusion.

Try playing games on an easier Campaign map difficulty level. At Very Hard you'll get tons of wars but on Normal a lot fewer. In addition, make regular cash gifts to other powers (especially those you share a land border with).

In the Grim Darkness of the Past, There is Only War.

PURGE THE HERETIC
BURN THE WITCH
KILL THE WEAK!

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Originally Posted by econ21

Wow - that sounds like a bug almost on a par with the shield bug. Does CA know about this? It sounds like the kind of thing Lusted or whoever should be raising with Palamedes as a matter of priority.

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It's not a bug, they're intentionally disabled, as a comment in the file even says. I am honestly trying to avoid speculating as to the reason for this, but it appears to work correctly at evaluating whether or not an alliance is trusted once reasonable thresholds are used, and then the game won't force invade you once you are trusted. It makes the AI seem a little less random and petty on the whole.

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Originally Posted by King Elessar

Is that so much to ask? I like to play the normans, usually i conquer the byzantines. After that i like to just rest and rebuild with a new capitol at Constinople. But regardless of what i do the same thing always happens. The Venetians attack me, the germans attack me, the genoese attack me, and even the hungarians attack. All within 2 turns of each other. The first time this happened, i thought ok ill take em out one by one.:charge: get them down and they will accept a ceasefire or maybe become a vassal. but no venice does not even accept a ceasefire when there down to there last city.:wall:

Does this happen to anybody else. I like to plan my conquests slowly and deliberatly but i never get this chance.

ANybody got any suggestions cause im getting peeved. ~:mad

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From 10 years the game name is Total War :laugh4:

Try some of the old versions of Shaba Mod or UltimateAI mods, look for complains about the mod being too peaceful :) and download that version.

It happens in RTW too. I too find this ridiculous. I was England and allied with spain and portugal a whole lot of other factions against germany. I had good relations with all. However after that one Spanish ship blockaded my port and then my own coalition turned against me! They even made peace with the Germans just to gang up on me!

That said, the AI does many other indescribable, incredulous, undiplomatic moves. On top of that they defy sense when they refuse for a simple ceasefire even when whittled down to the last city, as if some divine intervention will help them.

While the name of the game is Total War, it shouldn't be the whole map Total War-ring on you.

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It's called Total War!

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While I mostly agree with the spirit of the points, Total War does not imply that a nation is always fighting; it implies that the nation is fighting without holding anything back. It is totally committed to the war.

Wiki.

A "Total War" game in which war was an infrequent occurence would not be "wrong".

try ultimate AI mod, any time your by those tricksy nasty germans your gonna have problems :yes:

they like land :thumbsdown:

If "Total War" is the whole point of the game, as in that the AI will attack you at random and you cannot negotiate for anything, then why include the diplomacy in the game at all? Wouldn't it be more in the spirit of the game if every time you start the campaign you are immediately at war with every other faction? Or, better yet, that all factions are at war with every other faction and there is no option for peace?

However, since the TW games do include diplomacy, or at least an interface to conduct negotiations, then I expect it to make at least a little bit of sense. And, unfortunately, after four installments I'm still waiting for it to be modeled sensibly.

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I'm still waiting for it to be modeled sensibly.

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The problem is three-fold.

First they haven't enabled trusted alliances, when those are in effect, if it's a trusted alliance they simply WILL NOT attack you at all under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Second, a trusted alliance cannot be broken even if your down to 1 territory and no military and they have 50 units of the best units in the game in every province around you. Theirs no Trigger for this situation.

Three, even if their was a trigger that would make the AI disregard trusted alliances if it was strong enough, (or weak enough and was getting beaten by one of your mutual enemies), it would never be triggered as the AI's economic growth AI is totally useless ATM, so it never CAN be stronger than you. This is probably why CA left trusted alliances disabled by default.

Otherwise though, the diplomacy is quite good TBH, it just has severe economic limitations placed on it.

I am playing with trusted alliances enabled. However, this is not really an answer to erratic AI behavior, and additionally has its own set problems from what I can gather. So I stand by my statement that diplomacy has yet to be modeled sensibly in a TW game.

