Silly Danish/Polish

[Poncho400]

Greetings!

Ok, so I've had M2TW for a long time now. I've only completed one short campaign, and I usually give up on my other long campaigns as I grow bored/get other games. Recently I've gotten back in, and started a long campaign Medium/Medium with the Russians.

At about 12 turns in, I finally get my Rusky army over to Stockholm, and find it taken by the Danish. I remember the last time I was Russians, and they backstabbed me like crazy. So I take Stockholm from them, destroy the majority of their army, and kill one of their sons.

Here I am at turn 70, with about 5 regions (all large city/citadel or better) and I'm still "at war" with the Danish. Numerous times I've tried to negotiate a truce so I can focus my troops elsewhere, but no matter what I do, it's always a "very demanding" offer (even though they have only 5 regions and a puny army). They even had the guts to demand I become a vassal to them! Even after I've assassinated 2/3 of their family, priests, and diplomats, they still are stubborn.

To top it off, the Danes aligned with the Poles about 30 turns ago. The Poles then decided to blockade my port for ONE turn. They havn't touched me since. Just like the Danes, they accept no offer of a truce. I'm also in the process of taking out their whole family.

What the heck is wrong? I mean, it's no problem that they leave me alone, but it's really annoying that they don't even CONSIDER a truce. I'm just going to have to annihilate them all.

[Galain_Ironhide]

If you are playing vanilla 1.2 (standard m2tw - no mods), the diplomacy system can, well to be truthful, be damn impossible.

If you have a bad reputation (untrustworthy or worse), striking a deal with them may be tricky.

Offer a big cash deal or one that lasts over a period of time. Even offer to give back stockholm if you want to concentrate some where else, you can always stab them in the back again at a later date. Unless the offer is considered 'Generous' or 'Very Generous' you probably wont even get a look in.

My resolution to those who do not want peace is WAR!!! Wipe em out style.

Good Luck

[WhiskeyGhost]

All factions tend to hate the player in Vanilla. Especially since on hard/v hard you get that nasty little modifier towards "I hate your guts" every turn. Then theres all that other stuff, like if your winning, they attack you, if you look weak, they attack you, if you mind your own business, they attack you, etc etc

[Guru]

Make them an offer and they might update their priorities. Sometimes it works. In my byz campaign, the Venetians were reduced to their capital only and I had a huge army outside, led by no other than Emperor Whats-his-name-again the merciless. Still, they considered a truce to be very demanding. Nevertheless, I made the offer and they refused and were pretty angry. However their priorities were updated to "peace", and when I asked them to become vassals, the venetians considered it a balanced deal and agreed. Go figure.
I was playing LTC so I dont really know if it works in vanilla, but it might be worth a try.

[Poncho400]

Yea I'm using vanilla. I've never run into many problems to consider updating (maybe I will now, will that affect my saves?).

I've already tried about 5 times to ask for peace. Both the Poles and Danes strongly refuse.

But no worries. I have a fresh commander headed to my Citadel, where my massive army will be built. I'll ask for peace once more before I obliterate them all. If I feel sorry for them, I'll just ask them to become vassals.

[Empirate]

I strongly, strongly recommend you get Lusted's Lands to Conquer (LTC) mod. It installs itself in a different folder, so you can still use your old vanilla .exe, and it provides lots of little changes that make the game more fun. One big change is that diplomacy actually works: People agree to sensible offers, they even send diplomats to you to negotiate a truce if you've been trouncing them, and you can pretty much turtle in peace if that's your priority.

[Cheetah]

Yes, forget about vanilla. Here is a thread about some of the mods:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97908

My favourite is PDER (Pre Deo et Rege), regional recruitement, reworked castle/city system and much, much better startegic AI capable of launching coordinated attacks, with proper diplomacy.

[ReiseReise]

Play Broken Crescent

[TevashSzat]

Well the campaign map AI has never been known to make smart moves.

You can have 9 full stacks surrounding their last city with no defenders and the AI will still refuse a ceasefire/protectorate

[Poncho400]

Yea they're pretty dumb. Denmark recently had a full stack army in Arhus (about 5 turns away from my major trading city Stockholm). They were all super upgraded mega troops. Poland is also walking around with a few big ass armies.

They could easily wipe me out, but Denmark keeps sending their troops to fight the Germans (I think thats what they're doing, as their armies never come home). And the Poles are busy taking rebel areas (at turn 90, and they still lose to the rebels), instead of wiping out my capital.

