Peace I Just Want Peace!!!!

[King Elessar]

Is that so much to ask? I like to play the normans, usually i conquer the byzantines. After that i like to just rest and rebuild with a new capitol at Constinople. But regardless of what i do the same thing always happens. The Venetians attack me, the germans attack me, the genoese attack me, and even the hungarians attack. All within 2 turns of each other. The first time this happened, i thought ok ill take em out one by one. get them down and they will accept a ceasefire or maybe become a vassal. but no venice does not even accept a ceasefire when there down to there last city.

Does this happen to anybody else. I like to plan my conquests slowly and deliberatly but i never get this chance.

ANybody got any suggestions cause im getting peeved.

[Foz]

Is that so much to ask? I like to play the normans, usually i conquer the byzantines. After that i like to just rest and rebuild with a new capitol at Constinople. But regardless of what i do the same thing always happens. The Venetians attack me, the germans attack me, the genoese attack me, and even the hungarians attack. All within 2 turns of each other. The first time this happened, i thought ok ill take em out one by one. get them down and they will accept a ceasefire or maybe become a vassal. but no venice does not even accept a ceasefire when there down to there last city.

Does this happen to anybody else. I like to plan my conquests slowly and deliberatly but i never get this chance.

ANybody got any suggestions cause im getting peeved.

Different factions lend themselves better to different game types. If you want a slower paced game, try using a faction that starts off with more natural borders against water. England is of course the natural, as you can solidify your hold in France as you take over the various settlements in the islands, then plan your sweep through the bulk of Europe once you are well established. Spain or Portugal may work well for this too, there's water everywhere around, so it gives you an immediate goal (to own the giant land mass) with clear paths in and out. The primary thing I've found helpful in this direction is to have some foreseeable point where you'll be down to bordering few enemy factions: even if you end up at war with 5 other factions, you know where they're coming from for the most part, and don't have to try to defend 10 cities while you also build armies to continue conquering. The opposite of this is of course the infamous situation of the HRE - completely surrounded, with no natural borders in sight, and fighting invariably breaks out on all fronts. So, more of it has to do with your faction and the position they are thrust into than you may initially think.

Another suggestion would be to take note of what you are doing. If you are making moves that extend your borders with enemies, you are inviting trouble. You want to expand in such a way as to maintain or hopefully shrink your borders with enemies - it lets you focus more military might into less provinces (provinces behind the front line require little garrisoning), and makes the decision of what to grab next more obvious too. On top of that, if you are grabbing a very valuable city (like Constantinople) then be prepared for hell. It's somewhat of a choke point, and very lucrative to boot, which means if you're in it you can guarantee any AI faction that can get there is going to want it and try to take it probably. If possible, wait to take it until you've established a stout position on the side you're approaching from (that is, you want well garrisoned settlements protecting the side you approach from so that you know which direction the enemy will attack Constantinople from) and have the men to spare to garrison it against the assaults you know will be coming.

My last suggestion is to make sure you pace yourself. If you take the time to build resources, you can keep your military power at a level high enough to stave off most attacks - often the AI will evaluate your strength and actually decide not to attack if you are powerful enough at the place it wanted to attack. So it's important not to leave places that invite attacks unless you intend to be at war with whatever faction borders that city for quite a while. As you expressed it can be very difficult to make wars end, and I've found the best remedy for this is simply to stay bulked up enough on garrisons that wars don't begin in the first place.

[TevashSzat]

The Egyptians might be good for you since most of the settlements in the levant are rebel and the only factions u might come into trouble with is the byzantines and the turks. Note however, a crusade is going to be called on one of your cities sooner or later and your gonna have at least a couple catholic factions declare war on you as they join the crusade

[Razor1952]

Though some factions appear to coded to attack you at least early on, I believe(and stand to be corrected) that maintaining good relations and reputation will allow you to avoid wars you don't want.

There are several threads on reputation, but things like exterminating drive it down a lot.

I don't think you can be friends with everyone for ever so choose your enemies as well as your friends, but as a catholic faction I'd suggest paying tribute( say 100x100 florins) to maintain relations with other catholics which look threatening.

You also choose the assasin/spy covert war style against your enemies rather all out blitskrieg, slower but just as much fun.

I'd also recommend Lands to Conquer mod which fixes a lot of annoyances and makes a few things more sensible and logical.

[General Zhukov]

This is a mojor problem. The conditions for the AI breaking alliances must be either tilted towards constant war, or at least highly random. Reputation seems to make little or no difference in my experience.

