What does this mod do?
- In your campaigns, when a war has started, it is too difficult or impossible to persuade AI countries to agree to a peace treaty?
- As your nation expands, does diplomacy become pointless because the AI factions hate you, no matter what you do?
- Did you find Standard campaign difficulty too easy, play on Hard or Very Hard and find that diplomacy becomes meaningless? As you expand, AI countries attack you no matter what diplomatic efforts you have made to maintain peace.
taw researched how diplomacy works. There is a large -30 penalty to diplomatic relations when we take territory. That -30 penalty goes down very slowly at a rate of 1 per turn. taw described this as "the biggest failure of ETW diplomacy". Depending on which version you use, this simple mod either removes that penalty or causes it to decrease at a much higher rate (10 per turn, not 1 per turn). You also have the option of reducing the diplomatic penalty for going to war.
How to install (and uninstall) this mod
Download your preferred file. Unzip it (they were zipped with the free software 7zip). Copy and paste it in your C:/ProgramFiles(x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Empire Total War/data folder. That's it - you do not need to activate the mod using a user.empire_script file.
If you want to uninstall it, just remove the file from your data folder.
Compatibility
This mini-mod is probably not compatible with any AI mod (such as Bran's Empire Campaign AI or PikeStance's Campaign Overhaul for Imperial Splendour) or a mod which includes improved AI (such as Darthmod, Empire Realism, Empire Total Factions or Imperial Destroyer). If you are using an AI mod or a mod which includes improved AI, you probably don't need this mini-mod (the mod you are using will probably already fix the territorial expansion problem.) If anyone tries using this mini-mod with another mod and finds that it does or does not work, please let me know so that I can update this information for other players.
Known and potential issues
When playing a French campaign with the 'reasonable_diplomacy_remove' version of this mini-mod, from about 1756 my campaign was affected by the Ottoman turn bug. (If you do not know what the bug is, here's an explanation: when it happens, the Ottoman AI turn takes longer and longer, until the campaign becomes unplayable. The problem seems to be linked to the Ottoman Empire recruiting lots of tiny armies, especially when the Empire sends those armies across the land bridge near Istanbul). I don't know whether this mini-mod caused the problem - this bug is a known problem with Empire Total War and I could just have been unlucky. As a precaution, if you use this mini-mod (especially if you are using the 'more_reasonable_remove' version of this mini-mod, which has the strongest effect) I suggest sending a sloop to block the land bridge between Istanbul and leave it there. (That should help unless you are at war with the Ottomans - of course, if you are at war with the Ottoman Empire, you can prevent the Ottoman turn bug by capturing their regions.) If you are using this mini-mod, I would appreciate any feedback on whether you experienced the Ottoman turn bug or not. Alternatively (or additionally) you could use a version of the mini-mod which has a less powerful effect, such as the reasonable_diplomacy_reduce or the territorial_expansion_reduce versions.
Credits
Thanks to taw for the excellent research (if you rep anyone, please rep taw, not me), to erasmus777 for instructions on modding and modding tools and daniu for the latest Pack File Manager which was used to edit the entries in the diplomacy_attitudes_tables.
Permissions
If anyone would like to incorporate this into your mod using the information in this mini-mod, please do. If the links stop working, if anyone wants this mod and if I have not posted on this forum for a month, then anyone who has the mod has permission to re-upload it for others to use.
Options
There are four versions of this mod:-
(1) reasonable_diplomacy_reduce: this mod changes the diplomatic penalty for going to war. In vanilla, war gives you an initial diplomatic penalty of -140 which increases over time to -200. With this mod, the initial diplomatic penalty is still -140, but instead of increasing, it decreases by 2 per turn. This mod also changes the territorial expansion penalty. You get a -30 diplomatic penalty for taking a territory. This penalty now reduces by 10 per turn, rather than 1 per turn (as in vanilla).
(2) reasonable diplomacy_remove: this mod changes the diplomatic penalty for going to war, in the same way as version (1) above. This mod also removes the territorial expansion penalty, so there is no -30 diplomatic penalty for taking territory. (This version of the mini-mod has the strongest effect. If you consider using this version, I recommend reading the information above under the heading 'Known and potential issues'.)
(3) territorial_expansion_reduce: this mod changes the territorial expansion penalty. You get a -30 diplomatic penalty for taking a territory. This penalty now reduces by 10 per turn, rather than 1 per turn (as in vanilla). This mod does not affect the diplomatic penalty for going to war.
(4) territorial_expansion_remove: this mod removed the territorial expansion penalty. You do not get a -30 diplomatic penalty for taking a territory. This mod does not affect the diplomatic penalty for going to war.
Download
You can download the mod by selecting the links below. In case those links stop working, you can also download the mod from a mediafire folder.