diplomacy related tips/strategies?

[mtw2]

Hello everyone.

I would like to know in what ways people make use of diplomacy in mtw2. Do you use any specific diplomatic strategies to gain the upper hand? Any tips on creating successfull alliances? Using diplomacy to make money? Using diplomacy to actually help allies out? Bribing factions to attack your enemies? Please tell me in what ways you use the diplomacy in mtw2!!!

[Yoyoma1910]

Well, it's kind of an exploit, but if you offer a faction a territory they would not want, and ask them to make their own terms, they will generally reject the deal. However, your relationship with that faction will increase.


As far as my favorite diplomacy, I'd say marriages, especially for my heirs at a fairly young age if possible.

[Myth]

If you offer it the standard way. If you press the gift button they'd take the most backwater village you give them!

[mtw2]

Hmmm maybe the trick to it is asking more money for it than the other faction can afford and still be generous?

[klc123]

1. Your reputation matters, people will be more likely to accept your diplomatic offers, form alliances with you and less likely to back-stab you (from my experience.)
Things that increase/decrease your reputation can be found in this article.
http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Reputation-M2TW

2. Don't give out trade rights with everyone. If you are trading with someone and they are at war with one or more factions, every faction they are at war with will lower their relations with you over time, till the point where they begin to want to fight you. This can make things particularly dangerous if you are trading with someone who is at war with your allies. You may be thinking "Well I can always just cancel the trade rights when they declare war." Well the truth is you can't, because breaking trade rights decreases your global reputation, so making a habit of doing this is going to leave your rep in tatters.

3. As I've mentioned breaking alliances, even diplomatically announcing it before hand, results in a big rep penalty. If you want to go to war with someone, you can do things to piss them off, such as having a diplomat demand ridiculous amounts of money off them, so your relations decrease and they back stab you. The good thing about doing this is that if you've been careful about your diplomacy, and have a fantastic reputation and many allies, many of your allies will declare war on anyone who declares war on you, and then jump to your aid.

4. In terms of increasing relations, having trade rights and being allies will boost your relations automatically, but be careful, as mentioned before, if you are trading with an enemy of theirs, relations will decrease. To offset this, you can go and gift them gold to keep them happy.

5. In terms of Papal relations, this is far more important. If you have better relations with the pope than a Catholic faction you are attacking, you will probably not get ex-communicated, just be sure to have your diplomat keep topping it up, and hopefully the pope will ex-communicate the other person.

I'm currently playing a vh/vh campaign with Spain, and following all of the things above I am the most powerful nation about 60 turns in. I have been allying everyone around me, and when they back-stab, they get the bad rep, and I get to destroy them. I've also formed an alliance with the papacy. This is something I would recommend, as it means that you both use each other. I don't have the risk of getting ex-communicated, and everyone who attacks me does and has crusades called against them, meanwhile is there is someone the pope doesn't particularly like, he calls me in to wipe them out and I gain new territory, pretty appropriate that I'm playing as the Spanish and carrying out "Gods" work.

[Myth]

Being buddies with the pope = gifting the Papacy 5000 florins.

[klc123]

Not always. I formed an alliance at the beginning, and have built lots of religious buildings, so the pope is always Spanish and he has always been quite happy with me. I'm yet to gift him any money. But as you say, it's very easy to keep friendly with anyone if you gift them enough money, and don't do much to piss them off.

[mtw2]

Noone with eloborate ways of setting factions up against eachother?

And some nice tips klc123.

[Myth]

Getting the Pope to be from your faction requires you to have a large number of Cardinals. Just load a boat with priests and send them to Muslim lands in the east. Done.

[Kadagar_AV]

about the pope: gift him cash, send priests to whatever territory that isn't of your faith to get a load of cardinals. I mostly played Denmark, and sending priests into Russian territory was a cardinal magnet.

All other factions: I just gift them when rep gets low.

But with that said, diplomacy really is a minor factor in this game IMHO. You might as well give everyone the finger and go pillaging, it's not like you'll have much resistance anyway.

[knoddy]

Easiest way to control the pope is get a theologians guild. just pick a town without a guild and keep upgrading your church until you get the theos guild. then you can start churning out priests with 7-8 piety without having to move them anywhere.

My problem with Diplomacy at the moment is that I cant get anyone to accept a Cease Fire despite kicking their buts. Playing as england I own pretty much all of france and half of germany. I keep destroying milans full stacks they send at me, i slaughtered many danish naval invasions to britain. yet nobody with CF me.It just encourages you to expand faster. which i dont like. they wont CF me and if I leave them be they will just keep sending full stacks at me. Ive even tried offering large sums of money without luck. I dont know what my rep is like but I have not broken any alliances, all declarations were on me.

only thing slowing me atm is the threat of excommucation which will end with the next papal election because i have like 6 cardinals from my theos guild

[Myth]

As soon as one of your Catholic enemies gets excommunicated call a Crusade on their farthest settlement and steamroll them. Papal standing + dead Catholic. When I used to play vanilla M2TW my usual choice was Milan due to them being so berzerk all the time.

[Vampiresbane]

As soon as one of your Catholic enemies gets excommunicated call a Crusade on their farthest settlement and steamroll them. Papal standing + dead Catholic. When I used to play vanilla M2TW my usual choice was Milan due to them being so berzerk all the time.

There's a lot going on with Diplomacy and about a year ago I set out to write a guide about it in order to understand it more myself and to share what I learned. It's not in these forums, but could prove really helpful to you guys and this thread.

Vampiresbane's Art of Diplomacy Guide

[Handel]

The assassins are very powerful "diplomats". Even the newly minted assassins have at least 5% chance to kill any person. So a squad of about 10 assassins can kill anyone in 1-2 turns at most. Excommunicated? Send the assassins. The Pope is a PITA - send the assassins. Playing as an orthodox nation and going to kill the last general & king of a catholic nation? Send the assassins first and kill them before attacking.
But not sure what to do with the foreign princesses - do the AI try to make alliances or try to steal the human generals?