can trade rights affect relations?

[Jason X]

someone claimed over on TWC (though that place really does my head in) that if you open trade rights with a far away faction that you cannot actually trade with, your relations with them will decrease over time.

sounds fishy to me (maybe he was just observing the normalisation on H/VH campaign?) - but can anyone who is familiar with the campaign files confirm or disconfirm this?

[Jason X]

anyone? FH?

[Fisherking]

Any agreement (or even interaction) with another faction has an effect on relations, but they usually tend to go down over time.

Factions you have not contacted keep the amiable relations. Trade rights is only one stage of agreement. The more agreements you have with a faction the better. If you want to keep the best possible relations and not have it drop almost every turn you have to go all the way to military access.

This is only antidotal information from personal experience and not an analyses of files and codes…

[Quintus.JC]

Depending the level of difficulty being played. Playing VH on campaign level will result in the dropping of relationship with other factions overtime, eventually reaching abysmal even without doing harm to them. Playing on easy would result in the relation with other factions improving over time, eventually reaching perfect unless you do something that would screw your relation with that faction. Playing on normal would result in the improving or relations towards so-so, and your relationship would drop towards so-so if you have obtained a relation higher than so-so.

Don't know about the trade-right thingy though.

[Jason X]

yeah, that's the normalisation i described.

thanks for the responses though

[FactionHeir]

Trade itself does not affect relations. Obtaining trade rights gives your relations a one time tiny boost though. After that, how your relations change depends on other factors unrelated to this.

[Jason X]

thanks FH, that's what i thought.

twc full of it as per usual ...