Confused!

[FEARLESS]

OK! client states!.....70% support but won't trade. Never been at war. Used to trade but not now. Offererd 20,000 plus for trade but point blank refusal what the hell is going on? me no understand!!!!!

[Butan]

There is so many variables in diplomacy, sometimes things like that happens.

If you share blood, cultural group, and never been at war/disagreed with them and you have plenty of ressources that they could benefit from, it would be very strange that they refuse to trade with you; else it can always be justified by "something" (and that something is hard to point out I concede...).

The opposite problem sometimes happen : factions from over the world ask you for a NAP and offer you 2000 denarii just because, or you can "sell" a trade agreement for lots and lots of money. Sometimes the AI is completely closed and stubborn, sometimes way too open and sheepish. It can be related to CAI leader personality?

[FEARLESS]

Thank you for your answer Butan. I suppose it's just one of those anomalies that not even CA could answer.

[gdwitt]

There are only two personality-settings open to trade from what I can see: "Peace" and "Tension". I am not sure if a faction can change once these are assigned at start.
There are other settings that completely disable trading.

I recall from Shogun that no one would trade with me until I acquired horses to trade. I do not see the same killer resource in this game but it seems that you have a better chance of a Trade agreement once you acquire a unique resource.
I would appreciate if someone can link me to a discussion of the CAI pack file directories.

[FEARLESS]

This is my final say on this annoyance! I'm exporting Furs,olive oil, iron, gold, fish, warhorses, lead and timber. I want a trade agreement with one of my client states who is 41 friendly and just exports copper and glassware. I have offered him a fortune plus canceling all my client states my sister and all her friends but he still sais no!. I have done this with several others and they are not interested even though we are all very friendly and they are client states. This spoils the game as there is no sense in it!!

[Butan]

If gdwitt is right it may be because the AI you are trying to broker deals with is in a "disabled" state?

Sometimes its good to have factions which are stubbornly opposed to you (they make the best enemies), sometimes it feels autistic especially when they are your friends, its true.

[McCarronXLD]

I wonder if it would be possible for there to be a chart of what the different AI personality types are open to if that is the case. Would hate to waste my time trying to make friends with a faction that won't.

[Butan]

Would go a long way in understanding the diplomacy indeed.

But personaly, I somewhat "enjoy" having to viscerally understand the global relationship between each factions, and these past weeks I think I got the rope of it: managed to make those I wanted as friends, friends; those I wanted as enemies, enemies. + some surprises along the road because its very hard to predict everything since there is a loooooot of random AI personalities, a lot of negative/positive factors on every decisions. The intricacy is very strong.
I would not read a chart of the AI personality too much for example, because then it would give access to too much informations on how to "perfect win".

Still, an available guide on how everything works together would be a good idea. If modders had access to such information and wanted to share it it would be a good gesture.

[McCarronXLD]

Care to give some tips on how you flexed your diplomatic muscle?

[Butan]

Mostly using the snowball effect at your own advantage.
The easiest diplomatic factor to manipulate is the "+x treaty with Y" (where Y is either the faction itself, or their friends; and x is a relative relationship modificator). If you use it accordingly, you can create divides where there was peace, and alliances where there was strife; anything else is cake.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The fact that at the beginnig everyone is neutral means that everyone has the same potential to love/hate you and each of everyone.
(notwithstanding cultural aversion and "historical" hate, but the malus/bonus are low, you can easily outweight them with proper care)


The easiest way to win the diplomatic game, is to paradoxically dont take the initiative:

- in the first turns, dont sign anything that isnt crucial to your own existence, let the AI work each other out, stay neutral, anger noone, please noone, discover factions as fast as possible (stay below the radar)
- after a time, analyze the diplomatic network of the factions you have encountered, work out their foes and their friends, work out who you want as friends and who you dont care as foes (plan ahead)
- pick some and dive in


As soon as you start having a diplomatic agreement with someone, it opens him up to further agreements. But the most important thing is that it opens their friends to further agreements.
As soon as you sign your first deal, it has an impact on the network of the faction you signed with, which is the whole world.


A faction that is open to you, will open their friends to you too: the first faction being the "door" to the rest.
Once you have signed every diplomatic agreements you could with the first faction, their friends will have a relationship bonus with you.
At least one of them will want to sign something with you, and this will work toward more and more agreements with the whole group. Good job, you just made everyone in this bubble your pals and will probably have a very stable peace/commerce/alliance with them, if you wish to, and if they dont go full retard on you.

The only downside is their enemies, which will become hostile to you if you dont have enough diplomatic agreements to outweight the hate they feel for the fact you have treaties with their enemies.
Most of the time, except if those "to be" hostile factions are dangerous to you, dont sign anything with them and break anything you had, so that you dont have the "-X treaty with Y" with the guys you made friends with in the first place and endanger the network you created.


