Diplomacy is entirely broken

[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...

[Durallan]

Diplomacy is DEFINETLY/Entirely broken. First I thought Didz might have just been very annoyed because something really upset him, but no, playing a campaign again, diplomacy is definetly broken.

Started a Prussian campaign (M/M), Got Bavaria, Hannover Wurttemburg Wesphalia Georgia and Savoy to become my protectorates. I realised I wasn't going to get anywhere in europe so I decided I would send an army to the new world. 27 years later that still hasn't happened.

Austria declared war on Wurttemburg, so I join in to defend them. I take most of Austria bar 2 provinces, Polands protectorate Saxony decides halfway through that it wants to take my capital, my large army is right next door and destroys Saxony.

At this point Poland decides it doesn't like me anymore and declares war. I take Poland and beat it down to one province which is sieged by a full stack army.

Halfway through destroying Poland I realise that Russia is also an enemy of Poland and Austria, so I become their allies.

Serbia rebels against the austrians so I send an army to take it. End Turn. During Austria's turn it sends a large stack of those annoying irregulars along with some horse artillery. With my army heavily depleted I barely win and kill the prince of Austria aswell. When it comes to Russia's turn, they decide to DECLARE WAR ON ME.

There is no logical reason that it should have declared war on me considering I just beat 2 major nations to their knees, We were allies for a few years and had been trading partners for much longer
and both had Sweden AND Poland as enemies.

There are several nations in my game that are war with all of europe for no apparent reason. I really was hoping this patch might change things, but diplomacy is still hopeless.


Okay Russia is a similar sized country to me and to some people maybe they think russia thought it was a good time to pick on me, Then CA can at least get Russia to either send me a letter of demands before it declares war or give some sort of pathetic excuse in a news bulletin telling me why theyve declared war before the DoW panel comes up.

[Cheetah]

There is no logical reason that it should have declared war on me ...

1, Just tell me that in real life how many times do you see people behave logically? Since when is human behaviour motivated by purely by logic alone?

2, Why do you guys think that everyone else should behave the way you would behaved in their place? Why do you think that if they do not behave the exact same way then the game is "definitely broken"?!?

[Cheetah]

Diplomacy is DEFINETLY/Entirely broken. First I thought Didz might have just been very annoyed because something really upset him, but no, playing a campaign again, diplomacy is definetly broken.

Started a Prussian campaign (M/M), Got Bavaria, Hannover Wurttemburg Wesphalia Georgia and Savoy to become my protectorates. I realised I wasn't going to get anywhere in europe so I decided I would send an army to the new world. 27 years later that still hasn't happened.

...[snip]...

There is no logical reason that it should have declared war on me considering I just beat 2 major nations to their knees, We were allies for a few years and had been trading partners for much longer
and both had Sweden AND Poland as enemies.

There are several nations in my game that are war with all of europe for no apparent reason. I really was hoping this patch might change things, but diplomacy is still hopeless.

Okay Russia is a similar sized country to me and to some people maybe they think russia thought it was a good time to pick on me, Then CA can at least get Russia to either send me a letter of demands before it declares war or give some sort of pathetic excuse in a news bulletin telling me why theyve declared war before the DoW panel comes up.

I agree with your last point, it would be nice to get some official reasoning why the war broke out (which may or may not be the same as the real reason). However, don't you think that it is bit hasty to conclude based on one DoW which seemed to be irrational to you, that diplomacy is entirely broken?

By the way IMO you just captured one of the eastern polish provinces (Vilnius?) which might be amongst the Russian victory conditions. Also, would not you be afraid of a "friend" who keeps conquering its neighbours?

[Didz]

It would be hasty to conclude that the Diplomacy system is broken if it were based upon a single illogical action by the AI. But its not, the stories of the dumb actions (or lack of actions) by the AI are numerous and my own testing has shown that the Random DOW's are just that, and are not influenced by logic, diplomacy, geopolitic's or the even an assessment of likely success.

The inability to get an AI faction to response sensibly to its current situation, its failure to act to try and minimise a threat or maximise an opportunty, and a general failure of the AI to understand the basic elements and factors that contribute to the survival and prosperity of the factions it controls, all indicate that the system is broken.

What we have instead is a 'player hate routine' the sole purpose of which is to ensure that the player faction is kept in a state of pertetual war, regardless of what strategy that player happens to be following or what the diplomacy system indicates the player factions status to be.

[Sheogorath]

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

Geisha diplomacy

[Lemur]

Yup, the new AI forces you to blitz or die. No room for this so-called "diplomacy."

Since I like to roleplay, and not expand much past historical bounds, I find this intensely irritating. I may have to leave ETW alone until the next patch.

[Marquis of Roland]

Yup, the new AI forces you to blitz or die. No room for this so-called "diplomacy."

Since I like to roleplay, and not expand much past historical bounds, I find this intensely irritating. I may have to leave ETW alone until the next patch.

Same here. I'm not being forced to take more territory, but since it's a region that I need to win, I figure I'll just go ahead and take it early. This causes a chain reaction effect of the faction next to your new region will declare war, and soon its hard to stop.

Hannover used to never declare war on Prussia, but this time they did, so I got sucked into killing them, then Denmark declares war, and after I take Copenhagen Sweden declares war. Pretty sure if the Dutch didn't take Rhineland, Westphalia would've declared war too. As it is now, they're only trying to buy Hannover from me every turn.

I usually try to spread out the taking of the 14 required regions over a span of 60 years, but it's 1725 and I'm pretty much there already. I'm not gonna say the AI randomly declares war, I mean all the factions that have done so had a legitimate reason to. I will say that the AI is being unreasonably aggressive, same as it was in M2TW, and in RTW, etc. etc. etc.

On the bright side, my infantry are leveling up a lot faster than before. By 1720, all the infantry in both my field armies are 4xp.

[Cheetah]

Yup, the new AI forces you to blitz or die.

No it does not. Being in war does not mean that you have to conquer. Conquering is still your choice.

In my Poland game (though it was pre-patch) I was in war with the Prussians, Austria and the Crimean-chanate. They did not send anyting to me, I did not send anything to them for more then 2 decades! It felt like total tranquility and not total war. I was able to tech up and build everything with 4 landlocked provinces!

Another example: in my GRB game the hurons declared war on me (as usual I assume). They sent a dozen or so raiding parties to Moose factory. Defeated them all; now they have not sent anyone for many years. I don't touch them, they don't touch me yet we are still at war.

I none of the cases was I forced to blitz and in both of the cases I am well and alive. It is your choice.

[ZIM!!]

I agree Diplomacy just is not realistic at all another aspect of the problem is the demand surrender function . Has anyone EVER had a city surrender???

I have had a un walled/ unfortified city in India besieged by a full stack and a half stack nearby that would take part tons of artillery and had their port blockaded, them only having 1 infantry 2 mob units, there was no relief force anywhere. the nation was pretty much wiped out. I demanded surrender up until the end where the battle had to be resolved and they were crushed.

I think that the diplomacy rationale numbers are set too high and or the calculations to decide the outcome are not complex enough like they are not able to take into consideration certain factors like opposing force size, turns till possible relief, or remaining provinces that would make a more logical decision instead it seems like it just rolls the dice and if the # rolled doesn’t exceed a preset limit surrender limit value( apparently set at 99.99 across the board) the answer is No.

I think maybe its this same issue with the rest of diplomacy, I imagine they set it so high in case you are able to mass an overwhelming force and attack a poor or weakened country or theater the game would be over too quickly?

[Didz]

Just once. but that was patch 1.2.

[Didz]

Geisha diplomacy

Geisha's Rule..and the cut-scenes were awesome.

[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.