Diplomacy and keeping relations up

[Rothe]

I have found that the diplomacy system is actually quite "playable" despite many complaints about it. I am currently playing a grand campaign as Venice (H/VH).

I have found that you can make treaties and with relative reliability keep them if you give tribute/gifts to the faction you are in alliance/peace with.

For example, 100 florins per turn has kept the HRE off my back as Venice with trade rights granted all the way, even though they are also allied with my enemy, Milan. It seems that a continued tribute makes them hesitant to attack you.

Also, I keep an eye on the relationship meter and when it drops to so-and-so I give some gift, like map information or 500 florins to get it back to reasonable. I also think that the longer you have had peace with a faction, the less it takes to keep the relations up.

The second thing to keep diplomacy up is to ally with the pope and keep gifting him with suitable stuff (not necessary regions even though many do this as well). I find that a 100/turn is enough to keep decent standings as long as I also give some 500 florins as a gift if I do something to upset the pope.

So far I have consistently kept England, Denmark and HRE in peace, with England and Danes as allies even. This also helps with trade income, which in turn helps with the tributes.

The gifts do not have to be big, just that you have to keep on giving.
The odd part is that this sort of skews the game against the player, but I suppose it must be so to level the field a bit.

I tend to make up for this by selling off trade rights and alliances to other factions, which will in time betray me, attack and then when I beat them they will again pay me for the priviledges.... The trick seems to be to keep a few (2-3) factions gifted up and happy, so you have some safe fronts. Also, make sure that you have a diplomat in their areas. I suppose that muslim nations are more of a problem for the player as there are plenty of enemies that will probably not even take the gifts.

[Maizel]

Great post, Thanks for the pointers.

I'm gonna try that soon

[Bob the Insane]

Interesting to see 100 florins has an effect, maybe I am wasting money with my 1000 florin gifts (they pretty much guarantee a one level increase in relations with that faction)?

Additionally I play with Hard campaign difficulty too and I suspect that your reputation automatically degrades over time with other factions if left alone...

[Rothe]

I suppose any tribute will make them less likely to attack you.

I suspect the following:

The AI is less likely to attack you if your relations are so-and-so or reliable and up from there. It may still attack you at so-and-so. This is logical.

If you are at so-and-so, some things may prompt an attack and some things make an attack less likely. I suspect that even if you pay 10 florins/turn it will help. I find that a bit against logic, the continued tribute makes a difference even if it is small, so it seems to have a separate additional influence from the relations with the other factions you see on the diplomacy screen.

Also, it is less likely for a catholic AI to attack you if you have high papal standing.

So, my tactic is to keep the relations at so-and-so with single gifts (maps/500 florins etc.) and also to keep up the small continued tribute. Also, I keep up relations with the pope.

I could be wrong, but so far it is working.

[Wallas]

Diplomacy works and keeps alliances together except against AI fleets. For example France started a war with me by landing his diplomat to my shores and by blocking my port at the same time. But in the next turn I was able to make pease and form a new alliance with them. We didn't even have a mutual border. To me it seems that AI can't controll it's fleets properly and he starts war accidentally with them.

[Slaists]

Well, that does not sound so unreasonable actually... with all those drunk, crazy sailors and all... They starte a brawl here or there and voila - you've got a war on your hands :) However, if the relationships with the attacking AI faction are good, they are likely to sue for peace and apologize for their fleet's actions... sometimes paying with a province or two...

Diplomacy works and keeps alliances together except against AI fleets. For example France started a war with me by landing his diplomat to my shores and by blocking my port at the same time. But in the next turn I was able to make pease and form a new alliance with them. We didn't even have a mutual border. To me it seems that AI can't controll it's fleets properly and he starts war accidentally with them.

[Slaists]

Keep a spy in your closest neighbor's cities. Then, when offering a gift to the faction you are likely to see their "priorities" revealed. I had Germans at "amiable" level for some time, however, their priorities were clearly stated as "war"... In about ten turns (from the time the war priority appeared) they attacked... got excommunicated the very next turn since (I guess) my relations to the pope were perfect :) The same could not be said about the Germans. (H Campaign difficulty)

I suppose any tribute will make them less likely to attack you.

