Why doesnt dipomacy work?

[Von Nanega]

When if comes to walking through other factions lands you´ll receive a drop-down message on the left hand side telling you that your relations has worsened. On the other hand you can exploit this by constantly walking in and out of another factions land thus eventually making them the agressor when they get pissed enough and attack you.

Yes, that is my number one favorite way to make the AI be the agressor. I do this even to Muslim factions because the reliability meter is global. The key to way and reliability is to always be the transgressed against one. After all, now you are just defending yourself against other factions evil imperialist moves. Muhahahahaha!!!

[RussianWinter]

Wow, some of these replies just make me scratch my head. The AI could be sitting around having rabbit orgies and some of you would still consider it normal. When you play a single player game one of the ceilings to how much fun you have is the AI, and in this game its just terrible. If it was any one facet (bad at defending, bad at diplomacy etc.) I might be able to squint my eyes and deal, but its so pervasive throughout every aspect.

As diplo is now its just broken, broken, broken, and calling the game "total war" isn't a (good) excuse. Unavoidable war with every bordering nation with no hopes of reconciling doesn't feel like a good strategy game, it feels like Pac-man.

I've abandonded a few great games because after being an an already very challenging situation against 4 factions I've been backstabbed by 2 others in a couple turns. I was never the provoker, I really REALLY tried to get a ceasefire with anyone over the course of 15 turns, and its obvious the game, as coded, just would have none of it.

[Ar7]

I´d have to agree about diplomacy being useless, one will still end up at war with all the factions. The game is biased towards this by a) Setting the victory conditions to conquering 45 regions b) simply having a dumb AI.

To be honest I am surprised at how many things don´t actually work the way they were supposed to, most of them are core aspects of the game and the result is the lack of any strategy in what was supposed to be a strategy game. Look at the list: diplomacy, AI, characters traits, inquisitors, some of the units (cavalry, 2h), it is easier to say what actually works! The game is linear beyond belief, with an early rush the best answer for every faction.

I actually noticed this with many new games, somehow old games had better value and replayability to them, these days too much emphasis is put on graphics.

Having said that, I will still play the game because I enjoy the battles, even though the AI doesn´t really shine.