Are we suppose to be hated?

[Kawee]

I just installed 6.2, and began playing Venice VH/M. 20 turns in, I never attacked anyone except rebels, but I'm already at war with HRE, Genoa, Sicily, Byzantine, Hungary, and even the Pope! I'm excommunicated. Since turn one nobody wanted to be my ally. At the same time alliance blocks formed up everywhere. I feel so left out.

Just want to ask if this is normal? Are we, as the human player, suppose to be isolated and lone? Or is it just because I'm playing Venice?

[meese]

In my experience that's pretty typical for a Venice campaign As Venice you really have to be pro-active and make the first move unless you plan to fight defensively for a very long time.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Ahhhemmmmm...ya do have the setting jacked thru the roof, ya know... Diplomacy's gonna be a bugger. Just carry an ATM around with you
where ever you go....

[Kawee]

Oh! is that why everyone hates me? It's because I'm playing at VH?And here I thought they just didn't like Venice

If I lower it to Hard, how much less challenging will it be? I'm already dealing with the Campaign AI quite easily. The only problem I have is everyone hates me.

[DeMolay]

That's because of the level of difficulty . The answer is simple , give 700 florins from time to time to the factions you want to befriend and they will start having normal relations with you (or better , help them against their foes or capture a city from their ennemy, sack it then gift it to them ) .

With Venice , it's particular because HRE , Hungary are quite aggressive and Genoa, Sicily will look at your trade/military/naval success with envy (also, taking or buying Bologna from HRE is almost necessary IMO , whether your "turtle" or try to complete the unrealistic 70 region objective , because it helps your econmical start-up greatly at the start or simply to have a continous land territory with Ancona , thus it's important you don't get to fight more than 2 factons at a time )

So make sure you get an early alliance with the Pope , that's all you need basically (but it makes the game too easy as apart from HRE who have bad relations with papacy more often than nt , other catholic factions will not fight a long war against you without being excomm'ed ) although in my last Venice campaign , i was only allied with Sicilians ( after i took Bari from them though , was crucial to be the complete master of the adriatic )

[meese]

Heheh..I vassaled the pope within 50 turns..

[Mr. Tornado]

INB4 CRUSADE.

[Angrychris]

same thing happens on h/h and also with any faction next to another.

[Kawee]

So after trying other factions, I have drawn the conclusion that at VH, the human player will simply struggle to form an alliance with anyone. As England, the only ally I got is Aragon by marrying my heir to their Princess. Everyone else refuse to even if I offer them loads of money. I guess I'll just have to go Total War style. It just makes it hard to turtle that's all.

[Tommy7]

Playing vh/vh as France, during turn one I married a princess to HRE to secure an alliance before the inevitable war with England. Then I secured alliances and trade rights with Aragon, castille and genoa since then about 12 factions have come to me asking for trade rights/alliance I'm thinking because my rep went up due to getting four alliances/trade rights before turn 10. It looks like if you form alliances quickly the better your reputation

[Kawee]

That's the thing, if you get alliances, you get better rep. But I can't get alliances with anyone! How did you pull it off? They refuse me even when the offer is "very generous."

P.S. Playing 6.2

[JorisofHolland]

You can get rep by occuping settlements and releasing prisonners. Reputation goes down when you sack, exterminate or execute, and by being at war and breaking alliances, of course.

[Loose Cannon]

You have to be quick to make alliances in 6.2 Rc4 and then you have to work to maintain them It's slightly easier with RR/Rc. But if they turn you down at "very generous" guess who's getting ready to attack you

[Mr. Tornado]

You have to be quick to make alliances in 6.2 Rc4 and then you have to work to maintain them It's slightly easier with RR/Rc. But if they turn you down at "very generous" guess who's getting ready to attack you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8YsE...eature=related ?

[Petar]

Venice is a pain... I've tried the same. But in the 1450 campaign even on medium difficulty and having 4 diplomats making gifts every 2 turns, I ended up in a war against the Genoese, turks and the Roman Empire. Had about half a dozen full stacks of enemy armies besieging my cities.. I have no idea how it's possible not just to make alliances but simply to cease the war with the turks in order to be able to assemble a decent army...
Looks like the diplomacy is even buggier than the wall unit pathfinding... :-/

[Ichon]

Venice is interesting... if I want to play diplomacy I usually do H-VH but sometimes you can do diplomacy on VH it just takes alot more work. I only played Venice once because I like Genoa/Sicily much more but I found consolidating your power base makes it much easier. I sold off everything but Venice after recruiting as much as possible and moved all armies to focus on expanding inside Italy. Not only is Italy rich but it is easy to defend and taking the hit in relations with Pope early is easy to recover from once you get Italy. Just defend in north Italy and fight Romans, Moors, Fatimids etc and you probably don't even have to waste money buying Pope off unless you want Rome too.

[JorisofHolland]

I seriously have no idea why you guys have so much trouble establishing alliances. Even when I played 6.2 (yes, on VH/VH (as always)) I had no problems. Only a few times when they were getting ready for war I could not ally, but in that case I "intimidated" the AI and they didn't attack (I payed them to attack somebody else)

[Ichon]

I seriously have no idea why you guys have so much trouble establishing alliances. Even when I played 6.2 (yes, on VH/VH (as always)) I had no problems. Only a few times when they were getting ready for war I could not ally, but in that case I "intimidated" the AI and they didn't attack (I payed them to attack somebody else)

How do you pay them to attack someone else? I've tried that when I had over 100,000 saved and with almost perfect diplomat but could not get a single faction to agree. I have much better luck simply gifting a settlement or two on the border of the factions I want to go to war and leaving strong armies on my border for a few turns... eventually the AI decides it can't win vs my armies and goes looking to connect its territories. Unless it is much easier to do with natural enemies and early game? IE- pay Turks to attack Romans before either is a larger Empire? I've always tried in late game when there are only a few blobs left.

[DeliCiousTZM]

VH/VH The Romans Vs Scillity Genoa venice hungary seljuk kiev cuman fatmid and ofc the scottish came with a boat and docked me. Hardest game i ever played got attacked by at least 3 stacks every turn at some point. took me 60 turns to get myself out of that mess

[RootsKW]

This is why I like 6.1 better than 6.2

6.2 seems like a step backwards in terms of diplomatic AI, because they pretty much hate you no matter what.