I suspect the following:

The AI is less likely to attack you if your relations are so-and-so or reliable and up from there. It may still attack you at so-and-so. This is logical.

If you are at so-and-so, some things may prompt an attack and some things make an attack less likely. I suspect that even if you pay 10 florins/turn it will help. I find that a bit against logic, the continued tribute makes a difference even if it is small, so it seems to have a separate additional influence from the relations with the other factions you see on the diplomacy screen.

Also, it is less likely for a catholic AI to attack you if you have high papal standing.

So, my tactic is to keep the relations at so-and-so with single gifts (maps/500 florins etc.) and also to keep up the small continued tribute. Also, I keep up relations with the pope.

I could be wrong, but so far it is working.

[Oaty]

Also don't milk the AI for all its worth. Making a diplomatic deal that is either considered genorous or very genorous increases relations.

So if you can sell map info for 2000 at balanced and 1300 for genorous, you dhould opt for 1300 unless you need every florin you can get. Also selling the map info for 2700 at demanding may or may not be accepted but it can decrease relations.

[Zanshin]

The odd part is that this sort of skews the game against the player, but I suppose it must be so to level the field a bit.

Well, taking into account the huge amount of money you can get by:
- map selling.
- extortion.
- selling trade rights.
- selling alliances.
- selling your princesses.

etc...

I usually receive tribute the first 30 turns from 5-8 factions (about 1000-4000/turn). So, spending a small part of this to have only one opponent can work very well. I'll try next time.

[rios]

Is marriage only way to get alliance with anybody on VH?

[therother]

The data text files have been released: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73971. The descr_faction_standing.txt file reveals quite a bit about what affects your relations with the Pope, as well as other factions, and your global reputation. Worth a read IMO.

[Lusted]

Yeah some comments in those files show that the ai is set up not to trust the player, hence why helping it out from time to when as maestro suggested helps the ai to trust you.

[SigniferOne]

Fascinating news about vassals/protectorage -- from descr_campaign_ai_db.xml:

			<decision_entry>
				<!--
					if we're at war && we've more than five times his frontline strength && we're superior overall &&
					we outproduce him >>> propose he become vassal, invade immediate.  If our shadow, do not want to offer protectorate
				-->
				<min_entry	stance="AtWar" frontline_balance="5.0" military_balance="1.0" production_balance="1.0"/>
				<faction_attitude	invade="invade_immediate" invade_priority="800" want_offer_protect="false"/>
			</decision_entry>

[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.

[Bob the Insane]

The data text files have been released: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73971. The descr_faction_standing.txt file reveals quite a bit about what affects your relations with the Pope, as well as other factions, and your global reputation. Worth a read IMO.

Note the part where the faction standing is normalised downwards each turn for both Hard and Very Hard dificulties (with it just occurring faster on Very Hard).

Also note the "Tall Poppy" functionality where the top scoring factions (if significantly larger) automatically become more unpopular with every turn.

Note also there appear to be many more ways to score negative relationship points than there are positive (true to life as any married man can tell you... )...

So if you want a game where the cards are not unfairly stacked against the player then you need a Medium campaign difficulty.

It will be interesting to go through the other campaign AI files to see what else changes with difficulty...

[Steinfeld]

Since this was mentioned in a post above:
Is there a graph where I can view the quality of my diplomatic contacts? Currently I look these up while hovering my mousepointer over the other factions banner when in the Diplomacy menu.
So is there really a graph or did I misunderstand this??

[Quillan]

In one of the other threads here (I think it was one referring to difficulty rating differences) someone posted something they found in one of the AI controlling files. Apparently, there is a function in the game files where if the human player is at peace with all AI factions for more than a certain number of turns, one will automatically go to war with him. If I remember correctly, it was 20 turns on easy, 10 turns on medium and 4 turns on hard/very hard. That could explain why alliances get betrayed.

Edit- Yes, it was the battlefield difficulty test results thread. Here's Bob the Insane's post on the subject:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...1&postcount=13

[Steinfeld]

Since this was mentioned in a post above:
Is there a graph where I can view the quality of my diplomatic contacts? Currently I look these up while hovering my mousepointer over the other factions banner when in the Diplomacy menu.
So is there really a graph or did I misunderstand this??

bumpity...

