Diplomacy

[Wambat]

I am hoping someone can point me to a relevant thread, or can advise me from personal experience:

I have noted that factions will no longer give you money to attack other factions once you have taken aggressive action against them (the faction you are asking money from, not the one you have promised to attack), or have taken one of their cities by any means. I have fallen ill of factions whom I have not offended in those ways, however, and am uncertain of how exactly the relationship is spoiled.

Predictably, how quickly the relationship sours has nothing to do with whether or not the faction is allied, neutral, or even at war with you.

The relevant factors seem to be at least one of the following:

a. How much you get from the opposing faction, in an absolute sense; i.e., cp faction X is assigned 10,000 units to grant the player faction(s) for attacking other factions for the duration of the game.

3. How many times the faction is asked to contribute financially to your military efforts; i.e., cp faction Y is permitted 13 Diplomacy actions of type x with player faction(s) before refusing to make further donations.

VI. How many turns they have been asked to contribute to one's military campaigns; i.e., cp faction Q can perform diplomacy action z, any number of times, for up to 5 turns before refusing further diplomacy.

Perhaps some further variations are possible. Feel free to speculate. Concrete insight would be most appreciated as I like to take money from Peter to fight Paul, and I am eager to optimise my efforts.

[Nehcrum]

I am hoping someone can point me to a relevant thread, or can advise me from personal experience:

I have noted that factions will no longer give you money to attack other factions once you have taken aggressive action against them (the faction you are asking money from, not the one you have promised to attack), or have taken one of their cities by any means. I have fallen ill of factions whom I have not offended in those ways, however, and am uncertain of how exactly the relationship is spoiled.

Predictably, how quickly the relationship sours has nothing to do with whether or not the faction is allied, neutral, or even at war with you.

The relevant factors seem to be at least one of the following:

a. How much you get from the opposing faction, in an absolute sense; i.e., cp faction X is assigned 10,000 units to grant the player faction(s) for attacking other factions for the duration of the game.

3. How many times the faction is asked to contribute financially to your military efforts; i.e., cp faction Y is permitted 13 Diplomacy actions of type x with player faction(s) before refusing to make further donations.

VI. How many turns they have been asked to contribute to one's military campaigns; i.e., cp faction Q can perform diplomacy action z, any number of times, for up to 5 turns before refusing further diplomacy.

Perhaps some further variations are possible. Feel free to speculate. Concrete insight would be most appreciated as I like to take money from Peter to fight Paul, and I am eager to optimise my efforts.

I can't say for sure, since I have never been offered money by the AI to attack anyone.


And the diplomacy AI in Rome:TW is notably horrible, and basically has no connection with the strategic AI for the faction that it is "representing" and as such diplomatic actions are almost completely random and without connection to how the faction acts otherwise.
All I know is that if a faction shares a border with the player, they will concentrate on attacking the player, and making peace and such is just temporary and only lasts until the next army is ready.

The only exception are factions that are hardcoded so that they can't start a war with the players faction, but needs the player to be the aggressor.
Rohan and RK has such a relationship, and is the only one I think.

[Stark1]

Dale and dwarves will have that aswell.

[Aradan]

I am hoping someone can point me to a relevant thread, or can advise me from personal experience:

I have noted that factions will no longer give you money to attack other factions once you have taken aggressive action against them (the faction you are asking money from, not the one you have promised to attack), or have taken one of their cities by any means.

Even if you took the settlement through bribery and it does not share borders with their other regions and you are allied with them?

I have fallen ill of factions whom I have not offended in those ways, however, and am uncertain of how exactly the relationship is spoiled.

Predictably, how quickly the relationship sours has nothing to do with whether or not the faction is allied, neutral, or even at war with you.

The relevant factors seem to be at least one of the following:

a. How much you get from the opposing faction, in an absolute sense; i.e., cp faction X is assigned 10,000 units to grant the player faction(s) for attacking other factions for the duration of the game.

