Strategically, HOW do you play the slow game

[Zenicetus]

The one major tip I have to offer, is to play on Medium instead of H or VH campaign difficulty. Apparently (see other posts here), this normalizes your relations with other factions towards neutral a little bit every turn, if you're not doing something to upset them... like blockading ports or taking their provinces. Sinking ships seems to be immune to degrading relations, which is interesting (and useful).

Hard and Very Hard normalizes towards worse relations every turn, unless you bribe everyone to boost relations. In other words, you'll be constantly at war. It looks like CA substituted relations degradation for economic boosts for AI factions, on the harder settings. At Medium, it's MUCH easier to keep your neighbors at bay with strong border defenses like garrisoned cities or big standing armies near your frontiers.

For example, in my Spanish campaign I really didn't want war with France because I was busy elsewhere. They started a war anyway, I took their closest two provinces but didn't do anything else.... just garrisoned them and kept two big standing armies there. They sent several probes over the border, I killed them, but relations kept slowly improving every turn until they finally accepted a cease fire. If I had kept expanding and taking their cities, relations would have worsened. That's okay for blitz/steamroller expansion, but not if you're trying to maintain a static border with a neighbor.

This is different from RTW, where war was a binary condition -- on, or off. In M2TW, there are degrees of hostility in faction relations, and you can improve relations even while at war, if it's a war you don't want at the moment. I think this is affected by which side of a shared border the combat occurs... but I'm not 100% sure. At any rate, it's a lot easier at Medium difficulty. Otherwise you're likely to be constantly at war with someone.

(Edit): amending that last sentence: Of course you can't win this game or build an empire without warfare. What I meant is that Medium campaign difficulty makes it a little easier to choose WHO you're going to be at war with.

[sapi]

Despite their open aggressiveness, i've found that AI factions are woeful at taking advantage of the player's weakness.

In my milanese campaign, at turn one i moved everyone out of my cities to destroy the papacy, and none of the neighbouring factions moved in to take the open cities.

Foward 20 turns, and i'm the undisputed military leader, so i'm betrayed on all fronts.

Huh? ;)

[Musashi]

Just because you get attacked doesn't mean you have to retaliate. Just crush their army and go on ignoring them.

[Antipodean]

Actually, while trying to be all sweetness and peace, I did end up having to retaliate. My economy was so controlled by port blockades, and my meagre poor man's military so run down, that my little empire was dying from neglect and attrition, with insuficient funds to make repairs or retrain, let alone improve. Trying not to fight it out really allowed the AI to nearly crush me. Only when I mustered what was left of my forces and retaliated by sacking a few provinces, did I generate enough income to beat the senile city syndrome and even my economy out, but it wasn't until I sacked their cities and kept them, that the collapse reversed and things turned up (by the twin goods of having the enemy resources, and reducing their military).

Now I have all but the two most northerly HRE provinces and all but the two most northerly Hungarian provinces, all of the non-iberian Moorish land and a goodly chunk of France is in rebel hands or belongs to the Pope (from before I took the gloves off), and things are sweet, but equivalent to if I'd just gone forth and been angry all over them buggers to start with.

[Musashi]

Don't play on Very Hard... In my opinion it just makes it stupid and not hard... because the AI gets suicidally aggressive. On Normal, if you crush an AI faction's field army (And I mean crush, not just beat) it will generally send a diplomat post-haste to humbly request a ceasefire, and will generally accept an unfavorable agreement even.

On Very Hard they'll just keep scraping peasants together and throwing them at you until you destroy them completely.

[Joshwa]

I like to play a slow game, using espionage and diplomacy etc, but i feel kinda like im cheating if i play on medium, because it is way too easy to trounce the computer. Why can't the AI on V/H just be very clever or something but at the same time actually have some sense of self preservation