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Originally Posted by Xdeathfire

The Egyptians might be good for you since most of the settlements in the levant are rebel and the only factions u might come into trouble with is the byzantines and the turks. Note however, a crusade is going to be called on one of your cities sooner or later and your gonna have at least a couple catholic factions declare war on you as they join the crusade

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The Egyptians are so NOT a good faction for peace. The Turks are a pushover, but the damn crusades are like the never ending story of Hell, especially if you expand into Byzantine territory and take Constantinople. Then, right as you have all of your armies in the west fighting the Christian horde, the Mongolian horde shows up in the east and kicks you in the nuts. Check out my Egyptian AAR for my experience with the Egyptians: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76694

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Originally Posted by sapi

I suggest that you check out Medieval: Total Peace. The next game in CA's world renowned francise, MTP promises to bring all the timesome negotiation of the medieval period to life on your computer.

Controlling one of the pathetically minor powers of europe, it is up to you to forge alliances with the ai and attempt to maintain the status quo. If you're not careful, you might have to fight someone...and that means game over!

Medieval: Total Peace - coming to a store near you.

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Now this is not necessary. If we were to take the game name at face value, why have diplomacy at all? Lets rip out religion and city building while we are at it too huh? Behaving like a good christian nation, not starting any wars, never breaking a treaty, allying with your neighbors, and how does the game AI reward you? Every single faction you border can be expected to backstab you. And even when you are beating them handily, surround their last territory with a huge army, and ask for peace, they demand 10,000 gold to show you mercy. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a semblance of rationality from the diplomacy system.

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I am playing with trusted alliances enabled. However, this is not really an answer to erratic AI behavior, and additionally has its own set problems from what I can gather. So I stand by my statement that diplomacy has yet to be modeled sensibly in a TW game.

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Actually with the fix in place diplomacy is VERY sensibile IMHO.

Your allways the strongest faction in this game unfortuinatly. and that means they should eithier gang up on you you or bend the knee to you. When they get a trusted alliance to you they bend the knee, when they attack they are ganging up on you.

As you say their are problems, but they come about more because of inept AI, than bad programing.

1. As noted the AI will never break a trusted alliance, even if it would be benificial to do so

2. even if it had triggers to make it break trusted alliances, they'd never fire as the AI simply isn't good enough to get itself into a postion to use them.

3. The Trusted alliances requires a good reputaion. This is hard to get, you littrially have to use zero spies, or assassins, have a high Chivalry King, (that means low taxes, or at least no better than High), and you can't sack or exterminate any settelments you capture Thus in effect their are too few ways to get a good reputation.

A sensible diplomacy would mean e.g. that you can at least to some degree fight TOGETHER with your allies, or to have the AI that accepts a reasonable peace proposal every once in a while. And I'm still waiting to see things like that.

Ganging up on me when I'm the strongest doesn't qualify, as I said the diplomacy interface wouldn't even have to be included in the game to have that effect.

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A sensible diplomacy would mean e.g. that you can at least to some degree fight TOGETHER with your allies,

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You can, you just have to have a trusted alliance with them, they can't as far as i'm aware ever be at peace with your enemies if you have a trusted alliance.

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or to have the AI that accepts a reasonable peace proposal every once in a while.

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You will get this, IF your relations havn't sunk to Abysmal, you are tottally better than them in every respect, and have a decent reputation. By better I mean 5-6 times the total military strength with a lot of it on their borders. Lastly, no matter what, as long as you are the strongest faction in the game, EVERY faction in the game that is not a trusted ally will ALWAYS declare war on you ASAP if it can regardless. Thats quite realistic, they eithier cowtow to you or try to destroy you, (or die trying).

The problem is that since the AI is allways easilly well behind the player, (and thus the strongest faction is always the player), this means your allways having eithier trusted alliances or all out war with everyone. the only way to stop it is to get to trusted status, then force the AI into becoming vassels.

Nothing else will or should work if your the strongest faction. I agree that they attack too soon after agreeing to a ceasfire, but thats it.

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Originally Posted by Carl

I agree that they attack too soon after agreeing to a ceasfire, but thats it.