Sorry to be a pain, but so far I have not found this...

[Bob the Insane]

I thought I could finish this off with a list of the thing yo can do to improve your relations with other factions:

Your relationship score goes from 1.0 (Perfect) to -1.0 (Abysmal). This should give context to the increase values noted below, additionally where you see normalized in general the large the number to the right, the small the potential change will be:

Trigger: Forgiveness (I am not sure when this is fired)

Trade_Treaty +0.07

Military_Assistance +0.12

Obvious_Bribe - fired for every 100 gold given as gift + 0.14
(this is why a big bribe gets a good improvment, but in theory a 2000 fl bribe should mean perfect relations which is obviously not the case so there must be another factor in play)

Demeanour 0.001
(I think this relates to getting a nice response in negotiations?)

Update_Religion - Make other factions like factions of the same religion a bit more normalise 1.0 100
(Automatic, should slowly improve your relations with factions of the same religion)

Update_Band_Together1 - Make factions try and band up with smaller factions
(No numbers here because there are 3 versions. This is the opposite to the tall poppy thing which automatically improves a faction's relations with the 5 smallest factions in the game)

Update_Easy_Difficulty - Adjust the AI relationships towards each faction normalise 1.0 50
(Playing the game on easy automatically improves relations every turn)

Update_Normal_Difficulty - Adjust the AI relationships towards each faction based on difficulty level (AI factions have normal difficulty) normalise 0.0 50
(Playing the game on Medium auromaticallu imporves realtions each turn up to a max of Neutral)

Increase_Global_Standing_New_Turn normalise 0.0 200
(Automatically moves all factions towards being Neutral).

Increase_Global_Standing_When_Allied,normalise 1.0 400
(Automatically moves Ally's relations towards Perfect)

prisoners_released_increase_global 0.02
(Every time you release more than 80 prisors)

occupy_settlement_increase_global 0.02
(Every time you Occupy a settlement, don't sack or exterminate)

So actual ingame actions:

Get Trade agreements
Get Alliances
Help out your allies militarily
Hand out cash
Do not be demanding in your deplomacy
Release prisoners
Occupy settlements

That is a list al ALL the things that you can do in game to improve relations.

Finally a note for those playing on Very Hard. Your relations automatically degenerate towards Abysmal (-1.0) every turn at the rate "normalise -1.0 40".

I believe this mean if you have Perfect relations with someone that your faction stand with drop by 0.05 the next turn and at a slowly decreasing rate every turn. So you should be able to stabilize this affect with a 100 fl gift every two turns.

[BeeSting]

I currently have reputation as "trustworthy" and the factions that attacked me have consistently sued for cease fire shortly after the initial attack. I have financed a large part of my faction’s growth by asking for huge sums of indemnities. Playing as hre (h/vh), Milan has once paid me in lump sum amount of 10K. Regular tributes of 1000K per turn for 12 turns have also been common. Cease fire however was difficult to obtain at reputation level lower than reliable. To maintain the level of reputation, you cannot retaliate (as clicking on a faction to attack), but set your self up where they will attack you. And you will have to fight to win and destroy a good portion of their force. Executing their prisoners and having your relationship at abysmal with the opposing faction will not help.

[dopp]

Yes, you cannot attack at all or relations will plummet. Since the game is usually quite smart at other times about determining what is a defensive action, this is a puzzling omission. Surely anyone who sends an army onto another fellow's land without military access is asking for it, so why get angry when I chase them off?

[BeeSting]

Yes, you cannot attack at all or relations will plummet. Since the game is usually quite smart at other times about determining what is a defensive action, this is a puzzling omission. Surely anyone who sends an army onto another fellow's land without military access is asking for it, so why get angry when I chase them off?

Having my emotions override my judgment, wanting to wipe Milan off the map, I actually drew first blood by laying siege to one of their cities. And to my surprise, they sent an emissary that same turn (Dijon) to ask for a cease fire. Their faction goal was "peace". I couldn’t believe it. on my next turn I sent a diplomat to France to check on my reputation and it was still “trustworthy”. Once you reach that level of reputation, it won't drop so easily as with say "reliable", where attacking neutral factions will quickly drop your rep to "mixed".