Way to mitigate ridiculous DoW's?

[al Roumi]

Assuming the faction AI is also trying to "win" the game and not just a passenger in the mix to trip the player up, I'd like to add an overarching priority for faction AIs to seek to meet their victory conditions: e.g. focus on prestige points or conquest of particular regions.

I'd rather factions didn't become lap-dogs, willing to do my every bidding and trade key techs or territories just because i had buttered them up. I'd prefer the factions to be as independant and strategically active as the player can be (within the boundaries of possibility of course).

I'd get rid of the overal "game" AI which has the tendency to trigger the suicidal DoW's form factions, only there to keep the player stretched. there should be a quid-pro-quo between inter-faction AI dealings, as much as there is between human and ai factions.

For that matter, I've never seen the factions make any alliances beyond those that they start with -the 1700's were full of incessant changes in the raports and alliance between countries -this should be reflected in the game.

I'd even (pause for effect) be happy with an ammount of scripted behaviour, which would dictate the various factions pursuing their own victory conditions, generating flashpoint regions & resources that would naturally engender conflict between factions.

[Veresov]

I was experiencing the same thing however I've noticed that I am experiencing far fewer of these with the Imperial Splendor mod. I am still always at war with a faction however it usually with no more than 1 major faction and 2 minor factions. This is a lot different than the vanilla 5+ DOW I was running into.

[Sic semper tyrannis]

The AI loves making peace?! This is news to me.

In my first serious campaign after RTI as Prussia I expanded west first and destroyed Hannover, not wanting to agitate the more powerful Polish so soon. As soon as I did, Westphalia declared war, maybe sensing I was stretched too thin. Suicide. After taking Saxony later, both UP and Poland declared war in the same turn. Obviously this is out of character for UP as well as a stupid move. Attacking a greatly superior force with one territory to your name? I beat back Poland and took a couple of their northern territories, joining my empire and moving in next to a new neighbor: Austria. They declare war immediately. I can understand this as Austria and Prussia have been vying over the area for generations. What happened next baffles me. Courland declared war! By this time I was #1 or #2 militarily and they went without much of a fight.

To make a long story short, I have eliminated 4 minor factions, ALL of whom declared war on me and NONE of whom made any attempts at peace after realizing their folly.
As far as major factions go, which have more face to lose but also more time to reverse positions before they disappear, I eliminated UP and Austria. Poland has only Crimea left, down from 7 at its peak. NO attempts at peace whatsoever. Russia declared war along with Poland, but I have only defended myself against raiding parties and I can NOT for the life of me get them to accept peace. No "Ok you only attacked because Poland asked, they are finished. Give up." Presenting them with gifts gets good comments but doesn't even show up in the math regarding our relationship.

Luckily I have a long standing friendship with the Turks, who I now share a border with. Everyone else I touch likes me less and less and I don't want that to decay either. I still need to consolidate and take out a couple minors and tackle the French in Lorraine to win. My military bar is higher than any other 4 nations combined and every time some upstart declares war I just shake my head; distractions.