Diplomacy is entirely broken

[Sheogorath]

Back in my day we had to walk ten miles, in the snow, to get diplomacy. Uphill both ways. And we didn't have shoes. And the AI was less talkative than a rabid lion on acid.

In any case, yes, there are some 'berserker' factions in every game, it seems. It's been that way since 1.0. Most factions have, for me, responded well to diplomacy.

[Lemur]

In any case, yes, there are some 'berserker' factions in every game, it seems. It's been that way since 1.0. Most factions have, for me, responded well to diplomacy.

Try it again with the new patch. I was playing UP on H/H last night, and had both Sweden and Prussia go completely bat-guano crazy on me, accepting no peace terms no matter how many provinces i took, no matter how generous the offer. (At one point I was offering Prussia two major cities, one minor city and 50k gold for peace. "No, a thousand times no ...")

[nameless]

The AI can be weird sometimes.

As Russia on Hard I had control of north eastern part of europe while Austria had control of the south eastern part.

We were at peace for at least 40 turns before they declared war on me.

[AussieGiant]

Just keep trying to remember stating what difficulty you are playing on. I know the red mist can get in the way sometimes.

It really helps to determine if YOU are insane to expect VH to play with any sanity, or Medium, in which sanity IS part of what I experience.

@ Sheogorath, maaate, you should talk.

Back in my day we crawled backwards 23 miles in blazing 50 degree heat just to get a trade agreement. Going there was underwater and coming back was over the Alps. All we had was a loin cloth and a banana. The AI rarely even spoke, just grunted and pointed to options we had written on paper before hand.

[Dodge_272]

Now you know how Hitler felt.

[FactionHeir]

Well, at least during 1.2, you could take France and get all of their colonies for peace without offering them anything else. Same for spain.

Not working in 1.3.

All that VH too.

[antisocialmunky]

In all honesty, TW has always had bad to crap diplomacy. Atleast Shogun was fun about it though. :)

[al Roumi]

I'm not sure if this patch is any better or worse. I started a spanish campaign last night and got as far as 1714, having completed the New Spain quest, eliminated Portugal and Papal states.

In my first turn i was able to set up alliances with Genoa, Savoy and Venice and trade with Portugal and Morocco. I was also able to swap flanders and florida with France for French Guyana and their enlightenment tech. So far so consistent with previous play throughs on other game versions.

Incidentaly, i always offer military access as a sweatener to trade agreements. More often than not it works, and as the AI can't backstab you from within your territory, it comes with minimal risk.

Now I had no illusions of a lasting peace with Morocco or Portugal, just a few turns of trade, and Morocco did duly DoW after about 4 turns. Portugal never did however, and i did the dirty on them by about turn 6 or 8.

After I'd captured dutch Guyana and Curacao from the UP, they upped their game in Europe and captured first flanders and then France! I'd not seen this before but have heard of it happening. I re-captured paris and greedily wanted to keep it. After a couple of turns it all turned to the worse and a rebelious French army appeared (without drawing me into conflict with france though -weird), so I decided to cut my losses and invest in my ally. However, I couldn't for the life of me persuade France to trade or even accept Paris back for nothing. I literally offered them France as a gift and they wouldn't take it!

Now, i'm, not sure if the presence of a rebelious army of their nation (or any) is what detered them from it but when reloading to a save immediatly following my capture of Paris, France happily accepted my gift. They still wouldn't trade it for Savoy though...

[Sheogorath]

In all honesty, TW has always had bad to crap diplomacy. Atleast Shogun was fun about it though. :)

Geisha diplomacy

[Zenicetus]

Just keep trying to remember stating what difficulty you are playing on. I know the red mist can get in the way sometimes.

It really helps to determine if YOU are insane to expect VH to play with any sanity, or Medium, in which sanity IS part of what I experience.

Seconded.

I'll jump on the "diplomacy is broken" bandwagon too, but there should be differences at the various difficulty settings. Given the limited scope of the game where territorial expansion is the only real goal, we should be expecting more hostility and war declarations at the highest difficulty settings. I'm playing my current Empire campaign at M difficulty and I'm seeing some illogical DOW's, but I don't think I'm seeing as many as some here. The M difficulty is probably the baseline where the devs are trying to make diplomacy work best, and where we can figure out what's broken or not.

If CA is using a similar "constantly degrading relations" system at H and VH settings like they did in M2TW (are they? does anyone know?), then yeah... you'll have the whole world ganged up against you, and constant illogical DOW's. That's just how the CA devs think of "difficulty" in this game, based on prior versions. It can be a trap to think you're an experienced strategy game player, and therefore you should jump in right at VH setting, and anything else is gimped. Some games like this play out more realistically (or at least, more predictably) at the medium settings, where the AI isn't acting quite as crazy (but still crazy).

[Equilibrium]

I'd say it's not broken but simply their new principle of having arch enemies that they talked about in one of the daily updates.
Just like you I've not been able to make peace with poland at any time as prussia but with the russians, france and even the austrians after taking away two provinces and destroying bavaria for a small fee of money they all agreed to peace and have kept it so far.

[Lemur]

Hmm, okay, I'll re-start my UP campaign on M/M and see if that makes a diff.