Reputation mechanics

[crpcarrot]

i think the system is wuite ok. it will not work only if u intend to make war with everyone and still want to be trustworthy which shouldnt happen . so it works. maybe not to your specifications or own preferences but i think it works as the developers intended. if u make war and have no attempt to maintain allies you arnt trustworthy.

[Matty]

and the higher your reputation the more people want to trade / make deals with you presumably, so the more you can extract from them?

[Husar]

Well, there is a certain problem, I currently play a spanish campaign and of course I started to fight the Moors. The French however were allied with them and declared war on me, despite my attemots to keep peace with them.
Now that the Moors are wiped off the map, the French still hate me and there is no way to get them into a peacefire agreement(probably because I'm still at war with the nonexistant Moors). The only way to stop their attacks was to capture Bordeaux and that other castle on the border and give them to the pope and to my ally Sicily(in exchange for military access).
I guess if I keep the war with France going, their other allies will also start hating me etc pp, you get a nice snowball effect of factions attacking you sooner or later, which is why the war status with dead factions should not count anymore at least 10 or 20 rounds after they have been exterminated.
The way it is now, I will never be at peqace with France and even if I can get a ceasefire, relations will go down very fast again until they declare war again. I even gave them a few presents over some rounds, but next round the relations were back to where I started and I couldn't afford much more than 2000 per round, I'm not that rich.

[dopp]

The higher your reputation the more likely your allies will honor their alliance (trusted ally) and the more you will be liked in general.

The diplomacy file also seems to contain reputation settings, but I'm not sure how to read them.

Diplomacy is sometimes really strange. I was at war with the Polish and winning easily. They kept trying to make peace with me (their priority was peace) but kept demanding 60k or more in exchange. They were bankrupt but still had a 'supreme' military rating. I tried initiating peace talks as well but they weren't interested; it kept coming up as 'demanding' and even when I tossed in a few regions and wads of cash to make it 'balanced' they rejected it outright every time.

I then decided to demand vassalage from them. To my surprise the simple vassalage agreement came up as 'balanced' and they accepted right away. I tried the same trick on the Hungarians and turned them into a protectorate as well. Strange.

[Husar]

I finally got peace with France, after I conquered two of their provinces and gave them to the HRE, my peace proposal was suddenly very generous as opposed to very demanding.
But allying with them is still impossible nd they don't like me all that much so I guess the dead Moors still count as their allies and my enemies.
Oh, and I worked on my reputation and it seems many other countries now offer me alliances, even ones that refused them before. This is very interesting because I never watched my reputation before and now that I do, I'm getting a lot of allies lately.
One thing I'm not sure about though is whether being at war with the rebels does really drag your reputation down, because everyone is at war with them anyway, there is no way to make peace with them and they are special anyway. I think the rebels are not really included in anything diplomatic because nobody likes them anyway and they're not a "real" faction.

[Kobal2fr]

The higher your reputation the more likely your allies will honor their alliance (trusted ally) and the more you will be liked in general.

That's the truth, but not the whole of the truth : not only does your reputation needs to be at least somewhat good, but your allies' rep must be better than average as well.
If you're trusted but they're scumbags, the alliance doesn't become the sought-after Trusted Alliance, but a mere alliance of convenience like every other (ie, they'll help you if they get the chance, but they might just attack you if the odds are on their side and you're not both at war against a common enemy)

[dopp]

That's the truth, but not the whole of the truth : not only does your reputation needs to be at least somewhat good, but your allies' rep must be better than average as well.
If you're trusted but they're scumbags, the alliance doesn't become the sought-after Trusted Alliance, but a mere alliance of convenience like every other (ie, they'll help you if they get the chance, but they might just attack you if the odds are on their side and you're not both at war against a common enemy)

Yeah, that's the difference (I think) between leaked and official v1.2.; it didn't matter in leaked what their reputation was.

[Whacker]

i think the system is wuite ok. it will not work only if u intend to make war with everyone and still want to be trustworthy which shouldnt happen . so it works. maybe not to your specifications or own preferences but i think it works as the developers intended. if u make war and have no attempt to maintain allies you arnt trustworthy.

That's my point though. *I* am not the one making war, they are. And MY rep takes a hit when I retaliate in full when they attack me first.

[crpcarrot]

when u say retaliate in full if u mean annihilate them by sacking and destroying the faction i think that should give u a bad reputation and make all other factions vary of you.

unfortunaely(or fortunately depending on your point of view) this is how the game is programmed it cant be changed unitll its remodelled. but for slow players like me it doesn't make much of a difference.

if some one attacks me i just take away his offensive capabilities and sue for peace. any territiories taken are given away to allies or given back to the original owner in return for vassalage.

once i've carved ou my niche i cant be botheres managing all those provinces.. i'm lazy

[Kobal2fr]

That's my point though. *I* am not the one making war, they are. And MY rep takes a hit when I retaliate in full when they attack me first.