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Of course, so do I sometimes! I'll realize that I just agreed to peace with a faction I had a mission against, or that I really DO want to keep beating down Milan - it was that sexy princess who came with the ceasefire offer who made me do it! For some reason I just hate Milan. It seems like they're always the first to break alliances, they spam spies so much you wouldn't think they have anyone left to work the fields... They just excel at making me hate them I guess. Good thing they've taken a liking to excommunication though :smile:

As for the ceasefire thing, you can easily change the number of turns the AI respects the ceasefire. I think it's currently set to 3 turns. The trigger should just about jump out and bite you if you understand the file at all...

First post... I don't know if anyone has noticed this, I haven't seen anyone mention it here or at TWC, but, factions seem to want to go after certain settlements. I'll give you some examples...

As France, if I don't take Dijon at the beginning, I don't have to deal with a war with Milan. Same with Bruges, the Danes go crazy over that settlement. Happens in every game I've played, but if I don't take those cities, then I don't get backstabbed. Another example is Byzantium, if you don't take Sofia right at the beginning, the Hungarians will leave you alone. At least, that's what's been happening in my games. The Turks go crazy when you take Trebizond.

I've been using this in a current campaign as the Byz actually, I'm two hundred years in and I have kept an alliance with Hungary since I signed a marriage alliance in the second turn. They even got excommunicated helping me fend off the Venetians. It's very helpful to know what cities are targeted by which factions in controlling which wars I want to fight. Those two factions are the only two I've played with for more than one campaign, so if anyone else has noticed this, speak up, cause I'd love to hear. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by General Zhukov

This is a mojor problem. The conditions for the AI breaking alliances must be either tilted towards constant war, or at least highly random. Reputation seems to make little or no difference in my experience.

In my current game as France, having never started a war, having never made incursions into any faction's territory unless on crusade, after making constant bribes to all neighbors, with a Reliable reputation and Amiable to Perfect realtions with all of them, my allies have all at one point or another broken our alliances and begun wars. Portugal broke our marriage alliance just to blockade my Atlantic ports (not attack, just blockade). No one will negotiate sensibly. I suspect it is related to my persistent Supreme rating on the power meter. But instead of respecting my power, keeping in mind my trustworthy reputation, and honoring our alliances, they guys ditch me and team up with dinky Milan in an ill-fated attempt to take the big guy down a notch.

The one small consolation is that the fools keep getting excommed for it, allowing me to crusade against them at will. Bizarrely enough, the only neighbor to stay peaceful is England, France's traditional worst enemy during much of the period.

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Exactly, I am in the same situation. I feel that as bad as the battle AI is, the campaign AI is far worse. Diplomacy is absolutly useless. In fact, ceasefires rarely last more than 4 turns. Not only does repution mean little, it means nothing, at least in real world results.

I feel that the obvious bias in the AI programming on VH campaign map lvl towards a human player is simply unfair. I want the campaign to be very hard...not unrealistic. Its simply stupid to be portugal and having the papacy, milan, france, sicily, the moors, spain, the english and the scottish ALL at war with me by turn 10...thats right...Eight factions at war with me within 10 turns.

And some will say:"O but you were excommunicated!" That does not mean that factions such as milan, sicliy, england and scotland should be sending armies across a decent distance to attack me when they have nearby enemies they are at war with...they send stack after stack of massive armies in the very early stages of the game.

I had told myself I wasn't going to cheat any but I had to use auto_win a few games just because it simply isn't fair. If the devs develop a game where diplomacy is downright BROKEN then cheating isn't really cheating.

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Originally Posted by Alcorr

I had told myself I wasn't going to cheat any but I had to use auto_win a few games just because it simply isn't fair. If the devs develop a game where diplomacy is downright BROKEN then cheating isn't really cheating.

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I've never had to cheat to beat the AI, Total war or not. Why auto win? What's the point? Just lose and start again or...

Make the pope your friend and suck it up......

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Originally Posted by Carl

The problem is that since the AI is allways easilly well behind the player, (and thus the strongest faction is always the player), this means your allways having eithier trusted alliances or all out war with everyone.

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Even if only this was the problem, and it isn't the only one by far, the system would still be broken and illogical.


@ CaesarCS
Nice hints. Also, don't touch Corsica or Sardinia as any faction, as the AI just loves them. Another thing I found was that the HRE guys are fond of Metz.