The other thing I don't like is how hard it is to bribe rebels. After about 5 turns, I finally bribed Smolenske into joining me (for about 8,000), and that was with a level 5 diplomat. If it were easier to bribe rebel settlements, I'd have quite a few more settlements right now.

[MerlinusCDXX]

Yea they're pretty dumb. Denmark recently had a full stack army in Arhus (about 5 turns away from my major trading city Stockholm). They were all super upgraded mega troops. Poland is also walking around with a few big ass armies.

They could easily wipe me out, but Denmark keeps sending their troops to fight the Germans (I think thats what they're doing, as their armies never come home). And the Poles are busy taking rebel areas (at turn 90, and they still lose to the rebels), instead of wiping out my capital.

The other thing I don't like is how hard it is to bribe rebels. After about 5 turns, I finally bribed Smolenske into joining me (for about 8,000), and that was with a level 5 diplomat. If it were easier to bribe rebel settlements, I'd have quite a few more settlements right now.

it's actually cheaper and easier to buy settlements from other factions than to bribe rebels. And it often improves relations with the target faction, go figure. Seems like the AI has absolutely no survival instinct whatsoever.

[Galain_Ironhide]

Speaking of dumb AI. Another classic example is, many a time have I sent a stack (or 2) across to an enemy settlement that has a decent garrison within it, only for them to move most of those men out of the settlement and off to some other peice of land a turn before my army actually arrives, this is always when I am already encroaching on their lands.

I would have thought even a dumb AI would think - "uh oh, some bad @#$ mother #$%^&* is about to invade. Better keep our guys here just in case."

or even - "Quick Lassie, go run to Zagreb and bring home reinforcements!"

Instead its more like - "hmmm those two stacks of Turks are headed our way. To hell with that! I'm not telling the guys they cant go fishing because they have to protect their homeland. Have a nice trip fellas!"

Oh well.

[Ramses II CP]

The vanilla AI definitely has some strange ideas about how to defend themselves. In the Total Independence campaign I noticed over and over that I could take an enemy city and leave it ungarrisoned the same turn with AI armies in the area, and 90% of the time it wouldn't occur to them to take the city back. Instead they would turn and try to march towards a city that was still under their control.

[Zaleukos]

I've found that the vanilla AI is much more likely to accept peace if you dont share a land border (this works almost all the time, the only problem I've had has been with HRE. If I want peace with a faction without destroying it I take their border provinces, destroy all buildings, convert to cities if necessary, leave some understrength militia there that will prevent the enemy from marching in but not prevent an uprising, and let the place go rebel.

If you have an obnoxious AI making seaborne invasions you might want to park diplomats in those provinces (Caernarvon is a good example with it's attractiveness to the Portuguese). If you dont share a land border with the attacker he's likely to accept peace and even pay indemnities if he has money.

These solutions are borderline exploits, but what is one supposed to do about the retarded AI???

[Poncho400]

I don't share a border with the Danish anymore, as I bought out one of their regions and I took over another (they have like 3 more regions spread across Europe). I'm going to beat them up some more and see if I can make them my vassal.

The only problem is taking over a Catholic region and converting them to Orthodox. It takes quite a while to convert them enough so you can leave a small garrison and not worry about an uprising.

I think there should be a conversion bonus when converting from Catholic to Orthodox. I mean, there aren't any HUGE differences in the religions. It's not like converting a Catholic to Muslim. Where could I mod this in perhaps? Because at this rate, I probably won't finish my campaign. It takes way too long convert the religions, and my income is pretty crappy because of corruption and the need to keep cities on a Low tax rate.

[Zaleukos]

I've not had any consistent success in creating vassals. As France I cant get a Milan reduced to Ajaccio to accept Vassalisation, while I've had a strong HRE accept vassalisation without me winning a single battle against them or even breaking off their sieges:D

I dont think there's much basis for rapid conversion between orthodox and catholic. If anything it is ahistorically easy to convert. In this particular instance I do think that it is a wise decision to sacrifice historicity for gameplay though.

Put all your priests to work in one province at a time. That way it shouldnt take more than a few turns to get the province to a decent level of orthodoxy. It might also be worth it to move your capital to a more central location. When I play as France I find that just moving my capital to Marseille or Milan makes it much easier to control the holy land. I'd imagine Kiev or Vilnius would have a similar effect on Russian unrest. It will affect the income of your merchants though.