In the end you have a cascade of positive bonus to those you made your friends, because they all have multiple "+X treaty with Y" with you, which easily puts you in the 50/100/200+ relationship value.
From there on you can choose to do 2 things :

- use the positive relationship to become even closer, to the point where you will certainly go to war at their side and have even more relationship bonus.
- use the positive relationship to paradoxically try to become friends with neutral or enemies factions to them, where the positive relationship will outweight the negative events this will lead to, this way you can have friends out of one-sided blocks

bonus option:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

if you manage to outweight two blocks in a way that they both like you, despite the fact that they both dont like each other, you can make them both start to like each other until a point where they become friendly, and they will merge progressively in a single block; every combinations are possible.

Of course, since the world is not stable and random events changes everything at every turns, you will have to adapt to some situations, and sometimes you will lose control. Also as much as the "+x treaty with Y" snowball effect can go in your favour, the "-x treaty with Y" will also create situation where you create a block of enemy because you have made friends with someone's enemies, whose friends will also hate you for it.


The first few friends block you will choose are the easiest to manipulate, since you began with a neutral relationship to all.
The longer your campaign, the less control you will have other the diplomacy, because you basically reap what you sow in the beginning.
After a time you will reach a point of no return with most of the nations, and to change this you will either have to completely modify your own network (break deals, go to war against former friends, give large sum of gold) or will have to conquer the nay-sayers and eliminate/vassalize them


Of course, you will sometimes have to change your plans, according to your military or financial situation (expansion and trade are necessary), but you can use the diplomatic situation as your basis for what you should do and what you should not.


I dont know how the exact relationship modification value is chosen: I've had many "at war with" = -1 or "battle support" = +40 or some other strange things. This is hard to predict thus you have to be extra cautious if you want to keep your friends as friends, and your enemies as enemies.
Basically, hover on the diplomatic map a lot, read the tooltips, and use the information as a spearhead for what are your goals : either role-play goals or down to the ground military objectives.

[FEARLESS]

OK! Had to come back with a report. Decided Diplomacy was no more but what the hell kept playing. After 20+ turns all of a sudden diplomacy is back!!. Client states want trade and those previous didn't want to know are now offering money for trade agreements. On my side nothing has changed just hitting next turn button and upgrading units and upgrading buildings not attacking and getting more land just upgrading!. Strange!!! but now enjoying the game.

[Barune]

OK! Had to come back with a report. Decided Diplomacy was no more but what the hell kept playing. After 20+ turns all of a sudden diplomacy is back!!. Client states want trade and those previous didn't want to know are now offering money for trade agreements. On my side nothing has changed just hitting next turn button and upgrading units and upgrading buildings not attacking and getting more land just upgrading!. Strange!!! but now enjoying the game.

Sounds like the word underneath your picture (that describes how other factions see you) was something like "Untrustworthy" If this word is not "Steadfast" Its usually very hard to get a treaty with anyone, even freinds.

This word changes based on Broken treaties/Backstabs and your "Rep" returns over time (AKA hitting end turn a bunch)

^ probably your problem from the beginning.

[luck_ponte]

Sounds like the word underneath your picture (that describes how other factions see you) was something like "Untrustworthy" If this word is not "Steadfast" Its usually very hard to get a treaty with anyone, even freinds.

This word changes based on Broken treaties/Backstabs and your "Rep" returns over time (AKA hitting end turn a bunch)

^ probably your problem from the beginning.

Could also be because of your power balance. The stronger you are in comparison to the people you want to deal with, the more likely they'll accept. So if in those turn-ends you've been expanding/military producing, that could also explain your situation.

[McCarronXLD]

Thanks for the marvelous advice! That should be stickied somewhere. I was also curious how you go about establishing a stable vassal.

Client States, Satrapies, and the Tribal Confederation. Are all of these only achievable through conquoring others? Is it possible to get a faction to agree to these things because they like you?

[Butan]

Client States, Satrapies, and the Confederation. Are all of these only achievable through conquoring others? Is it possible to get a faction to agree to these things because they like you?

You can do that diplomatically but you need everything to be on your side : good relationship/ power balance in your favor/ high trust meter (& common culture/share blood for satrapies/confederation).
But you need to use the dresden diplomacy mod to have those options on more factions else you will lose a lot of cool opportunities.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=186922227

[McCarronXLD]

Thought that mod had been integrated into DeI? :o

[Butan]

I still have the sub-mod from steam workshop on the side of DeI but maybe its useless, didnt read any message saying it was included.

[McCarronXLD]

I still have the sub-mod from steam workshop on the side of DeI but maybe its useless, didnt read any message saying it was included.

I'm able to do all those things without the submod, as Macedon, so I think it is safe to assume that submod isn't needed anymore.

[FEARLESS]

Thanks Barune. shall keep an eye out for my description which I admit haven't been looking at.

[Butan]

Thx mate, I'll try without next campaign!