How did you arrive to this?

3. How many times the faction is asked to contribute financially to your military efforts; i.e., cp faction Y is permitted 13 Diplomacy actions of type x with player faction(s) before refusing to make further donations.

VI. How many turns they have been asked to contribute to one's military campaigns; i.e., cp faction Q can perform diplomacy action z, any number of times, for up to 5 turns before refusing further diplomacy.

Those two seem a bit at odds with each other. You mean that you can ask a faction (using your example numbers) 12 times to donate during the same turn, and they will accept, but if you ask once every turn, you can only ask 5 times before they start refusing?

[Wambat]

Even if you took the settlement through bribery and it does not share borders with their other regions and you are allied with them?

How did you arrive to this?

Those two seem a bit at odds with each other. You mean that you can ask a faction (using your example numbers) 12 times to donate during the same turn, and they will accept, but if you ask once every turn, you can only ask 5 times before they start refusing?

I don't remember if bribery caused a problem, but a city taken through defensive action; i.e., the garrison attacks an adjacent army which does not have the city under siege, and loses; will spoil relations, whereas a defensive victory which does not involve the taking of the attacker's city will not.

The three listed possible influences are each independent speculation based on my in-game experience. Any of them, independently, may, or may not, be true. I rather suspect only one of them is true.

Specifics of what I have noticed are that AI factions will give money to attack other factions. Once a battle has been carried out, whether defensive or offensive, victory or defeat, with the faction against whom you have accepted payment, you may accept payment against that faction again. For each faction there is a starting amount which it will give for the promise of an attack upon another faction, and each successive dispensation that round, whether against that same faction, or a different faction, will decrease until the amount reaches zero. Next turn the AI faction will be ready to repeat the process, until, eventually, they wont.

[Wambat]

It seams I may have stumbled upon the (or a) secret of diplomacy. It would seem the amount a faction is willing to give to you to is dependent upon your own account balance: I found that by keeping my balance between 5000 and 10000, by adding more buildings and units to queue, I was able to avoid diminishing returns from this particular diplomatic transaction. By taking advantage of the fact that the AI considers placing a city under siege to be as good as a battle, by continually placing and removing a siege on an enemy city you can collect a (conditionally) unlimited amount of money from the other enemy factions.

This is an extreme bummer as I can no longer pretend that diplomacy is not a bunk way of making money in the game. I wonder if I could field for opinions on to what extent, if any, diplomacy should be used "earn" money in the game? Trading map information, for example, seems to be balanced. If it were not that I love acquiring exotic ancillaries through bribery, I would say: "get rid of diplomats altogether."

[Wambat]

I would seem that diplomacy is by far the most broken part of this game. I think it would be helpful, if diplomacy is to be retained in future mods, that the moders would state what diplomatic transactions they consider legitimate; in other words, what diplomatic transactions were taken into account when balancing the mod. The current mod seems to be balanced for no exchange of moneys between Human and AI factions (though, if otherwise, I would like to know).

I think it would increase enjoyment of the mod if the perimeters for game balance were made explicit, since it cannot controlled outside of the self restraint of the player. Personally, I intend to restart my RK campaign with zero financial transactions with the AI, since I cannot see at what point to cut off such transactions, other than absolutely.

[CountMRVHS]

This is all quite interesting. So you're finding you're able to predictably get the AI to give you money in exchange for attacking other AI factions?

I've never tried that. TBH, I almost never ask the AI for cash. I know that map info and/or trade rights is often a sure thing. But it's rare that I feel like I need the money they would give me.

[Nehcrum]

Generally, due to the horrible diplomacy AI, I tend to turn off diplomats.
Delete all the starting ones and disable building new ones.

The AI tends to only use them as a sort of spies anyways, so they might as well use real ones and not waste money of diplomats (which is only good for leveling up assassins on).

Fact is, sometimes I even do the same with assassin and spies, so the AI can only concentrate on troops.
Does make it more fun IMO.