Europa Barbarorum II FAQ

[Arjos]

Does the AI respect alliances and such, or more specifically, are the military and diplomacy AI actually aligned now (they weren't in R:TW)?

They respect them, yes.
Betrayals are still possible, but their standing needs to be lowish for it. Or if your ally shares all its borders with you, it will demand military access or declare war, but accept peace and alliance once again, provided you offer access...
Factions with high relations, will stick together...

I do not know, at a coding/engine level, whether they are aligned though...

Will the AI accept peace treaties when you've decided you've had enough of defeating them?

It depends on how many settlements the specific faction has left I think...
But it's very common for say a faction suffering defeats and with 2-3 (sometimes even more, especially if you don't border with them), to sue for peace and accepting most demands...

Does the AI put together proper, large armies, rather than fragmenting their forces and sending endless streams of useless, too-small armies to annoy but never actually threaten?

It tends to stick to large armies yes and also sends decent stacks on naval invasions...

Does the AI defend its settlements when you invade, rather than fleeing?

Not really sure what you mean here...
I've usually seen settlements with full stacks (in EBI). AI vacating settlements and running away is new to me...

In M2TW, there are mods with scripted garrisons, so even if the AI has left it with a unit, depending on the settlement's size it spawns a stack inside. So definitely a sub-mod possibility...

Is the rebel/slave/unaligned faction a challenge to other AI factions? One of the things that annoys me a little about the simulation aspect in EB is that all those independents are a pushover, leading to imperial juggernaughts in far too short a time.

That will depend on how the team scripts it...
The pushover/short time is because they don't recruit or retrain. But I think already with the alex.exe the retrained units. I don't know whether it's harcoded or not for the eleutheroi to be unable to recruit. Hopefully it will be just a matter of editing few entries, but ofc it must be kept in mind, that starting with so many provinces, they would overrun everybody else. So in the end, the best of compromises will have to do...

Lastly, is there an equivalent to the Force Diplomacy minimod in M2:TW?

Don't know, but I don't see why it couldn't be modded...

BTW all of this comes from my experience with M2TW's mods. I haven't played any vanilla title (except Shogun 2) for more than a few hrs...