Takes two belligerents to make a war :)
I think the rationale behind the mechanism is that if you let a war last for some time it means that you're willing to wage it, whereas a "good guy" will try to get ceasefires ASAP by any mean available, and only fight defensive wars (as far as I know, the Pope will not threaten to castrate you if your battles with christians are on your own soil for example)

[Whacker]

@ crpcarrot and Cobol2

I hear what you are saying guys, but I still disagree. Gotta remember, this game is about WAR and waging war. *IF* the diplomacy in this game were much, much deeper and more refined, then I'd be somewhat more inclined to see things as you guys do. However, realistically speaking, if someone attacks you first, you are free to 'defend yourself' and 'neutralize the threat'. In the middle ages this basically amounted to open season on whomever it was that started the ruckus, which is how I'm treating it. Expecting someone to just sit there and take it on the chin while another faction bangs away at your doorsteps is not a reasonable expectation whatsoever, even for chivalric types, you have the right to defend yourself and take the fight to an aggressor. The basic message and way to think of it is someone walking up to a huge nest of africanized honeybees and whacking it with a stick. You're going to get stung repeatedly and more than likely killed, but if you'd simply stayed away and left it alone you'd have been fine.

[Kobal2fr]

In the middle ages this basically amounted to open season on whomever it was that started the ruckus, which is how I'm treating it.

True enough I guess, but then again in the middle ages (and, well, today still :) ) leaders considered alliances as convenient bits of paper and little else, especially when they had a large amount of soldiers and mercs sitting around twiddling their thumbs and ravaging the countryside to pass the time.

Also, "open season" is probably not accurate, as many "wars" and battles consisted in one side muscling in, the other bringing their own lads to show they were willing to fight, then they'd negociate and everyone goes home. Understandable, especially considering the "good" season for war is summer, when the peasants are sorely needed back home to tend to whatever mud puddle they called a field back then.

[Stuperman]

Whacker, when you say the Moors initiated the war and you defended your self by going after them, this brought your rep down. If you only fought them on your own soil then no it shouldn't hurt your rep. BUT when you become the aggressor (and go after them) this should and does hurt your rep as people will become suspicious of your intentions (defence or conquor(sp)?)

IIRC taking rebel settlements has a slight negitive effect for the same reason, other factions begin to see you as an aggressor, and are therefore less likely to trust you,

[Whacker]

Whacker, when you say the Moors initiated the war and you defended your self by going after them, this brought your rep down. If you only fought them on your own soil then no it shouldn't hurt your rep. BUT when you become the aggressor (and go after them) this should and does hurt your rep as people will become suspicious of your intentions (defence or conquor(sp)?)

Again disagree strongly. If I keep to myself, and only mulch those who come after me first, why am I distrustful? Leave me alone, and I leave you alone. I've honored my very few and carefully selected arrangements.

IIRC taking rebel settlements has a slight negitive effect for the same reason, other factions begin to see you as an aggressor, and are therefore less likely to trust you,

This just plain won't work. Rebel cities are 'free game', taking them should do nothing to your rep.

As alpaca said, the system was not very well designed at all. Personally, I don't think you should have a 'global' rep at all. It should be a average of all of your individual relationships with other factions. If I keep and hold 5 alliances, ignore the other 9 factions, and backstab one, my rep should stay relatively positive because I am trustworthy for 5 factions and not for only 1. Sure I'll agree that negatives should weigh a bit more heavily against someone than positives, but one single value for you that represents everything is erronious in my view.

I sincerely hope in future patches or in the next title they put some significant effort into this, as it'll be a decision point for me.

[alpaca]

I agree that the system isn't very well designed. It's a nice feature in general but they should have put it at least twice the work they did.

What I always do is get as many allies as possible, which will nicely normalise your global standing towards 1 (while it also normalises towards 0 twice as fast, which means you'll reach an equilibrium at 0.33 if you have one ally - being at war with a non-rebel faction normalises towards -1 with half the speed of the ally normalisation).
Releasing more than 80 prisoners gives 1/40 on top of the usual 1/100 as does releasing a character, if you do both you get 1/20. You also get that figure for occupying a settlement - rebel or not. Executing rebels will give you -1/20 even if you may not notice it immediately.

A good global standing will help your faction standing with everyone, not the other way around. This can almost make up for the normalization towards -1 you get on vh so is a powerful thing.
Breaking treaties or alliances can give you a big hit, so be careful who you ally to (make it so you don't ally to a lot of factions who're likely to declare war on each other)

All these are taken from vanilla 1.2

[Kobal2fr]

There's a very good way to break alliances without getting a reputation hit : offer to trade maps for maps with your "ally" turn after turn.

They might agree the first few times, but eventually they'll call it quits (either as a hardcoded way to prevent a diplomatic XP exploit, or because the AI sees a prelude to an invasion in you wanting to have their up-to-date maps)