Romans and Reputation?

**CloacaMaXima** · July 06, 2012, 05:59 PM

Hi guys, I've got few questions about the reputation and diplomacy...

Been playing for some 30 turns as The Roman Empire and I'm currently at war with Venice, Sicily, Hungary, Genoa, León & Castile (I don't know how, they simply chose to declare a war, didn't blockade a port or anything

) and the Seljuks. NONE of those wars were started by me, they attacked me... still, my reputation is considered "dubious" and furthermore my relations with almost every faction drop all the time.

Also, when I enter negotiations with Venice or Spain, both of them say that their priorities are "peace". However, neither of them won't accept a ceasefire+trade rights with me, not even if I try to give some money to them. Just says "demanding" or "very demanding"

Now I'm wondering is this normal... I tried playing as the Romans before and my neighbors weren't so stubborn then

I'm playing on Hard/Hard on Stainless Steel 6.4 with BGRIV and MSC 6.0 (with two settlement types and two turns per year). I've modifies some brigand spawn values and character action points, but nothing else.

Oh and it's Late Era, forgot to mention that!

And it's Early Era, forgot that.

**PapaRosario** · July 06, 2012, 06:03 PM

Being at war with a faction will drop your reputation slowly every turn. Doesn't matter whether you started the war or not. Being at war with many factions will increase the rate at which your reputation drops.

Originally Posted by CloacaMaXima

Oh and it's Late Era, forgot to mention that!

Originally Posted by CloacaMaXima

And it's Early Era, forgot that.

What?

**Son of Mars** · July 06, 2012, 06:25 PM

Originally Posted by PapaRosario

Being at war with a faction will drop your reputation slowly every turn. Doesn't matter whether you started the war or not. Being at war with many factions will increase the rate at which your reputation drops.

What?

I concur, and who cares just kill them all!

**CloacaMaXima** · July 06, 2012, 06:56 PM

Ah yeah, my bad... I meant Early when I typed Late!

Realised it when I hit the "post reply" and tried to undo it

You really should be able to edit a post =/

But, thanks for the info, wanted just to check that I hadn't messed up anything :laugh: Indeed I'll just kill 'em all (luckily got a pretty good income for that... now gief moar WC members so I can recruit good units!

)

**CloacaMaXima** · July 06, 2012, 06:58 PM

Ah yeah, my bad... I meant Early when I typed Late!

Realised it when I hit the "post reply" and tried to undo it

You really should be able to edit a post =/

But, thanks for the info, wanted just to check that I hadn't messed up anything :laugh: Indeed I'll just kill 'em all (luckily got a pretty good income for that... now gief moar WC members so I can recruit good units!

)

**CloacaMaXima** · July 06, 2012, 07:02 PM

And now a double post...

seems like my internet is lagging

**RedGuard** · July 06, 2012, 07:31 PM

i had the same problem a few threads down. its kinda tough but the only way to have peace as the romans is to kill them all...

**Viperidae** · July 07, 2012, 01:47 AM

Originally Posted by RedGuard

i had the same problem a few threads down. its kinda tough but the only way to have peace as the romans is to kill them all...

I made the Papacy and Venice my vassals and set them up as buffers against further aggression west, and bought an alliance with hungary for Zagreb. Pretty effective, as now I only had to worry about my eastern border.

Try getting a crusade called against you as the fatimids, however... All catholics seem hell-bent on being at war with me unless I pay them 20 k each. My reputation went from trustworthy to very untrustworthy in a few turns after the crusade was over as I had no more prisoners to release. It's a bit broken, to be honest. I'm going to try instigating a war between the pope and some random catholic state, and hope he calls a crusade on that; I've been allied with the pope since turn 20 or so, an alliance that held strong even through the crusade for whatever that's worth. That would give that faction equal reputation and same amount of enemies, which should make them more reasonable when it comes to negotiating.

**Sir Walter** · July 07, 2012, 03:08 AM

Also playing as Byzantines atm, everything's fine except due to a random storm in an inland lake in Anatolia (triggered by the Venetian crusaders hiring a mercenary galley there) loads of my nearby elite soldiers (Varangians, Scholarii, Siphonatores etc) died. Where do I retrain/train them?? There's no option I can see in Constantinople...

**CloacaMaXima** · July 07, 2012, 04:43 AM

You can't recruit them untill the military reform, I think it happens in 1215. Correct me if I'm wrong about the date. You CAN retrain Scholariis, Siphonatores and Spatharious (or whatever their name was...) from Constantinople's Scholae Barracks, but only if the unit still has at least 50% of it's troops alive. It's really really annoying to lose them early on when you can't really replace them

But when the reform happens you also get acces to Hetairoi Mercenary Outpost building line and therefor some pretty good units (Skytkihonks, Latinikons and so on)

**PapaRosario** · July 07, 2012, 05:28 AM

^Actually the max pool is 0.4 before the reforms, so you can only retrain them if you have at least 60%. So yeah, you have to be very very careful with them before the Fourth Lateran Council.

Edit: Oh and that only applies to the Scholae Barracks units, which are the Siphonatores, Scholarii, and Spartharii. The Varangians can't be retrained at all until Heavy Mail, which is 1200 I think.

**CloacaMaXima** · July 07, 2012, 03:15 PM

Really? Thanks for that, didn't know! Now I'm probably too afraid to use them at all...

**Sir Walter** · July 07, 2012, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by CloacaMaXima

Really? Thanks for that, didn't know! Now I'm probably too afraid to use them at all...

I already was, the storm thing almost got me ragequitting

**tudor93** · July 08, 2012, 01:18 AM

Originally Posted by CloacaMaXima

Really? Thanks for that, didn't know! Now I'm probably too afraid to use them at all...

oh, come on !! use them, use them; I always love to rape an entire stack of turks (assuming they don't have too many HA and javelins) with those 2 units of Scholarii

**CloacaMaXima** · July 08, 2012, 04:31 AM

Originally Posted by tudor93

oh, come on !! use them, use them; I always love to rape an entire stack of turks (assuming they don't have too many HA and javelins) with those 2 units of Scholarii

Yeah they are pretty awesome indeed, too bad the Turks have almost all the time Horse Archers around

I also love to burn entire units of infantry down with just few shots from my Siphonatores

**PapaRosario** · July 07, 2012, 08:51 PM

Well if you wanted, it would be very simple to change it so that you could retrain them no matter how depleted they got. Just change the max pool to 0.99. If you'd feel guilty like you were cheating by doing that, you could also lower the replenishment rate to compensate so that it would take a long time to build up the pool to be able to retrain them.