How to not have everyone want to kill you

**takilla** · February 08, 2010, 02:35 PM

One of the most annoying things to me when I first started playing was having several factions attack me at once and force me to fight defensively and have my trade go down the toilet. I've read many of the guides here and many posts but I don't think I've ever seen one on this topic. Therefore, I present to you:

The TE Treatise (the author is aware that this is not really a Treatise)

What it's about

I'm sure many of you already know that there is a penalty to relations with other factions called "territorial expansion" (TE). In general: you don't want to fight the whole world at once. Obviously, one needs to use diplomacy (in part) to prevent this from occurring. But there is one thing that helps even more. What I've discovered after observing this for several hours in several different situations is that this is the number 1 thing that will make factions want to kill you, and unless you're an Uber take over the whole world even if they all fight me at once, type guy. You want to minimize it.

How TE gets bad

1. You go to war and take some land.
2. You take some more land.
3. You do it quickly. Why not take as much as you can really fast right? It's called blitzkrieg ... not snailkrieg.
4. All of a sudden you have 5 factions wanting you dead.

Simply put: the faster you take land ... the more your TE penalty goes up. If it goes up enough: everyone will want to kill you. There are several things that effect it that I've observed to some degree. Note: these are not "tested/verified/proven." But I have seen them to some degree and they do make "logical" sense. Not that everything in E-TW does ... but:

How it works

As far as the faction you are attacking, TE goes up if:

you take land from a faction: their TE goes up a lot (DER really!?)
you take an "important" region ... goes up more
you've taken other regions (that they care about) recently ... this is key ... it will really go up quick

As far as other factions (yes! Other factions that don't even own the region you attacked get TE too!) TE goes up if:

you take regions near/adjacent to their region
you take an "important" region
you take land from their allies
you've taken other regions (that they care about) recently
you take regions that are in a theater that they have regions in

How to deal with it

The number one thing by far that helps you deal with TE is simply paying attention to it and making sure you don't move too far: too fast. You can do that by checking the diplomacy screen for the major factions immediately after you take a region. If the factions you don't want to come down on your head go from a TE of 15 to 30 in one turn ... it's time to slow up and start sending boxes of chocolates and such to your (former) friends. IE: don't take regions that will trigger more/bigger TE penalties for them for awhile.

Now, it can take a loooong time for the TE to go away (and yes, it does go away over time). So you can't really win the game if you sit around and wait for it. However, you can arrange things to a large degree so that a strategy of divide and conquer is doable. As I'm sure anyone who knows anything about war will tell you: and as we've seen in many martial arts movies as the nameless henchmen attempt to fight our hero one at a time ignoring the fact that if they just all jump on the guy he'll suffocate - it's better to fight and defeat one enemy at a time than fight everyone at once.

Quick example

Say your trying to be friends with France and take out Spain. You attack Spain in the Americas and take a few regions. France happens to have regions in the Americas too so their TE goes up to 60 ... you took the regions pretty fast and one was right next to a French region. France doesn't have any regions in India and their closest region to South America is very far away from it. So: you do the following:

Gift France a technology, military access, a few gold (you already have a trade agreement)
Make peace with Spain for now (they'll attack you later and get what's coming to them)
Send an army to India to start working there (will not generate TE with anyone in Europe IE France as they have no region there)
Wait 5 years or so: rinse and repeat
When you're done with Spain: go after France and take them out too

**Jayzilla** · February 09, 2010, 02:28 PM

Usually what I do is trade agreement + ally with 2-3 factions early and get the snowball trade bonuses coming in, and then pretty much war-dec everyone else. C:

**The_Valiant** · February 09, 2010, 02:49 PM

Marathas have it easiest, they really only have to worry about the Mughals. And even then not much. You just steamroll them.

But yeah as Europeans make some trade and take out the Marathas while their weak. Then conquer most of India. After that, just take your funds from India and do whatever you want.

**takilla** · February 09, 2010, 03:42 PM

Good points. I do think the conquer India route is a very good strat ... maybe too good really.

