How do I build strong diplomats?

[OBarbas]

Hello all. Hours, days, months of pleasure from EB, this fantastic mod.

I've searched the forum though and have been unable to come up with a focussed thread dedicated to answering my question -

How do I build a strong diplomat?

I've never managed to engage in the lengthy negotiations that the manual suggests is possible in any of the Total War games.

Please can someone advise, or provide a link to a thread I've missed.

thanks!

OBarbas

[FriendlyFire]

When you first recruit them, let them sit in a city with an Academy or better. They'll get the "Trained" attribute in a year or two, and stand a good chance of acquiring retinue such as translators. You can also send them off to a battle zone, where they can pick up the Foreign Hostage retinue.

Then negotiate lots of ceasefires, trade rights, and/or alliances (giving gifts doesn't seem to help, sadly). Presumably you could even provoke wars with a minor foreign power (blockading a far-off port, maybe?), just to then negotiate ceasefires and boost your diplomat, but this might bring down your global "trustworthiness" level.

Finally, just let them get old and learned: they'll gain even more influence as they age, although they'll also get slower and more prone to assassination.

Note that your initial diplomats are often hard to match in the later game, precisely because they're the ones negotiating a lot of ceasefires, trade rights, and alliances. You'll also see this with AI diplomats, where their initial diplomats become almost impossible assassination targets, just because they've negotiated so much and have such high influence. Later on there's just less opportunity for negotiation because all the deals have already been done, so it's harder to build up great diplomats. Still, if you start out lucky (with e.g. a diplomatic genius), get trained, and throw in a couple of retinue, you can be at +7 or +8 influence before he's even gotten old or negotiated his first trade deal.

[OBarbas]

Thank you FriendlyFire! With that knowledge, I proceed to diplomatic triumphs! Currently starting a Very Hard on all settings Seleucid campaign, I think I'm going to need plenty of diplomacy to maintain my far-flung borders!

Cheers, mate!

[Lazy O]

There is no such thing as diplomacy on VH campaign, play medium. No matter how good the diplomat, AI wont accept

[Ludens]

There is no such thing as diplomacy on VH campaign, play medium. No matter how good the diplomat, AI wont accept

Actually, you can get the A.I. to accept at VH, but a badly though-out mechanisms means that the A.I. will become annoyed with the player for no reason other than that no positive interaction takes place. You can counteract this effect by paying them a small, regular tribute (say 100 mnai per turn). The A.I. also seems disinclined to attack someone who is paying them money, no matter how little. Still, the A.I. is programmed to gang up on the player, so even this won't prevent the A.I. from being unreasonably and unwisely hostile towards the player. But that happens at any difficulty level.

[Randal]

AI diplomacy is very weird.

In my Rome game it's the second century BC and the Romans rule the western Mediterranean, the Ptolemies the eastern. The Ptolemies keep attacking me in Rhodos and then offering a cease-fire a turn later. I can demand Antiocheia in return and get it for free, and I even demanded their entire western seaboard (Antiochea, Tarsos, Damascos, Hierosolyma, Alexandria, Sidon, Bostra, Edessa) and I got it in return for a few 100.000 minai. I then reloaded because it didn't make any sense to me for them to sell their empire after a war that had seen 1 skirmish fought. And all this is on hard campaign difficulty.

[vollorix]

Bribing boosts up their influence too. And is sometimes even usefull: preventing a strong AI faction from taking a key rebel region, while allowing a smaller one to use their foreces, or even lifting a siege; bribing a small rebel army with units your faction can utilize, or even better, cannot recruit yet due to the lack of adequate army barracks tier. Of course, bribing armies is really expensive ( try the ones led by captains only ), and the mercs are cheaper, but that way you are weakening your enemies on the front, while getting some useful units for your own. Also, once you start swimming in money, you can keep your treasury at bay that way.
Bribing is quite expensive, though. The cheapest way to get a good diplomat instantly is to bribe one of the enemies negotiators. Bribing also affects some traits of your Faction Leader, giving him politician skills. Though, i think to have noticed that sometimes an FM residing in your capital would get the traits instead ( i have to test it out yet, though ).
Moving your agents around a lot, while using their full movement points, will give them a "hardy" trait, which boosts up their movement point and their personal security, counteracting the "elder statesman" traits when they are getting older.