Concerning AI having favorite targets: A different thread discovered through hot-seating that the AI gets faction missions just like the player does. It's possible they lock into certain provinces so much because the council of that faction gives a mission to take it - and if you get there first, it goes to war with you instead. This would make a lot of sense if it's really a repeatable thing, since in testing I've played the early stages of England quite a few times, and the rebel towns I get missions to take are almost invariably the same ones, in the same order. At the least a mission for York always springs as the very first thing, by turn 3 I think. Similarly, blockade missions go a long way toward explaining the seemingly random way the AI will sometimes blockade you.

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Originally Posted by Foz

Similarly, blockade missions go a long way toward explaining the seemingly random way the AI will sometimes blockade you.

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That could be an explanation. But I don't recall getting blockade missions on factions that I am neutral or allied with.

The other annoying thing is, your own coalition attacks you, then signs ceasefires and alliances with the enemy coalition you were fighting against in the first place, which ends up usually in one coalition consisting half of Catholic europe warring against you.

I have also noted that to some extent, your reputation affects response to certain diplomatic proposals eg. alliances, maps

General Zhukov, you're right that blockade missions don't occur against allied or neutral factions, but take settlement missions do. But sometimes it feels that the AI just does things to deliberately start a war with you eg. blockading then never sending an army, sieging a full stack settlement with just one unit, following which is a flurry of weak and disorganised forrays into your territory which are promptly destroyed.

If your borders are too strong the AI will simply continue to pester you with annoying blockades while at the same time refusing even the most generous of peace proposals...

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I've never had to cheat to beat the AI, Total war or not. Why auto win? What's the point? Just lose and start again or...

Make the pope your friend and suck it up......

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I never cheated in a tw game before this, but the AI is so blaringly broken, I find it only fair...

To me, there is no point spending many hours on a game just to give up and lose because the diplomacy is broken in the game.

I gave the pope money to be friends, made peace with everyone, didn't attack anyone..but his armies kept attacking ME and thus my 3 cross rep with the pope (4 is reconciliation) kept going down to zero...then up to three...then down...then up....

I only auto_win one battle, and then gave myself just enough money to bribe the pope to reconciliation...

Anyways, my point is, to each his own, but to me, if the AI gets tons of bonuses, why can't I auto win one battle...just my two cents.

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Originally Posted by Foz

A different thread discovered through hot-seating that the AI gets faction missions just like the player does.

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I've seen the thread where Re Berengario said this. However, turning off can_force_invade seems to make the AI factions not fight each other (except for the crusade wars) in addition to not fighting me. It's almost as if the AI needs a trigger to start a war, and it gets it through missions. Btw, in my experience the same thing happens when you enable trusted alliances, the only wars are those started by the crusades or those against me. Which again just goes to show that the diplomacy is implemented poorly.

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Btw, in my experience the same thing happens when you enable trusted alliances, the only wars are those started by the crusades or those against me. Which again just goes to show that the diplomacy is implemented poorly.

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Not if you modify the rest of the triggers in my expiriance, they're still trigger happy, they're just less likliy to break every alliance they ever have. I'm also making some modifications tyo it to aid in good defending/attacking and they seem to be working.

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Originally Posted by hrvojej

I've seen the thread where Re Berengario said this. However, turning off can_force_invade seems to make the AI factions not fight each other (except for the crusade wars) in addition to not fighting me. It's almost as if the AI needs a trigger to start a war, and it gets it through missions. Btw, in my experience the same thing happens when you enable trusted alliances, the only wars are those started by the crusades or those against me. Which again just goes to show that the diplomacy is implemented poorly.

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There's no way enabling trusted alliances at a reasonable (read "high enough") threshold should cause the AI not to attack each other. The AI countries do not treat each other well enough to ever qualify for trusted alliances with each other, and frankly it takes some work for the human player to achieve them even. I also know from experience that what you claim is not the case, as I've been playing with trusted alliances enabled for quite some time now, and consistently see factions I'm not at war with being excommunicated, breaking alliances, calling ceasefires, and whatnot. The Papacy just went to war against Venice in my one campaign and I've never been anywhere near them (I'm England in that one), so it doesn't look to me like enabling trusted alliances neuters the AI in any way at all (Venice got excommunicated without my involvement at all).

I haven't used can_force_invade=false though, so I can't really comment on that at all.