On AI and Diplomacy

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

MTW already has influence for kings which dosent seem to matter to much in my diplomatic actions. The system you mention does it have variables for the prestige of the players? If my 5 influence king wants to befriend your 1 influence king, in that system is more apt to make the pact?

If you were a world superpower for example (in terms of both military and economic strength), when dealing with lesser nations you would usually choose a Kind tone in diplomacy. This is because you are in a sense 'looking down' upon your smaller and weaker rivals (this would usually improve your standing amongst nations). On the other hand, if you were a minnow in a pond of bigger fish, you would usually select a Neutral tone, because you don't have the power to concern your rivals. Most are suspicious of a superpower's motives, and these would be closely watched by the AI.

Basically if you were a superpower hell-bent on destroying the world, backstabbing your weaker allies and threatening every civilizarion you encountered, nobody would want to deal with you in diplomatic negotiations (at least this is realistic ).

Its a shame that Influence doesn't seem to come into play as often as it should do, as you've highlighted. The ISF feature was used rather than influence in CTP2, so basically the AI would treat you as you have already treated others, but this would depend on the AI's core attitudes. For example:

* Elizabeth I (English) - Aggressive Imperialist

These attittudes towards expansion, recruitment, construction, diplomacy and so on were quite broad, as there were a number of variations such as:

* Isolationist Autocratic
* Militaristic Expansionist
* Agreeable Trader

You already see elements such as this present in RTW (I'm not sure about MTW as I haven't played it ) in the AI's recruitment and construction biases. EG Balanced Caesar, Craftsman Napoleon, Comfortable Stalin etc.