BC diplomacy

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

There are times when I am thrilled enough by a campaign to be considering writing a short BC AAR – but now and then a strange turn of events undoes much of the mod’s charm. So while waiting for the perfectly immersive campaign, and in view of Byzantineboy’s recent poll, I am posing a question, in case there is interest in tweaking a thing or two while I am looking into campaign balance.

Sort of living in virtual reality, Total War games approach time travel. Apart from war and battle related immersion, there are the various characters, where there is a level of engagement in making decisions affecting trade, espionage, dynastical decisions, etc.

One aspect of M2 that is sometimes unsympathetic to immersion is the style of diplomatic interactions. One BC example: A nice short Byzantine campaign was coming to a close when I saw that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was reduced to one settlement and that Ayyubid armies were gathering around it. I could easily squeeze a win ahead of the Ayyubids, who still needed to take out Makuria. But these being the Middle Ages when the survival of the Christian communities in the Holy Land was in every Christian’s ruler’s mind, I thought of extending a helping hand to the KoJ. Bizarrely, they would not accept free money for under 500 coins and would not accept an alliance for 5000-10000 coins up front or more in tribute, so that I could send an army to help them out. We are somewhat accustomed to this M2 feature, but in reality I do not see why anyone would need to send money to an ally, except if he had no men to send. They also rejected my offers to attack the Ayyubids (when I was not asking for anything in return). What was more annoying was their insolent responses and insults. No need to say what that did for immersion.

In another case, in a short Ghazni campaign, the Ayyubids were losing settlement after settlement at an alarming rate until there was an announcement that the KoJ was about to win. I started throwing money at the Ayyubids at the tune of 5-10k per turn, which disappeared into a hole and was not used for anything (presumably due to campaign script monitors). My offers for help in men were refused. They only accepted an alliance after several turns of donating 5-10k and after donating them Aden, which the Ghaznavid marines managed to capture while the Ayyubids were on their last settlement. I had even been playing on easy difficulty.

Whatever the reasons for making diplomacy difficult were, there is some room for thought if on the easy campaign level it is so hard to make diplomatic agreements. If diplomacy has to be so difficult to isolate the human player, we might as well forget diplomats, add a short script, decrease file sizes and save ourselves from unnecessary weirdness. I actually do not think diplomacy needs to be quite so hard, especially on the easier difficulty levels.

What are your views on BC diplomacy?

[Byzantineboy]

Yes, Agreed!
Diplomacy in Total war games really sucks (and not only in MTW2, but in RTW and shogun too)
In RTW and MTW2 vanilla, each time you ally with a faction, you are pretty sure they will attack you...

BC diplomacy need to be renewed... but I even don't know if it is really possible...
In my submod, I tried to influence diplomatic relations with script. But it cannot be enough.
The best would be with real alliances, with allied armies attacking ennemy faction in the back, like it was in reallity. (And ERE used it a lot)
I dont have enough knowledges about diplomacy engine... but improvements would really be appreciated

Diplomacy's role is to add an interesting dimension to the game (for exemple I think that protectorates should be really more usefull and used).
And the best should be that AI would be able to make a coherant diplomacy to back you, or Human player to back AI.

[lodewijk]

yes, totally agreed.

vasalss and protectorates should more usefull and more valuable.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

In writing the AI, the thought of AI factions ever possibly helping the human player had probably not been contemplated by CA. Alliances have been tied in the game engine with faction reputation and global standing, which then have been tied in the campaign AI to the likelihood that the human faction will be attacked by the AI. So if the human player has an alliance (even though it means next to nothing, since allies hardly ever help each other) the AI is being deterred from attacking the human player because of his improved reputation. For the sake of a little bit of realism, some of this can perhaps be dissociated, though clearly we are limited by the engine.