Diplomacy is entirely broken

[Husar]

@Hussar, no what I wrote wasn't bollox you just didn't get it.

Oh, I got it and I will take the rest as a joke.

The fact that the AI does not sue for peace, or form new alliances is a bug, but it does not mean that the game is unplayable, and doubt it would have a great affect on the game dynamic even if they did.

Wait till after the summer, 1.3 cannot have been the last patch, think everyone would agree that there is room for considerable improvment and no doubt it'll be addressed sooner or later.

Oh it would, AI factions who constantly take eachother out are a lot weaker when they get to fight with the player than AI factions which are otherwise at peace and have big armies for use only against the player.

I actually managed to make peace with Poland and Austria in my current Prussian campaign but Poland keeps attacking me no matter how often I crush their armies or which settlements I take.
Maybe I'm a bit spoiled from EUIII but in that game the AI is a lot more reasonable and when it has lost, it is even willing to pay, a lot, for peace, while the AI in TotalWar will very often not accept peace under any circumstances much less pay for it, they'd rather make the player pay even if the player is already besieging their last town.

And concerning patches, this problem isn't new, it has existed at least since RTW IIRC, you'd think that after they promised to completely redo the AI for ETW that it would actually be somewhat reasonable by now, I've been rather patient you know, but this is the third game in a row with completely stupid AI diplomacy and there is a point where I just have enough. A lot of the diplomacy seems random, within about ten turns my relation to Poland has been switching between friendly, hostile and war, peace several times and they never ever gained anything out of it, in fact they lost quite a bit yet they refuse to give up their stupid crusade of idiocy. I don't even want to crush them, I dont want their stupid regions, I just want them to leave me in peace after I showed them who's boss, even offered to give them their capital back for a peace deal after their attempt to take it back horribly failed but no, they won't accept, I thought about giving it all to Russia after crushing Poland but I'm somewhat afraid they might attack me as well then. Oh and this is on Very Hard campaign IIRC, the armies are nice and big and challenging(normal battles after I noticed the AI gets laser muskets on hard).

Ok, talking a lot here but it shouldn't be that hard to make some decent diplomacy possible, other games have done it before, sometimes with rather simple number crunching models, but somehow ETW has nothing like it and way too many AI decisions seem random and stupid to me, must say I have noticed a few that made some sense but there is quite a lot of room for improvement and it's about time since that room has been in TW games for about three years or more.