Diplomacy Part 2

[Rodion Romanovich]

I think the RTW diplomacy was a huge improvement over MTW. The only thing that bothered me was the protectorate bug, and that games were over too early and outbreak of war not a serious threat enough (in game years, not in playing time - grr brigands!) so no interesting diplomatic scenarios ever happened. In EB, however, I've had a lot of interesting diplomatic situations so I don't think it's the actual RTW engine functions for diplomacy that are bad, but mostly things such as the too quick games and stats balancing of units etc. Similarly the EB combat stats brings out the full potential of the battle map AI, with the AI often managing to rout part of my line even when they're outnumbered, and so on. So the RTW engine is IMO a lot better than the actual content that was put into it on release, as mods have shown it can be vastly improved by balancing it better for gameplay.

Anyhow, a few things I missed in the RTW diplomacy system apart from the too short (in game years, not in playing time) games and outbreak of war not being dangerous enough were:
- more factions!
- make deals on where to attack and when
- borrow and lend troops from/to allies
- make every rebel faction a mini-faction, that could become an ally, so you could finance a rebellion against one of your enemies
- better protectorate functions - differ between vassals, tributaries, semi-autonomous client kingdoms and so on
- allow diplomatical conquest of a rival faction - step by step increasing the control from allied to vassal, to duchy, to province etc. This should be difficult to pull off and cause some problems/revolts/unrest etc. so it isn't too powerful.
- allow a form of pact system apart from the normal alliances. A pact could be a tighter form of alliance that promises you don't ally with anyone outside the pact, and you could make suggestions for new factions to join the pact but all members must accept the suggestion before new factions enter the pact.
- etc. but I'm too lazy to mention any of the other great ideas I have...
- bribing an enemy settlement should be transgression or justify you to go to war with the enemy
- ways of provoking enemies to go to war with each others
- AI trying to stay out of war as much as possible, and trying to carry out quicker and more decisive wars when possible