Diplomat not gaining experience

[Werner]

I've had the same two diplomats running around making deals with people and accepting alliances, etc etc. Their routine/skills never seem to increase, they are both still on "0", or as Med 2 says "A turnip has more influence". If I take a city and leave the enemy's army in ruins I try to use my Diplomat to convince them to be vassels or give me money but I can never close the deal because my diplomats skill sucks so bad, so wtf? I just have to end up wiping them out or calling a truce.

Same goes for merchants and priests, whats an easy way to increase their skill?

[Kobal2fr]

Whenever a proposition of yours is not accepted, your diplomat's skills take a plunge. Whenever a deal is concluded but only after negociations or otherwise "reluctantly", your diplomat skills won't increase (or, at least, I've never seen the case).

So if you're repeatedly asking your opponents to be your vassals (and by the way, maybe I didn't understand what you were saying, but when you're offering an army to be your vassal, it's actually a factionwide deal, i.e. you're asking the *whole kingdom* to submit to your will, not just that army. Basically, it's the most unlikely diplomatic proposition of them all) and get turned down, your diplomats will forever remain as eloquent as cabbages, any exp they may have gotten securing trade pacts and alliances made void by those failures.

[Werner]

That makes alot of sence, however I've secured alot more deals than lost. Still not increasing.

[Kobal2fr]

Yes, but the punishment for failure is extra-harsh in this game when agents are concerned. I've had many assassins go from 4-5 to 0 after a single failure for instance, same goes for princesses and diplomats.

There wasn't any loss of exp for failure back in STW/MTW (mainly because agents most often either succeeded or died ), there was a chance to gain a negative trait or ancillary (like "tactless" for diplomats, or "inept poisonner" for assassins) which would substract from total agent skill in Rome, but in M2 not only can you pick-up these bad traits and followers, you actually have your beneficial traits vanish ! Which means you have to be very very careful with agents...

Don't know wether it's intentional of if something's borked and will get fixed eventually, though.

[Fumes]

I have the same problem with my diplomats - playing on VH campaign it seems all my agents end up with 0 skill. I have send priests on converting missions to non-catholic contries, but they die of old age before getting a single increase in Piety. The only way I have found to increase Piety is for priests to make a succesfull denouncement of a heretic - but I just cant find any of these, maybe because I have built lots of churches and priests and have around 95-97% Catholicism everywhere I rule. One would think that in itself would make my priests have high piety...

Same deal with Chivalry: dont see many ways of increasing my generals chivalry. Dread seems a lot easier to get (just make frequent use of assassins and your faction leader will get 10 Dread eventually from sitting inside your capital).

[Werner]

You gain dread from executing enemy soldiers instead of letting them go. Lately I've been nice and have been letting alot of enemy soldiers go, chivalry has increased. Ironically piety on one of my priests went waaaaay up after I posted the last message, and since there were 3 or 4 Cardinal seats empty, my priest got elected. I've also come out the dominating faction in the last few turns, taking over some key cities really boosting the size of my faction. Now I have so many friendly diplomats coming to me to offer alliances I dont know what to do. And diplomat skill has gone through the roof as a result. I'm starting to like this.

Amazing, this game really is different than Rome: TW.