How do you improve global reputation ?

[Shahed]

Hi All !

Playing Turks still first campaign. Got some questions on reputation. My reputation is dropping all the time. Although I have done absoluetly NOTHING aggressive. The Byzantines declared on me, then the Egyptians backstabbed me, in the typical fashion.

Then I took Constantinople and a Crusade was declared against me, which I utterly smashed to minute particles, and rightfully so. Then almost everyone came along with a Crusade army, but once dealt with, came back with ceasefire offers. Why though is my reputation on the decline. Always released or ransomed captured prisoners, depending on if I judged the opposing faction to be able to pay the ransom.

So....

1. How do you improve reputation globally ?
2. What determines your reputation ? What factors ?

Thanks.

[Spartiate]

I've found that as a Muslim fation you are pretty much screwed after the Pope calls the First Crusade as now you have dropped in the estimation of most of the factions in the game.God forbid if you defend yourself against a crusadeing army passing through your lands by the way.Apparently that is a no-no and annoys the Catholic factions even more so.

As any Catholic faction i find that all you need to do is honour your agreements and treaties and your rep goes up.Seems unfair that the Muslim factions suffer because they are outnumbered 3 to 1 and so will always have the ill-will of 10 or so Catholic factions.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

Yup, I'd agree with Spartiate. As a muslim faction, once the first crusade waddles its way toward you your relations irreparably plummet. I've been at Abysmal with every faction in the game for 100+ turns now, even when I was allied with Venice for a while. Sigh.

[Shahed]

Ok that explains it. No more Mr. Nice guy.

All prisoners put to the sword, all settlements annihilated, from this moment on !

ROFL.

Are there any friends for the Turks ? or you have to go it alone basically, I guess.

[sapi]

You should try the byzantines mate - not only do the Catholics hate you, the Muslims do too :P

[Shahed]

Ouch... great ! I will try that, next campaign.

Got a bit of a setback on the current one, just found out how to change the time scale so one turn is 6 months. Means I'll have to restart. OMG... 4 days I been playing this campaign, and it's not great but it is good. Oh well.... ere we go again.

[chunkynut]

Sinan, I presume you are talking about reputation (overall) rather than relationship (to a single faction).

Relations work as said, your a muslim faction so the catholics want a piece. But Reputation - and mines never been good - drops through attacking allies/breaking treaties etc and i've read on these boards that it rises through fighting with your allies (amoungst other things).

Sorry at work, someone needs me .... thats all I know too lol

[Shahed]

That's cool chunky. Thanks.

I did'nt do much for specific faction relationships, I guess giving gifts would help, and accepting some proposals as well. I'll have to try that in the restart. Cash was tight though so could'nt give away too much.

[R'as al Ghul]

Keeping in touch with your allies and trade partners is very important.
I'm allied with the French as Venice for about 150 turns. The relations were poor, though. I then offered some gifts, such as maps, single payments or small tributes. The relations improved to good in the end.
Every few turns or so I'll give my new map as a gift to the Pope. I'm always getting the "Of course, we accept this gift with open arms" and "You truly have our best interest at heart" lines.
Actively fighting the enemies of your allies should helps also.

R'as

[Daveybaby]

Yup, throwing money at them works wonders. Something like a couple of hundred per turn for 5 turns will make quite a difference. Obviously you cant afford to do that for everyone, but it's nice to keep one or two of your neighbours sweet while you concentrate on taking out the others.

[PseRamesses]

As R'as al Ghul states frequent diplomatic contacts are essential. I usually end up with one diplomat with each faction, except in Italy where one takes care of 4 factions. Offering maps, 100 florins etc as gifts now and then will slowly raise your standings. Initially I concentrate on Novgorod and the Moors which are quite easily swayed your way.

[Bob the Insane]

I like to abstract that reputation thing to include respect...

If you turtle and are non-aggressive you will wonder why the other factions start taking a to dislike you, well... You don't play the politics game keeping them sweet with gifts, you don't build up your armed forces to silly levels and crush mutual enemies so they do not respect you militarily... If you are a small non-threatening kingdom then no matter how nice you are the other factions will starting look at you as a likely target rather than an ally...

Add to that it appears on Hard or Vary Hard Campaigns (at least) it would appear that your reputation automatically degrades over time, so if you are not activaly imporving it it will end up sucking.

