The Ceasefire/War Merry-Go-Round

[TheSavage]

Playing as the Romans (not sure if it happens with other factions), neighboring factions will often attack. Fine. If my diplomat immediately requests a ceasefire and trade rights, they will often (though not always) agree. In fact, they will frequently pay a significant sum in addition. Then, on the next turn, they attack again. This cycle can repeat for many, many turns, and is obviously ridiculous. So I see two problems:
1) Enemy factions constantly attacking immediately after a ceasefire for no reason
2) Enemy factions often agreeing to ceasefire and paying tribute immediately after attacking

I know that much of diplomacy in RTW is hardcoded, but the problem seems worse in RTR than in some other mods. For instance, I was recently playing RS and this rarely, if ever, occured. (Not that RS diplomacy is perfect, as enemy factions can sometimes be extremely stubborn and unwilling to accept peace when they should.) Meanwhile, I'm playing RTR (Platinum) and it's happening constantly with Carthage, Illyria, the Greeks, etc. So obviously something about diplomacy is different between the two mods.

Anybody know why this happens or what the differences between the two mods might be?

BTW, the problem is frequent on Hard but does seem even worse on VH.

[Brusilov]

I am fairly sure that the diplomacy in RS and RTR games is the same. What version of RTW are you using for your games? (RTW, RTW BI or RTW Alex.)

I've been plating RS with the Alexander executable and the diplomatic ties appear to hold on longer.

The factions still do silly things though.

[We shall fwee...Wode]

I found the most effective way on RTR and all mods is to pay a small tribute say 100 denarii/talents/mnai (or whatever you want to call it) to a neighbour for 100 turns as a gift. So long as you pay this and they accept the gift, you have a 25 year truce. I found this really effective in EB and it makes a realistic game easier to accomplish.

[TheSavage]

I am using BI.

Even if the diplomacy settings can't be modified, enemy factions do not seem to behave this way in RS. So something is different.

[Tiberius Nero]

1) Are you running both RTR and RS on BI? Not much of diplomacy is hardcoded, diplomacy is totally hardcoded; the .exe is one thing affecting it.
2) Are you using the same campaign difficulty settings for both RTR and RS? The harder the camp.diff. the more aggressive the AI.
3) The AI tends to accept peace in the early years of the campaign, later it simply doesn't happen, especially on higher diff. People say the AI accepts peace easier if broke. Did you play both RTR and RS for about the same amount of turns and with the same faction?
4) The strategic AI is affected a lot by the strategic map; it sees stuff as priorities (cities to get e.g.) according to very random things on the map, like the placement of impassable terrain; it might not move into a certain direction and therefore not attack if something is placed in a certain way and usually this happens without the modder's intent (e.g. the Greek army in Crete in EB which doesn't attack the rebel settlement because of pathing issues). As the two mods probably don't share a map, it might be partly due to this.