Diplomacy is entirely broken

[Husar]

What difficulty setting are you playing on?

This sounds like the programmed, constant deterioration of relations on H and VH setting that was in M2TW, absent bribery or something else to stop the slide. At M difficulty relations would stay static, at Easy they'd slowly keep improving. If you're playing at M or Easy, that blows the theory.

This could also be the targeted province effect, if you're sitting on a province the AI needs for a win condition. There are a lot of overlapping "gotta have it" provinces in this game, and the world starts in a more developed state than M2TW or RTW.

Well, I conquered baghdad from the Ottoman Empire before they declared war on me, apparently they were after Baghdad as well. The declaration of war is not even the problem, they asked me for baghdad and I refused because they wanted Baghdad and 5900 gold in return for unlimited military access which is useless since they own all of india and I don't want to march around in circles there.

Regardless of that the problem is that they keep accepting white peace the next round and keep being friendly towards me.
My guess is they wouldn't accept white peace if they were hostile towards me but they aren't because we never fight, they declare war and then we make peace again without a fight. If they really wanted Baghdad, they should simply not accept the peace, their army prestige is about twice that of mine and they have three or four full stacks in the are while I have around two and half which is about my complete army. That doesn't mean they could win practically, but theoretically they should assume that and then sue for peace after their incompetent battle AI ruined their plans... something like that. Or maybe they'd win if they actually have some line infantry they won't hide in buildings far away from the actual battle...

Maybe for a start CA should make sure that all stacks the AI sends around, and they actually do send stacks around since monday(last patch) actually contain about 50% units that are designated as line infantry, and then as an interim solution, disable garrisoning completely for the AI so it won't use buildings on the battlefield at all. I think that would make the game quite a bit more challenging, then make declarations of war more dependant on the relative factions strengths, meaning factions attack factions with similar strength so we don't get Georgia declaring war on the Ottomans, GB and Russia at the same time. Or just use the prestige points or something but there are already so many numbers in the game that could be used to make diplomacy a bit more believable at times and it can't be all that hard to tweak the army compositions a bit, maybe change the routine from "what do I recruit?" to "what does that stack there need?" based on some relatively simple formula, like I said, around 50% of units that are designated as line infantry, then maybe 20% cavalry, a general and 30% artillery, or 20% and 10% light infantry if available. We might see clone armies then but I'd rather fight those than single howitzers running around in my territory.

What army composition has to do with diplomacy you ask? It makes declarations of war either scary or laughable...

Btw, got a bit carried away there but I play on Hard campaign and normal battles, haqrd campaign because I'm afraid the armies on normal might be even smaller and normal battles becuase I'm not a fan of the AI winning with stat boosts or get militia which never break, maybe I should choose hard or very hard there though.