Reputation - has anyone ever had better than Very Trustworthy

[alpaca]

I.E. The AI will wait longer before backstabbing you.

Since the end result is going to be that I wind up backstabbed regardless, I don't see any reason to spend my time, and my empire's florins, in the hopes that it backstabs me in 40 turns instead of 20.

No, the result will be that within 20 turns you aren't backstabbed by two factions at the same time which will be followed up by another three factions dogpiling on you because your relations and reputation go down.
If you never tried which effect it has, you shouldn't discard it so easily.

You can do without it, but if you don't blitz it's a lot harder if you don't use diplomacy.

[Budwise]

I don't break any of the diplomacy rules either but I go from Trustworthy to Dubious when I am attacked and I go all out on them for it. At what point is it okay to eliminate a faction and not get dinged for it?

[WhiskeyGhost]

Attack them if they are Excommunicated, or perhaps if they have really bad rep and you've already got a good one (not sure on the latter)

[alpaca]

I don't break any of the diplomacy rules either but I go from Trustworthy to Dubious when I am attacked and I go all out on them for it. At what point is it okay to eliminate a faction and not get dinged for it?

At no point or at all points depending on how you look at it.
You are punished for being at war with factions, you are punished for exterminating settlements or executing prisoners, but you are not punished for destroying a faction.

By the way: In my current game I'm having reputation problems because I often have to break alliances when two factions go to war, and I get a rep hit for that, which is just plain silly again... However, my only real war so far was when I've been attacked by the Milanese. After two heroic and three or four clear victories, they gave me Genoa for a peace treaty and a bit of money!
In addition to that, I have a total income of about 50000 florins while only spending 15000 or so on army maintenance (I only have two large stacks and free garrisons in cities) because the Hungarians, HRE and Byzantines are really nice thanks to generous bribes. Furthermore, the Sicilians have two stacks in the south of Bologna but don't do anything to attack (just to be sure I put one of my stacks there to fend them off should they decide to backstab me after all) and the Milanese are busy with France.
It's also interesting to note that I had a marriage alliance to France for a while when they were at war against England and Spain and kept them alive (together with the Byzantines) with gifts of roughly 10000 florins per turn. I abandoned them when they were also attacked by the Milanese and the HRE and they were soon killed. Definitely fun to play.
Before I forget to mention it though: I'm doing that with a slightly edited AI for testing purposes. It doesn't do any forced attacks like those annoying port blockades nearly as often as normally.

[Budwise]

What is your reputation, after my post you failed to tell me yours.

[Budwise]

So, can anyone answer the question that this thread is based on. Has anyone ever had anything higher than Very Reliable? If so, how do you get it, what difference do you have to do?

[imnothere]

before reading this post, my reputation was dubious.

after reading this post, my reputation went up to "very reliable", but it was a pain and due to too many bugs crashing my computer, i quit, reinstall and restart (i got bored as well)

but AFTER reading askthepizzaguy's post regarding conquering, my reputations is now very untrustworthy! since i realised - what do i care about the other cyber-fractions think. its like fight-maim-burn across mediterrean on the way to middle east - i got sick of the europe theatre so went off to fight in middle east instead.

in conclusion - i think askthepizzaguy is a bad influence! readers beware!