Quote Originally Posted by Soylent Green
Not really man, because that's what the AI forces you to do. Unless you spend the entire game fighting defensive battles. In RTS i'm a turtler by nature. But MTW2 forces you to take the offensive.

The computer declares war on you, and won't ceasefire, forcing you to extermine their cities, and when you defeat them, the next nearest AI declares war on you, and the process continues!
It doesn't have to go that way. First, you're playing on VH campaign setting, which normalizes your diplomatic relations with all factions every turn towards terrible (or is it abysmal, I forget), unless you gift cash or do something else to stop it. At medium difficulty, relations are normalized to neutral. At easy difficulty they get better every turn. If you want to turtle, either don't play at VH, or else get ready to spend lots of money bribing people to like you.

Also, note that being the most powerful faction is also a negative diplomacy modifier, which might be one reason you're having trouble getting ceasefires Another reason might be available cash. Factions are more likely to offer or accept ceasefires in the early stage of a war, when they still have cash reserves and they're not fighting for their lives.

Turtling of a sort, is possible in this game, but it's easier on medium difficulty. It also requires strong garrisons and standing armies at your borders (good fences make good neighbors, etc.). Playing as Spain, I can tell that France really has a jones for the Iberian peninsula, but a couple of strong armies sitting on our mutual borderhas kept them at bay. They send a few probes now and then, I beat them back. Often they'll just retreat if I move my stack near them. Then they focus on someone else for a while. That's as close as this game gets to turtling, which is appropriate I think, for a series titled "Total War."