In my current game as France, having never started a war, having never made incursions into any faction's territory unless on crusade, after making constant bribes to all neighbors, with a Reliable reputation and Amiable to Perfect realtions with all of them, my allies have all at one point or another broken our alliances and begun wars. Portugal broke our marriage alliance just to blockade my Atlantic ports (not attack, just blockade). No one will negotiate sensibly. I suspect it is related to my persistent Supreme rating on the power meter. But instead of respecting my power, keeping in mind my trustworthy reputation, and honoring our alliances, they guys ditch me and team up with dinky Milan in an ill-fated attempt to take the big guy down a notch.

The one small consolation is that the fools keep getting excommed for it, allowing me to crusade against them at will. Bizarrely enough, the only neighbor to stay peaceful is England, France's traditional worst enemy during much of the period.

[hrvojej]

The AI is scripted to commit forced invasions. It's stupid and a poor design choice, IMO, but it has been present in all TW games unfortunately. Check out this thread for a good discussion on psycho AI and possible ways to offset it:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75496

Also, you may want to delete all of the tall_poppy triggers from the descr_faction_standings file to reduce the senselessness of the AI, and to prevent the game from punishing you just for being successful (instead of the other way around, that you get rewarded by an enjoyable game).

[Alcorr]

This is a mojor problem. The conditions for the AI breaking alliances must be either tilted towards constant war, or at least highly random. Reputation seems to make little or no difference in my experience.

In my current game as France, having never started a war, having never made incursions into any faction's territory unless on crusade, after making constant bribes to all neighbors, with a Reliable reputation and Amiable to Perfect realtions with all of them, my allies have all at one point or another broken our alliances and begun wars. Portugal broke our marriage alliance just to blockade my Atlantic ports (not attack, just blockade). No one will negotiate sensibly. I suspect it is related to my persistent Supreme rating on the power meter. But instead of respecting my power, keeping in mind my trustworthy reputation, and honoring our alliances, they guys ditch me and team up with dinky Milan in an ill-fated attempt to take the big guy down a notch.

The one small consolation is that the fools keep getting excommed for it, allowing me to crusade against them at will. Bizarrely enough, the only neighbor to stay peaceful is England, France's traditional worst enemy during much of the period.

Exactly, I am in the same situation. I feel that as bad as the battle AI is, the campaign AI is far worse. Diplomacy is absolutly useless. In fact, ceasefires rarely last more than 4 turns. Not only does repution mean little, it means nothing, at least in real world results.

I feel that the obvious bias in the AI programming on VH campaign map lvl towards a human player is simply unfair. I want the campaign to be very hard...not unrealistic. Its simply stupid to be portugal and having the papacy, milan, france, sicily, the moors, spain, the english and the scottish ALL at war with me by turn 10...thats right...Eight factions at war with me within 10 turns.

And some will say:"O but you were excommunicated!" That does not mean that factions such as milan, sicliy, england and scotland should be sending armies across a decent distance to attack me when they have nearby enemies they are at war with...they send stack after stack of massive armies in the very early stages of the game.

I had told myself I wasn't going to cheat any but I had to use auto_win a few games just because it simply isn't fair. If the devs develop a game where diplomacy is downright BROKEN then cheating isn't really cheating.

[kublikhan3]

The Egyptians might be good for you since most of the settlements in the levant are rebel and the only factions u might come into trouble with is the byzantines and the turks. Note however, a crusade is going to be called on one of your cities sooner or later and your gonna have at least a couple catholic factions declare war on you as they join the crusade

The Egyptians are so NOT a good faction for peace. The Turks are a pushover, but the damn crusades are like the never ending story of Hell, especially if you expand into Byzantine territory and take Constantinople. Then, right as you have all of your armies in the west fighting the Christian horde, the Mongolian horde shows up in the east and kicks you in the nuts. Check out my Egyptian AAR for my experience with the Egyptians: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76694

I suggest that you check out Medieval: Total Peace. The next game in CA's world renowned francise, MTP promises to bring all the timesome negotiation of the medieval period to life on your computer.

Controlling one of the pathetically minor powers of europe, it is up to you to forge alliances with the ai and attempt to maintain the status quo. If you're not careful, you might have to fight someone...and that means game over!

Medieval: Total Peace - coming to a store near you.

Now this is not necessary. If we were to take the game name at face value, why have diplomacy at all? Lets rip out religion and city building while we are at it too huh? Behaving like a good christian nation, not starting any wars, never breaking a treaty, allying with your neighbors, and how does the game AI reward you? Every single faction you border can be expected to backstab you. And even when you are beating them handily, surround their last territory with a huge army, and ask for peace, they demand 10,000 gold to show you mercy. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a semblance of rationality from the diplomacy system.

