Another hopeless war

[Zort]

I really love this game, but at the moment I am just to annyoed to continue to play. Why? I was in war for the last 200 years

Not that I started, the French attacked me and then I had to fight them around for every single province until I had killed all of their Kings/Heirs. The funny thing is- they wouldnt do peace with me, even their empire is totally hopeless destroyed.

Then Fractions attack me, which have NO hope of even beating one single army of me. Off course you get excummunicated for defending yourself. The final drop on my last campaign was, when a fraction started war with me (sinking my ships) which had not even land contact with me

I am getting tired that I cannot live in peace for 10 years with my not really so big country without this fools waging war.

Ok, I think I whined enough.

[A.Saturnus]

I have never been excommed for defensive battles alone. It`s usually the counterstrikes that get me in trouble with the pope. If you want to make peace with factions that are down, invade all their provinces simultaniously so that they retreat to the castle and then leave the provinces again. That creates an automatic ceasefire.
Factions attack your ships when yours are easy prey in their waters. If you don`t have a border with these factions, you can get a ceasefire by moving away all ships from their cost (they may also have no ships at your cost).

[HopAlongBunny]

The pope can excomm you for defending yourself. It is rare though. I had it happen; the attacker was allied to the pope and I had just been warned; Fought the defence and Boom Excomm'ed for agressive behaviour

When playing a catholic faction I always have a province that pumps out assassins. Their only purpose is to take down the pope

[Shahed]

Diplomacy in MTW

[Asmodeus]

Sounds like you need Medieval Total Peace

Seriously though, I usually find Princesses are an effective way of buying peace if you really need it and also having some powerful allies helps too. If you keep back stabbing other factions none of them will think very highly of you.

[Zort]

I dont need Total peace- but I dont need the whole game war with everybody I my income is now -5000, because I cant trade and so on- this is stupid. And it would be more reasonable if the fractions who attack would have the necesarry force to beat me, but the swiss is hardly an opponent- is it?

[trickytree]

One of the things I admire about all the MTW campaigns is they tend to go a different way each time.

If your current campaign is going the shape of a pear because there seems to be ceaseless war that is a bummer. I've had campaigns like that too and it tends to be a bit of nightmare - especially as I try to explore my tech tree and use the more cloak-and-dagger methods of spreading my influence.

However I can guarantee that in your next campaign all the other factions will veritable hippy peaceniks and you'll have an embarassment of emmisaries begging to call you ally. Even the Almohads and Spaniards will have a nice big party in Leon to show how much they really love each other and respect each other's cultures. Maybe...

[komninos]

I usually play the Byzantines (just another Greek ) What happens is that the others stay in peace with me for a long time … though they gather there army on my borders. I start with the Turks in order to get some territory fast and expand through Khazar and Kiev. The problem is that at some point I get endless crusades from faction that I have no contact with (English, French, Spanish, ...) They all get in the game in turns. They end up in Hungary from where they lunch a series of disastrous (for them) Attacks. Once I had reduced a French crusade to a small detachment of Knights ~8 and a number of lesser troops not more the 20 men in all and they still attacked me. The last time they attacked was one knight an 3 men at arms ??? I still wonder what was the reason for there visit?

Any way the problem is that I get in a state of war with all the Catholic Kingdoms in about 2 –3 years time. After 10 more years the Russians attack, the Mongols come and I find my self in war with all of Europe with in 10 years time????

[Zort]

What would be nice for the AI is if the computer would calculate the overall strengh of your army against your enemies armies. With this value the AI could decide if an attack has a chance to succeed or it is 100% certain that the war will fail and the AI country destroyed.

Example: your country is France and you are in war with England. There is roll that the HRE (Germany) wants to attack France. Now the German AI substracts the strength of the known English troops from the French troops and compares the values against the own power (same check if Germany is in war with other countries).

This would prevent situations like when the Danes attack me as Germany when I had something like 1:1000 quantity superiority (not to mention the qualitiy edge I had)

[Gregoshi]

Welcome to the Org trickytree. Thanks for laying down roots here.

[Losfalos]

Maybe maintaining the peace is about earning the respect of your neighbours?

If you are too peace seeking (trade loving), they'll attack you anyway.

Show em some muscle then make peace. Cow em

[trickytree]

Thanks Gregoshi.

Zort> had the Danes you talk about respawned after dying? I often find respawned factions can be fairly belligerant (and idiotic) in whom they choose to attack.

[Popeye]

I think the diplomacy needs to be explored more. I think there's more here than just a stupid AI. Well, maybe it IS stupid, but stupid in a way we can understand as opposed to being random.

In my current game as England, I noticed the Danes had lost Denmark to rebels, and weren't even fighting to take it back, hopelessly outnumbered as they were. I bought the rebels, and reinforced. Then the Danes, my ally, attacked Denmark with about 150 men against about 1200. They didn't quit until Sweden revolted with about 500 rebels, and they retreated to Norway. I bought Sweden, and reinforced it, and they attacked again, this time about 75 to 1200. Eventually they got wiped away by rebels in Norway. All that time I had an emissary asking for peace.

My feeling is that there is no peace with the Danes for the owner of Denmark. I believe that there are similar rules with all factions, like there will be no peace with the Egyptians for the holder of Egypt.

I further believe that the key provinces that a faction will go to war over varies based on the date. France will make nice with England until maybe 1120, but after that, France wants to own Normandy, for instance. No Normandy, no peace.

Making it worse, I think there are also some unknown natural alliances between AI factions, although these may or may not vary from game to game. For example, if you are at war with Spain, Italy won't agree to an alliance until you patch matters with Spain, and if you are already at war with Italy, there will be no ceasefire. These may or may not be predictable by the current status of alliances. I do know that I was allied with Hungary and Poland, who were NEUTRAL to Germany, and when I answered the Pope's call to war on excommunicated Germany, my alliances with Hungary and Poland were canceled. I had saved the game and tested it by re-running it three times, with identical results.

Diplomacy is not random. We just don't understand it yet.

[komninos]

AI ... in the strategy does strange things ... once I have been attacked by one faction with big forces the fight was hard and bloody but I was holding ground trying not to expose the other provinces … thing is that a small neighbouring faction that was at war with my opponent and had suffered dearly decided that it was a nice time to pay a visit in one of my heavily defended provinces … it is easy to find out what happened to them

The thing is why did they attack at the time they had no chance of winning … and I had been a good allay in the past???

Never mind … after that I had a few strategically placed provinces and one less rival to think of

[Popeye]

Quote[/b] (komninos @ May 15 2003,13:23)]The thing is why did they attack at the time they had no chance of winning … and I had been a good allay in the past???

That's a good question.

The answer is either There is no reason or the reason is something we don't fully understand yet.

If there is no reason, we don't really lose anything but a little time experimenting and sharing observations by trying to find this non-existent reason.

If there is a reason, such as other alliances, specific-province goals, V & V of a general that is a magnet for attacks, we should try to find out.

You don't make attacks without reason. Maybe the AI doesn't, either. You've attacked allies. Why shouldn't the AI?