Has the pendulum swung the other way in regards to diplomacy?

[Red_Barron]

So pre-patches diplomacy was super static from what I experienced. It was pretty hard for me to get anything beyond a non-agression pack. However, I fired up a campaign as Egypt post Patch 4 and found something to be strange. Almost anyone I encountered had a "High" chance to succeed on either a trade agreement, or a non-agression pact, unless they had something more than about -30 relations.

The result? I would regularly be able to extort 500/1000/2000 gold as part of one of those agreements. Then later they would come back to ask for the other treaty (generally a non-agression pact), and I'd get more money out of them. If they refused, I would just reject the offer until they had the gold in their coffers and were ready to give up some coin. It was ridiculous to have barbarian nations way up North constantly asking for non-agression agreements that I didn't care about, and giving up 1000 gold to get it.

While it is nice that the AI is more amiable to alliances and treaties, it is too easy to grab some extra cash from them in the process. Perhaps the math needs to be reworked a bit on that.....

[dturtle1]

I agree to a certain extent, i managed to get trade rights without paying through the nose before patch 4(though it was a challenge and frustrating) and as Athens in my 1st campaign i was getting 2000 denarii base for each trade agreement up to 8000 from Rome. Although it has added much needed consistency it doesn't exactly make the game harder. I am running into more A.I alliances however i guess that is a plus. Also trade rights money runs out sooner or later you are going to lose all your trading partners(unless they're well protected in regards to the geographical position according to you and do not succumb to rebels) and the ones that are left dont like you. I learn't that the hard way with ParthiaI threw my lot in with Seleucids after Parthava, Arabia and another satrapy attacked Persia, opening up an invasion of Parthava. Unfortunately this crumbled under the combined weight of Armenia, Pontus, Egypt and all of Arabia. Despite not actually being at war they were all upset and no one wanted to trade. I mean no one, I was left with Drangiana.( Bactria and the northern hill tribes were already gone ) So pushed into the black sea and got all the steppe tribes all riled up giving me a front from Bosphorous to the Persian Gulf and now all my armies(just before imperium 3) are chasing the remnants of Armenia from Persia/Armenia back through my lands(forced march, magic boat little bastards..) Without any spare army slots i couldnt even whip up a single turn merc army.... One does not simply disband a balanced 20 stack of Cataphracts, Noble horse archers and a mix of horse skirmishers and Parthian horse archers, all Gold vetted at minimum. In the end i had too..... yes, I was sad Choose carefully who you do deals with, their enemies may have long memories, hence all the "no one wants to trade with me", "everyone is at war with me" threads.