Reacquiring a Territory from Another Country

[ColIndyJackson]

Dear All:

Good afternoon from Canada!! I hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

I've been given the above mission a couple of times, and I really don't know how to go about it without causing WWIII. I've tried it once and found that my luck at it was just about as good as acquiring another merchant's assets--in other words, horribly bad. More often than not, I'm turned down flat, and the solution I can think of is to take it back forcefully, aka WAR!!!

They, the Council of Nobles, ask me to send a diplomat to regain the property in question, let's say, Metz. Let's also, hypothetically speaking, say that Metz belongs to the Holy Roman Empire, and King Philip feels it should be one of our provinces yet again.

The floor is now open for any and all suggestions, ideas and vague notions. I now go back see what I can do to keep His Hatness happy.

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

[Ramses II CP]

If you have good relations and a positive reputation (and they have more than three provinces) the best thing to do is simply buy the province from them. If you don't have good relations that's pretty easy to fix, but reputation repair would take longer than the length of the mission.

You'll have to do a little manipulation to figure out just the right number, and it never hurts to throw in promising to attack their enemies (Rebels), map information (If you haven't given it to them recently), and a little long term tribute (100 florins x 10 turns is a good sweetner sometimes), but overall I tend to start at around 1000 florins offered. Save before you offer, because sometimes even a proposition rated 'balanced' will end up offending them.

[Quillan]

Ramses has the correct method, but the cost can vary widely. It depends on things that aren't always obvious. In the early going as Venice, it's usually fairly easy to buy Bologna from the HRE for between 5000 and 7000 florins, paid 1000 per turn for X turns. However, as England about 40 turns into the game it cost me 75000 florins (5000 per turn for 15 turns) to buy Zaragoza from the French, and much later I paid 9000 per turn for 5 turns to Byzantium to purchase the isle of Cyprus from them. I'd imagine things like date, the financial state of both parties, your current treasury, and their plans all factor into the cost.