For Those Wondering About Faction Relations

[Petite Wolf]

For those of you wondering about faction relations - specifically why they're getting worse and worse for no reason - take a look at your campaign and look at the factions that your relations are getting worse with in the Diplomacy tab. Hover over them and see if you have "Trade Rights." If you do, make sure you are actually trading with them, either by bordering them by land or by using sea trade routes. You might very quickly come to notice that factions you've got trade rights with but have no way of trading with seem to be the ones disliking you a lot more.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the reason a faction begins disliking you for seemingly no reason is because you create a trade agreement with them but have no way to trade with them, leading to them growing angry at you for not being able to trade with them.

Just thought I'd post this in case some didn't know. I'm not 100% sure if I'm right, but I'm pretty sure if you're not actually able to trade with a faction it affects your reputation with them negatively if you've got a trade agreement.

[Seleukos_I.]

I know about this effect, and I've seen it happen in other mods as well.
However, in EB II my relations drop with basically anyone around me. No matter if I actually trade with them, have an alliance or jsut trade agreements without any trade going.
I think there is another explanation for this phenomenon.

[Wickedone]

Territorial expansion, attacking a faction who has good relation with another faction(s), sacking and exterminating, cultural differences, being aggressive with agents, disrupting trade etc. There are a lot of causes, it depends on the engine.

[Klierowski]

Sure and it always just drop ? the rep NEVER goes up, so u can't be right Wickedone ...

[Darkan]

From what I know from M2, your reputation may also influence other faction's relations with you. Sacking and extermination usually lowers everyone's opinion of you as well as your reputation worldwide.

[bzhou]

In the M2 engine, and more so on harder difficulties, relations gravitate negatively by default. Not sure if this is changed here.

[Suite]

In the M2 engine, and more so on harder difficulties, relations gravitate negatively by default. Not sure if this is changed here.

This is it. On very hard, the vanilla M2 campaigns cascade into war on all fronts, every time. Player's actions can't influence their opinion well enough to e.g. avoid an upcoming war or secure an alliance, but this is how it was since 2006.

[Kull]

We're working on a mod to address this. Relations shouldn't slowly worsen for no reason.

[Geleco]

I don't think it's the difficulty because on my first campaign as Rome I played on E/E and still got this 'bug'.

[Grimmy]

I don't think it's the difficulty because on my first campaign as Rome I played on E/E and still got this 'bug'.

Iirc, from way back when, when RTW was first released, the general consensus was that it was engine driven, because... "Total War" not "Sorta War".

[Rosbjerg]

I don't think it's the difficulty because on my first campaign as Rome I played on E/E and still got this 'bug'.

I don't know if it's a bug, more so than the diplomatic modifiers are very punishing towards 'bad' actions like using agents. I've played a very isolationist game, where I never used agents and always respected treaties and I was universally loved throughout the game.

[Orphydian]

I suppose this is still current and far away factions get distrustful relatively soon after you establish trade agreements.

Does it worth offering trade rights to factions you cant establish a route with ?

[myarta]

Wow, that's some quality thread necro The single biggest way to keep relations high is gifts of gold. This is partially why the satrapy script for Baktria and Hayasdan under AS exchange gold for relations (except via script, not via diplomacy). But just like trying to butter up the pope in Vanilla M2TW, what you need is a diplomat parked at a prospective ally's city dropping gold on them every turn. As that would get insanely tedious, you can still drop gold every 4 turns instead or only when you get the notice that relations are down below a certain amount. But IIRC each one time gift makes them happier than setting up a 30 turn regular tribute for the same total amount, for some reason.