[Carl]

I am playing with trusted alliances enabled. However, this is not really an answer to erratic AI behavior, and additionally has its own set problems from what I can gather. So I stand by my statement that diplomacy has yet to be modeled sensibly in a TW game.

Actually with the fix in place diplomacy is VERY sensibile IMHO.

Your allways the strongest faction in this game unfortuinatly. and that means they should eithier gang up on you you or bend the knee to you. When they get a trusted alliance to you they bend the knee, when they attack they are ganging up on you.

As you say their are problems, but they come about more because of inept AI, than bad programing.

1. As noted the AI will never break a trusted alliance, even if it would be benificial to do so

2. even if it had triggers to make it break trusted alliances, they'd never fire as the AI simply isn't good enough to get itself into a postion to use them.

3. The Trusted alliances requires a good reputaion. This is hard to get, you littrially have to use zero spies, or assassins, have a high Chivalry King, (that means low taxes, or at least no better than High), and you can't sack or exterminate any settelments you capture Thus in effect their are too few ways to get a good reputation.

[hrvojej]

A sensible diplomacy would mean e.g. that you can at least to some degree fight TOGETHER with your allies, or to have the AI that accepts a reasonable peace proposal every once in a while. And I'm still waiting to see things like that.

Ganging up on me when I'm the strongest doesn't qualify, as I said the diplomacy interface wouldn't even have to be included in the game to have that effect.

[todorp]

Is that so much to ask? I like to play the normans, usually i conquer the byzantines. After that i like to just rest and rebuild with a new capitol at Constinople. But regardless of what i do the same thing always happens. The Venetians attack me, the germans attack me, the genoese attack me, and even the hungarians attack. All within 2 turns of each other. The first time this happened, i thought ok ill take em out one by one. get them down and they will accept a ceasefire or maybe become a vassal. but no venice does not even accept a ceasefire when there down to there last city.

Does this happen to anybody else. I like to plan my conquests slowly and deliberatly but i never get this chance.

ANybody got any suggestions cause im getting peeved.

From 10 years the game name is Total War

Try some of the old versions of Shaba Mod or UltimateAI mods, look for complains about the mod being too peaceful :) and download that version.

[KHPike]

It happens in RTW too. I too find this ridiculous. I was England and allied with spain and portugal a whole lot of other factions against germany. I had good relations with all. However after that one Spanish ship blockaded my port and then my own coalition turned against me! They even made peace with the Germans just to gang up on me!

That said, the AI does many other indescribable, incredulous, undiplomatic moves. On top of that they defy sense when they refuse for a simple ceasefire even when whittled down to the last city, as if some divine intervention will help them.

While the name of the game is Total War, it shouldn't be the whole map Total War-ring on you.

[John Johnston]

It's called Total War!

While I mostly agree with the spirit of the points, Total War does not imply that a nation is always fighting; it implies that the nation is fighting without holding anything back. It is totally committed to the war.

Wiki.

A "Total War" game in which war was an infrequent occurence would not be "wrong".

[Callahan9119]

try ultimate AI mod, any time your by those tricksy nasty germans your gonna have problems

they like land

[hrvojej]

If "Total War" is the whole point of the game, as in that the AI will attack you at random and you cannot negotiate for anything, then why include the diplomacy in the game at all? Wouldn't it be more in the spirit of the game if every time you start the campaign you are immediately at war with every other faction? Or, better yet, that all factions are at war with every other faction and there is no option for peace?

However, since the TW games do include diplomacy, or at least an interface to conduct negotiations, then I expect it to make at least a little bit of sense. And, unfortunately, after four installments I'm still waiting for it to be modeled sensibly.

[Carl]

I'm still waiting for it to be modeled sensibly.

The problem is three-fold.

First they haven't enabled trusted alliances, when those are in effect, if it's a trusted alliance they simply WILL NOT attack you at all under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Second, a trusted alliance cannot be broken even if your down to 1 territory and no military and they have 50 units of the best units in the game in every province around you. Theirs no Trigger for this situation.

Three, even if their was a trigger that would make the AI disregard trusted alliances if it was strong enough, (or weak enough and was getting beaten by one of your mutual enemies), it would never be triggered as the AI's economic growth AI is totally useless ATM, so it never CAN be stronger than you. This is probably why CA left trusted alliances disabled by default.

Otherwise though, the diplomacy is quite good TBH, it just has severe economic limitations placed on it.

[hrvojej]

I am playing with trusted alliances enabled. However, this is not really an answer to erratic AI behavior, and additionally has its own set problems from what I can gather. So I stand by my statement that diplomacy has yet to be modeled sensibly in a TW game.