As said before it is best to pick those you want as allies and spend the time, effort and cash to keep them sweet (even if you are playing a defensive game). Note that one of the biggest positive impacts to reputation with is to grant land to another faction. So if an ally is attacked and losses a settlement, get in there, take it back and give it back and your reputation with them will go through the roof... Of course this can backfire when your chosen ally annoys the Pope and gets excommunicated, but this is all part of the fun...

[Quillan]

There's a difference between relations and reputation. Reputation is global, relation is faction specific. In my experience over two campaigns, the only way to improve your reputation is to do poorly. My reputation has invariably dropped whenever I add to my empire, whether it's the addition of Muslim or French lands. The factions that have Reliable and Very Reliable as their reputations are the ones that are getting their asses handed to them, or just never expand. The Papal States are very reliable in my current game, and only have their starting province. The Moors were very reliable in my Byzantine game, when Spain had reduced them to the point where they only held Tunis and Tripoli before making peace. However, my reputation as Spain is down to dubious, after taking Marrakesh, Algiers, Tunis, Antioch, Acre and Jerusalem.

Certainly the diplomatic stuff affects it; if you attack an ally, or cancel trade rights, you take a hit to reputation. I've seen the backstabbers who are doing poorly wind up with bottom tier reputations, but I'm pretty sure nobody trusts the big dog.

[chunkynut]

I've seen the backstabbers who are doing poorly wind up with bottom tier reputations, but I'm pretty sure nobody trusts the big dog.

I agree to an extent but the big dog that fights with allies against mutual enemies will be more reputable.

[Quillan]

That could explain some fluctuations then. I'm currently allied with the Papal States, and we are both at war with the Moors. My reputation has gone up as well as down, just never getting above mixed. I think I'm still dubious. I may have to go to war with Sicily. They've been excommunicated, and decided to attack the Pope.

[Molinaargh]

If you play VH or H you will often receive "reputations worsened" messages even tough you haven't even moved a unit. It's quite annoying. This happens even if you are not the strongest/richest/greatest faction.
The only way to avoid it is to distribute gifts, as some have mentioned.

Does your standing with a neutral faction influence in the possibility of them attacking you?
Probably, but it doesn't seem to do so that much.

[jabo0511]

I'm playing as the turks and right now I'm in the year 1246 (turn 166, 1 turn= 1 year) I've been at war with basically the whole world for almost the entire game. My first move was to attack egypt which I destroyed after 30 turns or so. I then proceed to defend my land from the crusaders until byzantine decided to backstab me (I was going to go for the moors and invaded western europe through spain). So I gathered my force and push them out of asia minor and captured constantinople. Then the mongols came so I had to stop my campaign against byzantine and after 10 turns or so I managed to contain the mongol hordes and they're now just wandering around in the mountains south east of yerevan.

I am now resuming my campaign against the byzantines and are halfway into conquering the Balkans.

The funny thing is every turn there is always a catholic faction trying to offer me peace for 40k+ florins. I rejected every single one of them since I don't want peace with infidels!

"LONG LIVE THE WARRIORS OF ISLAM!"

[Slaists]

In my experience: not breaking alliances helps to build reputation (also on Hard campaign difficulty). Breaking an alliance diplomatically and then attacking the former ally still gives a reputation hit, by the way.

Another way to build up reputation is to help your ally in battle (or let them help you out). Attacking pirate ships along with your allies seem to help in this sense too. I guess, one way would be to watch out for rebels spawning near your ally's troops and attacking the rebels drawing the ally into fight too.

[Molinaargh]

Breaking an alliance diplomatically and then attacking the former ally still gives a reputation hit, by the way.

This is something I experienced - breaking an alliance diplomatically made my reputation go from Very Reliable to Reliable a few days ago, but today, when I broke my alliance with the Genoese to attack them, it went from Reliable to Very Reliable.

I thought it could be a mission from the Pope to break the alliance but it wasn't.

[Shahed]

It seems using spies and assassins, getting the relevant traits to the faction leader, affects global reputation. I was always using spies and assasins and this time around I've been watching the reputation go down after every 2nd or 3rd wave of assassinations and sabotage.

[Zoltan]

Sinan I think you're up to something. My current campaign is as "Mr. Clean" : no assassins and only the spy I started with, and I'm at "very reliable" almost all the time. Best I could do before was "mixed"

Attacking your your ally's enemies (rebels, pirate ships blockading port etc.. helps too.)