Really Great mod but diplomacy is way too tough, to the point of stupid...

[Praetorian1]

This mod is probably the best i ever played & was greatly amazed by the skins, units, factions & evrything & i must say THANK YOU to all its developers for the great work however, the only thing is really annoying me is its diplomacy, not because its not easy, cos i like a challenge but sometimes it gets to the point of stupidity.
I know reputaion counts alot in diplomacy but with reliable reputation, other factions are being so tough even when i'm being too generous with them.
In my koj campaign no one is accepting trade rights & sometimes even when i offer some money like 9000 florins & trade rights . I only battled rebels since the start & never clashed with another faction, i freed the rebel prisoners most of the time to raise some chivalry & only demanded ransom twice, cos i was still low on money , yet evryone keeps rejecting my offers even when offering money, but still, when some other faction demands trade rights i agree immediatly.

At one point i got so suspicious that i wanted to test diplomacy, as a test, i used money cheat to raise money & diplomacy trait cheats on my diplomat, so with my diplomat with full influences i went to the ayyubids & offered 2000,000 florins as a gift, what i got is "Keep that up & u will anger the sultan.."

also, no one got bribed so far..

But all the rest is really amazing.

[trollface]

Some factions will refuse you utterly i.e. the ayyubids. The armenians will accept trade rights and an alliance BUT if you take rebel settlements by sack or extermination they will want a bribe/settlement for an alliance. Sacking and extermination lowers your ''likeability''
The abbasids cannot gain trade rights with the seljuks either because it represents historical emnity... you can get an alliance with anyone if you offer a settlement, unless they are your hated rival i.e. the ayyubids in your case. The makurians will also offer trade rights, though that is irrelevant for the most part.

[Praetorian1]

yes, in fact the makurians & armenians did offer me trade rights & i obviously agreed, but trade is to be beneficial for both factions, i don't know why others simply refuse while i try to get a good relationship with them. Just now i offered trade rights & 9000 florins to a faction & it replied that it will accept with a lesser ammount of money hehehehe for example 6000 florins lol..

[Neige]

I guess there's a historical factor to it. You can't expect much from Islamic factions if you're Christian.

[Neige]

But one thing that is very unbalanced is the greediness for money. If you have decent relations to a certain faction, you'll be able to buy almost all their settlements if you have enough money. That's just plain stupid. In my previous campaign I bought most of Turkish lands. My relations to them dropped eventually, but that's not a punishment at all - I own their freaking lands!

I hope we have (or will get) someone to work on diplomacy a little bit.

[Iguanaonastick]

Buying lands is possible in vanilla RTW or MTW too. In the Teutonic Campaign I bought all of the Teutonics Order's cities before they attacked me.

As for diplomacy, as others have pointed out the crucial factor is your reputation. If your faction has a good reputation you can ally with anyone. If you sack cities and murder prisoners and break alliances you won't even be able to get trade-rights as you discovered.

As long as you refrain from sacking rebel settlements at the start diplomacy should be fairly easy in BC, allowing you to maintain peace with most of your neighbours. It actually works better than in most MTW mods.

[Babygod22]

I think BC diplomacy, in term of trade rights, settlements trading and reputation is good enough, like Neige Noire already said, faction's that are historically enemies will less likely to agree to trade right offer.

One thing that bug me about diplomacy is the cost to bribe a general or an army, it's too high, if the army is a full stack or half stack then the price is always past 100,000. If it's 2, 3 units then it cost above 50,000. Who got that kind of money to give them?