Too easy to bribe factions, suggestion for patch.

[Razor1952]

IMHO its just too easy to gift factions to improve relations. Pope or otherwise.

My suggestion is to decrease the effect of gifts each time on improving relations.Say by a factor of 25% less effect on relations each gift.

Discussion,
Worry about the Pope?, don't ; 100flx100 turns will let you forget him.
Worry about poor relations with your neighbour?, don't; just give him a good gift and your relations will skyrocket and you can get peace easily.So instead of 100x100 for the Pope I would have to do say 100, then 125, 150 etc to get the same effect.

Related issues
I also mention in passing that your reputation is also important in this, but I don't think retracts from my central idea to reduce the impact of each successive gift with time.

Tribute also poses an implementation problem unless you just reduce the effect after every tribute period.

I leave the thread for discussion.

[Whacker]

Meh, I'm actually happy with the Pope-o-matic bribery mechanics. I don't have to spend a ton of money to keep him happy, but he does require regular care and feeding, esp. when I go at it with my catholic neighbors. Parking a diplomat on his doorstep and careful income management ensures that I can take the offensive in a reasonable manner against fellow catholics and not get on his short list.

Regarding neighbors, I've honestly never tried bribing them after some effort put into that area, most of the time I just ignore them, if I'm not at war with them. If anything I'd say that it's really hard to get back on good terms with someone, esp. after a long war in which you've conquered a good part of their kingdom, or even one single province. I tried this unsuccessfully a number of times with the HRE and Milan, both after THEY came after me first, and after I took a few of their bordering castles as a buffer. I never could get them to stop attacking me, even with huge cash gifts (which were rejected), so that was a front I had to maintain. If anything I'd like them to be a bit more receptive to gifts, taking into account their relative strength vs. me. If you're an 80 pound weakling or even a 150 pound middleweight going up against an 800 lb gorilla, and the gorilla offers you a tidy sum to sit down, shut up, and cut your losses... What would you do?

Cheers!

[Razor1952]

I didn't really want to get into reputation in this thread, but once I improved my reputation to very reliable AND gifted then most factions took peace, in fact I neutered the mongols with a 10k gift , they declare war and next turn always happily accept peace. My relations are perfect with them. If I can figure how to post a screen shot I'll post that one. At present I have 40 provinces, at war only with rebels, and turks and milan both as vassals (as Venice- L to C 2.1 mod)

[KHPike]

I think that the current system is fine. The diplomatic implications of bribing factions add extra depth and balance the game to some extent. Besides, bribery doesn't always stay the AI's hand.

[TevashSzat]

holycow. Having a good diplomatic standing makes it more likely for other factions to sign alliances with you and sign treaties since you are more trustworthy

[holycow]

holycow. Having a good diplomatic standing makes it more likely for other factions to sign alliances with you and sign treaties since you are more trustworthy

Yes, but then do you play a defensive game to preserve standing or do you still attack and then pay everyone off to keep standing?

[holycow]

It is easy to improve relations in this game, as you say. but honestly, I don't give it much thought, cause I think the diplomatic side of the game is not worth the effort or $$.

1. alliances, even marriage alliances, don't mean much or have much effect. I've been attacked by allies and/or neutrals no matter how good the standing.
2. my ultimate goal is to conquer territory anyways, so I'm not about to give my potential enemy cash to build building/units
3. the pope standing/warnings/threats excomm are too easy to play around
4. the diplomatic options are too vanilla/boring for me, all you can choose from are trade, alliance/demand/etc. If there were more diplomatic choices or more interesting choices, then it'll be worthwhile to have a sliding effect as you propose.

My question is:

Currently, what do you do with a good diplomatic standing?? What is it good for? What if you have peace and nobody comes ??

[Caelus]

I think the AI needs be a bit more rational about going to war before you could decrease the effect of tribute. Otherwise it would be even more impossible to get good relations with any faction, resulting in ridiculous wars.

It’s already silly with factions randomly blockading ports when doing so does not even serve in their best interests.

I think your basic point is good, but brings up the large issue of diplomacy in the game, which I will refrain from getting into as it would be somewhat off topic. But basically I think relations need to be handled in a more intelligent way, and that without improvement in the basic system making tribute less effective would simply eliminate a big part of what little diplomacy we have.

[TevashSzat]

The new patch already says that it will be dealing with ai unpredictability in going to war and accepting peace treaties.

[JCoyote]

I think the current system is fine. A little bit of money regularly exchanged is often part of nation's diplomacy. In one form or another.

As for the Pope thing? I think it is a PERFECT representation of the materialism that was compromising the catholic church during that age. Popes were bought off and what do you think Indulgences were? (In fact, I think Indulgences should make an appearance to continue a war against other catholics without the Pope butting in.)

[holycow]

Ummmm, I understand the nuts and bolts of how the game works. I'm not asking how to get good standing. I was asking, how does it affect your gameplay, strategy, etc? Do you maintain good diplomatic standing as a priority? If yes, then as you've replied you'd have to play a defensive game. If not, then you are on the offensive and if you attack, your standing takes a hit. Do you keep paying off other factions to keep alliances/standing?

My first post's point is, alliances and good diplomatic standing have no real consequences and/or benefits, that you can't easily plan/play around. So why keep investing, as the first posting member proposes, to keep increasing tribute/$$ for lesser and lesser effect. But what do you think and this is what I want to know - in your game, are alliances or good standing worth the $$?

Me? I don't see any value to alliances or good standing and actually I find this game a whole lot more interesting/exciting if I've 3 or more enemy factions invading from all directions. I'm juggling resources, armies, etc. and with the pope sticking his nose in, sometimes have to wait - giving me the time to attack in other direction at faction y. I mean, the title of the game is total war, not total peace.

[gardibolt]

It's far too hard to bribe units and agents though. Everyone wants the GNP of a medium-sized country to commit treason. People are bought and sold much more easily. CA rather overreacted to the complaints that bribery was too easy in RTW 1.0 so now the system essentially prevents bribery of any kind of unit.

[Whacker]

You know that's an interesting point, I never tried bribing agents in M2TW. RTW/BI was just like as you said, they wanted half of your damn income if not more. If memory serves the bribes were also dynamic based on your cash level at the start of the turn. Provided that's actually the case, I'd like to see it switched to a better calculation where it's NOT based on your cash or income, but how skilled the agent is, perhaps distance from their capital, maybe some others.

[Mega Dux Bob]

Bribe you neighbor? No! Bribe you neighbor's neighbor. Give those pesky neighboring factions something to worry about while you built up.