AI Diplomatic tricks

[Caius]

Why they can try to bribe you when you are sieged and you cant negotiate with settlements sieged?
A RTW bug?

[jhhowell]

Why they can try to bribe you when you are sieged and you cant negotiate with settlements sieged?
A RTW bug?

More likely an AI cheat "feature". Not sure I've seen that one myself.

Here's a question: am I crazy to think that a faction reduced to a single small city, the faction leader, and a light cavalry unit should agree to peace with the #1 military power in the world who just smashed 12 units and two faction members? Particularly when said superpower offers the defeated faction their starting capital back as part of the deal? Heck, by my reckoning they should become a protectorate and like it, but I'd settle for a ceasefire and trade rights.

Likewise one would think the WRER and their single province peasant army would accept peace with the WRE, but no... What does the Empire have to do to get a buffer state in Germany, anyway?!

[Ower]

I think it's because they have an ally, i never been abble to get a protectorate from someone who has an ally.

[rich19]

I've had some big problems. While playing as egypt, pontus only attacked one of my cities on the same turn as I accepted a ceasefire they wanted! I eventually tried refusing the ceasefire and proposing one myself a bit later, which solved it for a bit (they declared war soon after, though).

[Fate]

I found a great way to make money whilst playing on my last campaign on RTG.
I was the Ilberians, and id been kicking ass, working my way towards taking carthage fromt he scippii, and fighting the jullii in southern gaul, but the senate and the brutii had no beef with me, so every turn i called for a ceasefire in exchange for 5000D a piece off them, after a while, that free ten grand a year begins to add up....

[jhhowell]

I found a solution to the problem of converting a defeated enemy into a buffer state! As might be expected, the solution has nothing to do with diplomacy - as far as I'm concerned RTW doesn't have a diplomacy system, just a diplomacy gui. Seriously, if one can't negotiate peace treaties, there's no diplomacy in the game... Those "diplomats" should be called "trade attaches" or something.

Anyway, the trick is to attack the defeated enemy's last city, but fight only long enough to kill off all their faction members. Then retreat, and there's a fresh rebel province covering your border. The down sides are that you're technically "defeated" and thus don't get to recover your wounded (i.e. none of the kills you suffer come back at the end of the battle), you can't trade with your border buffer province(s), and more distant potential enemies can just walk over and attack without worrying about declaring war or fighting an actual faction with normal faction members. But it's the only way to get the desired buffer state...

Also note that this is a perfect way to eliminate horde-capable factions. The test case I've been so frustrated with was the Franks. I imagine Saxon, Burgundian, and Lombard players would find this info very useful (if they don't already know). As would imperial players like myself who want to make barbarian neighbors go away but don't want to take their land.

Ower: alliances were not the problem. They basically don't exist in BI. The starting WRE-ERE alliance is broken by the AI within the first ten turns, and the very common ERE-Goth alliance has never amounted to anything in any of my games.