Diplomacy and keeping relations up

[Vanya]

GAH!

Vanya sez...

Do not make the mistake of presuming your diplomats are cunning linguists. They only really manage to shove their own foot in their mouth most of the times.

Vanya routinely beheads those lying bastids anyways. Builds them, then beheads them before they can get Vanya into hot water. Keeps Vanya's supply of heads adequate during times of peace and keeps the enemies happy by not wasting their time with baby-talk and gobbledeegook.

It's what those lying, two-faced diploid bastids like to call "a win-win extensible value-added synergy-empowered process". (Or something like that. Youz must forgive Vanya's lacking gobbledeegook prowess. )

GAH!

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I've played 4 campaigns on VH/VH
I've never started a war.
I've married princesses to other faction heirs to create (lasting?) alliances.
I've gifted money to allies.

I've never had an alliance last more than 6 turns into any game (except with papal states)

Once your power is supreme all diplomacy simply ceases to function (VH)

I have not been able to find any evidence whatsoever to support the sugestion that diplomacy in MTW2 is either intricate or logical.

[Morindin]

I've played 4 campaigns on VH/VH
I've never started a war.
I've married princesses to other faction heirs to create (lasting?) alliances.
I've gifted money to allies.

I've never had an alliance last more than 6 turns into any game (except with papal states)

Once your power is supreme all diplomacy simply ceases to function (VH)

I have not been able to find any evidence whatsoever to support the sugestion that diplomacy in MTW2 is either intricate or logical.

You are playing on VH which is a completely different kettle of fish. Do not expect diplomacy on that level.

One thing I have noticed (and I noticed this in RTW as well) is that sometimes your production drops very low - almost to nothing - for a turn or two. I always suspected the AI made some rash decisions based on this production glitch.

They think you incapable of producing anything and go guns blazing, not realising you have about 20 cities able to pump out armies in a second.

[maestro]

You are playing on VH which is a completely different kettle of fish. Do not expect diplomacy on that level.

One thing I have noticed (and I noticed this in RTW as well) is that sometimes your production drops very low - almost to nothing - for a turn or two. I always suspected the AI made some rash decisions based on this production glitch.

They think you incapable of producing anything and go guns blazing, not realising you have about 20 cities able to pump out armies in a second.

I'm playing on VH/VH and I'm "supreme" and nearly always number 1 in all rankings and I have excellent relations with my allies, have never been back-stabbed and am getting a great playing experience from diplomacy.

[Flavius Gonzo]

Diplomacy is definitely much easier early in a campaign and gets tougher late in the campaign.

I think part if this is because you gradually do deeds that screw up your global relationship, but also, it seems to degrade over time, but honestly I like the way that works, for a couple of reasons.

First, it makes the late game more challenging that you can no longer count on having safe borders on some sides. The late game in RTW could get boring, after your economy and production capcities were killing it, it was too easy to just steamroll. Now, you need to worry about being attacked from all sides late in the game, making it much more challenging.

Secondly, it's historically accurate. Think about any military conqueror, weaker nations do tend to line up and attack en mass after extended campaigning. Would Napoleon have been defeated if not for the alliance of English, Prussians, Russians, etc? It's totally logical that once a single faction is close the winning the game, the remaining factions go to war with the winning one, regardless of their relative strenghts.

[Kobal2fr]

There was an excellent post about this, but for the life of me I can't find it again, nor tell you who did the research in the first place

Basically, in VH difficulty, relations default to Abysmal over time if you let them be (ie you don't give money/maps/regions to get them back up all the time). In M they default to neutral, in Easy they default to Good. Of course, Abysmal relations generate completely insane diplomatic demands and suchlike.
Also, being one of the top 3 factions worsens your relations with everyone. Attacking a faction worsens your relations with every other faction sharing the same faith.

Not sure if the relation thing is factored in strategic choices by the AI though, BUT the researcher also stumbled upon a disturbing thing : if the player is not at war with anyone for a number of turns, it automatically triggers an AI attack, presumably to keep the player on his toes all the time.

The "peace length" varies with difficulty as well : in VH, 4 turns of peace with everyone triggers aggression, in Medium it's 10, in Easy 20. So it seems that, if you want to keep your direct neighbours relatively quiet and sane, you need to have a "pet war" going on somewhere (don't know if the war needs to be active or not though, that is to say, I don't know if those turns of peace are "turns without any battle" or "turns in which your faction is not at war with another". But picking a hopeless, non-Christian scapegoat and blockading one of his ports all the time seems to be working for me.)

Knowing that has conforted me in thinking that M/VH is the way to go, not VH/VH.

[Aenlic]

There was an excellent post about this, but for the life of me I can't find it again, nor tell you who did the research in the first place

Kobal2fr, I think it was Sinan's post in the "making florins" thread and came up while discussing the effects of sacking on relations and the various global relations triggers.

Let me go find it real quick and add a link in an edit.

Is this the post?

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...6&postcount=22

[Kobal2fr]

Ah ! Found it again ! Obviously, involved campaign AI discussions were tucked in a post regarding battle mechanics. I should have known

Here it is : https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74107

I hadn't read Kraxis' reply. If he is indeed right, then bribing factions into attacking each other would be the key then... which is impossible when they are allied. So, keep borders garrisonned, then wipe out the "diplomat" species, then bribe into attacking each other... Sounds like keeping the peace might require much, much money spent on it .

[Aenlic]

Sounds like keeping the peace might require much, much money spent on it .

That's the way it works in the real world! At least CA nailed the realism on this point. Thanks for finding that link, Kobal2fr, I missed that thread in all the others.