**Final Frontier** · February 10, 2010, 10:31 PM

It wasn't the jewel in the crown for no reason.

**lemming3k** · February 11, 2010, 06:53 AM

Not that I disagree with what's been said, but in my British campaign I was still hated by everyone(mostly thanks to TE penalty) - even though I left europe entirely alone.
The only provinces I took were in India and the Americas, but I ended up at war with everyone, including my allies - Austria, Sweden, Prussia, Russia, Portugal, Ottomans, Spain, France, All natives(ok those last 3 make sense but still). Eventually I wanted to give up on it.

**The_Valiant** · February 12, 2010, 07:06 PM

Originally Posted by lemming3k

Not that I disagree with what's been said, but in my British campaign I was still hated by everyone(mostly thanks to TE penalty) - even though I left europe entirely alone.
The only provinces I took were in India and the Americas, but I ended up at war with everyone, including my allies - Austria, Sweden, Prussia, Russia, Portugal, Ottomans, Spain, France, All natives(ok those last 3 make sense but still). Eventually I wanted to give up on it.

Well, you get a territorial penalty if you conquer a region in theater that another faction is in. For example, the Spainards, French, Dutch, and Natives would get mad if you conquer parts of the Americas. The Portugese and Dutch would get mad if you conquer parts of India.

I guess its kind of like Rome:TW, once you conquer enough, the other factions hate you. Then you spill their blood. It's bound to happen!

**lemming3k** · February 13, 2010, 07:07 AM

Originally Posted by The_Valiant

Well, you get a territorial penalty if you conquer a region in theater that another faction is in. For example, the Spainards, French, Dutch, and Natives would get mad if you conquer parts of the Americas. The Portugese and Dutch would get mad if you conquer parts of India.

I guess its kind of like Rome:TW, once you conquer enough, the other factions hate you. Then you spill their blood. It's bound to happen!

But the other nations? Prussia, Sweden? And I wiped the Dutch out of those theatres pretty early on, so they shouldn't be too mad at me but they just won't let it go! The portugese were my allies for a long time, and they'd been wiped out of indian by the marathra before I took ceylon. I'll have to fire up the game again and see what the TE is with nations that shouldn't have any according to this. Personally I think TE just gets bumped up no matter what or where you take provinces.
I'm still kicking ass, but I'd just prefer having a game of alliances and being able to use the diplomacy to some degree. At the moment it kinda seems like diplomacy doesn't really help anything as the downward penalties are far higher than anything that brings it back up.

**The_Valiant** · February 13, 2010, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by lemming3k

But the other nations? Prussia, Sweden? And I wiped the Dutch out of those theatres pretty early on, so they shouldn't be too mad at me but they just won't let it go! The portugese were my allies for a long time, and they'd been wiped out of indian by the marathra before I took ceylon. I'll have to fire up the game again and see what the TE is with nations that shouldn't have any according to this. Personally I think TE just gets bumped up no matter what or where you take provinces.
I'm still kicking ass, but I'd just prefer having a game of alliances and being able to use the diplomacy to some degree. At the moment it kinda seems like diplomacy doesn't really help anything as the downward penalties are far higher than anything that brings it back up.

On the Dutch, destroy the faction in Europe first. Then their overseas colonis resort to native rebels, which aren't very strong. Easy to kill.

But this has been a major complaint before. Ever since 1.5 came out the diplomacy has been crap. I would like one more patch that only fixes diplomacy. Everything else seems small and trivial.

**Maximus Lazero** · February 12, 2010, 09:36 PM

Aye, I've come to notice that all of this is one of the factors that tend to come together against me around the beginning of the second third of the game. My initial war(s) is/are coming to a close, when suddenly another faction (for no reason at all) declares war on me. Usually it's a faction that's attacking a poorly defended area. I have to finish them off, and just as I'm about to do so another faction joins in.
I have a feeling that sometime around this point in the game, ETW is deliberately having nations fight me just for the sake of keeping me off balance. The result is that I have to slow down considerable, or I run out of troops/money to continue the campaign.