How to maintain the immaculate reputation?

[yeungwailei]

Pardon me for digging out my own thread from the tomb after all these years. I am now playing another VH/VH campaign of m2tw vanilla. Again I have conquered the entire map already but this time I have allied with Papal State and have left HRE alive and made it my vassal. Still my reputation dropped from “immaculate” to “very trustworthy” at 68th turn. I wonder how many allies do I need to neutralise the negative effect of global normalisation of reputation under VH difficulty.

[John Doe]

According to the wiki, it would be 0.005 on vh

[Gigantus]

There is a messed up script part in descr_faction_standings that lowers your reputation even if you only occupy a settlement. This is fixed in my Bare Geomod setup which is basically the default campaign with a number of fixes plus kingdoms features like boiling oil.

[FootSoldier]

I've wondered if size of empire and cash in the bank have hidden effects of reputation. I understand the normalizing, but have seen a steady decline in reputation with a faction at peace with all but was steadily stacking up cash ... not to mention the way this degrades the generals.

[Steward Denethor II]

Expanding your Empire seems to make the other factions dislike you, but it should not affect reputation directly.

Money I am confident does nothing. FootSoldier was this your faction? A factions reputation is changed overtime depending on the difficulty.

I was rereading this old thread, and thinking. With the Very Hard penalty, your reputation is normalized by a divisor of 200 to -1, the lowest reputation. Having an Alliance normalizes it to +1 with a 400 divisor.

So, in theory, you would need 2 alliances to keep your reputation steady, and 3 alliances to keep it growing better, assuming you do nothing else for your reputation. If you wanted an eternal good reputation, you'd definitely ally with the Pope once you take all his land. You could do the same with the Mongols/Timiruids once you beat them to a pulp. If the Alliances hold your reputation stays good forever. However, the Mongol/Timiruid family trees might eventually die off, and they are probably more likely to hire mercenaries and attack.

Another more ridiculous thing you could do to have a Perfect Reputation is be a Catholic faction, destroy everyone else other than the Pope. Than every turn attack the Pope, capture him and release him. Build enough priests so there is always a Pope. This method should maintain perfect reputation. It is silly though.

Edit

Pardon me for digging out my own thread from the tomb after all these years. I am now playing another VH/VH campaign of m2tw vanilla. Again I have conquered the entire map already but this time I have allied with Papal State and have left HRE alive and made it my vassal. Still my reputation dropped from “immaculate” to “very trustworthy” at 68th turn. I wonder how many allies do I need to neutralise the negative effect of global normalisation of reputation under VH difficulty.

Interesting that that happened. I would have though it would remain steady. Vassals should count, maybe they don't.

3 should definately be enough. On turn 68 the Mongols should be around, and the Timiruids should be coming before too long.