Making Alliances? Crossbow Full Stacks?

[medvednic]

This sucks.
Right now I'm in a situation that I'm (France) in war with five six factions and in poor alliances with three far away factions Egypt, Byzantium and the HRE that has only 1 region by now (I feel pity for them and that what keeps me from taking it to myself).
The Pope asked me to ceasefire with Spain, but I cant, every time that I send a diplomat to Spain or any other rival faction they refuse to ceasefire or become an ally (same thing for princes marriage), can you tell me how to make them agree to my ceasefire or alliance proposal? give them money?

second question
while fighting against Milan an Venice most of their units are crossbowman and siege equipment (balistas and similar), why? is this a bug? during my war against them they sent and keep as garrison full stacks that consisted only of crossbowman and other weak units like peasants, why? no money? bug? have anyone experienced this phenomenon? playing on hard will help to prevent it?
because it makes battles easy and boring.

btw playing on m\m, timescale of 1.00

[Ambrosius]

the AI purchases units based on cost effectiveness/stats as well as any player. the genoese and pavise crossbowmen are excellent units: free upkeep in garrisons, and otherwise very low upkeep (100, just 10 more than peasants - this should be raised to 150 in the patch). they are devastating ranged troops that can also hold their own in melee -- once the AI assaulted my town with a full stack of crossbowmen and in melee they killed all my spearmen (about 6-7 groups defending a gate, which is rediculous).

anyways, if it isnt modded by CA simply changing the upkeep from 100 to 150 in the text files will reduce the amount of AI crossbowmen and balance them more.

[SPARTAN VI]

I noticed this too. The Milanese spam crossbowmen like mad.. the Venetians, not so much. It's cool though, those crossbowmen have decent melee abilities and excellent armor. Easily overpowering militia in hand-to-hand.

Venetians still seem to favor well rounded armies. I noticed they like to lug around a lot of ballistas and catapults. And the sicilians horde templar knights (if my memory serves me correctly).

[Papal_Knight]

I noticed this too. The Milanese spam crossbowmen like mad.. the Venetians, not so much. It's cool though, those crossbowmen have decent melee abilities and excellent armor. Easily overpowering militia in hand-to-hand.

Venetians still seem to favor well rounded armies. I noticed they like to lug around a lot of ballistas and catapults. And the sicilians horde templar knights (if my memory serves me correctly).

yep, the Milanese in my game are cross-bow-heavy in their deployments as well. they definately are good troops.

[Mihail]

This sucks.
Right now I'm in a situation that I'm (France) in war with five six factions and in poor alliances with three far away factions Egypt, Byzantium and the HRE that has only 1 region by now (I feel pity for them and that what keeps me from taking it to myself).
The Pope asked me to ceasefire with Spain, but I cant, every time that I send a diplomat to Spain or any other rival faction they refuse to ceasefire or become an ally (same thing for princes marriage), can you tell me how to make them agree to my ceasefire or alliance proposal? give them money?

The best thing to do if you want a alliance with a near by faction is to ally early in the game, then constantly give them some money even if it's not much, to keep them in perfect relations.

I learned this late in my first game that I am still playing(the french), I refuse fight the russians so to keep them happy I'v been giving them money, and they've been very good to me, even giving me money! and more often then not they request marriage into my family, the russians now make up about 15-20% of my surrounding factions, and unlike the rest, they have not declared war on me, unlike the others who declared war on me as soon as I got close to their lands.

[Ambrosius]

trying to keep perfect relations with someone is a nightmare.
i just gave hungary an upgraded antioch, and 3 upgraded minor cities around it.
my reputation with them shot up to perfect.

the next turn, when my garrisons were put out of the towns i gave them, i disbanded most of them. i had a couple of units of gold chevron crossbowmen i wanted to keep though, so i simply tried to move them out of their lands back to my cities of jerusalem and acre, and my reputation with them went down to poor instantly. the ungrateful #%@$s, i just gave them 4 cities.

so i gave them map information, a regular tribute, a lump sum of money, etc. my reputation went back up to very good.

3 turns later, i did NOTHING wrong - to anyone - and my reputation with about 6 factions, including hungary, went down to abysmal.

all i was doing was sitting in my towns building upgrades, i crossed noones land, attacked noone, etc.

there is something seriously messed up with the diplomacy and relations in this game. it plummets for no reason often. as for keeping up an alliance, i really fail to see the point: all it does is automatically put you in bad relations with the enemies of your ally, and your ally will backstab you the moment you have a weak army or poorly ddefended town in its range.

i stopped trying to play the diplomacy system. i try to stay in the popes good graces, but thats about it. if a country wants poor relations with me - bring it on.

[Mihail]

Don't walk into their land, unless you have access, and every turn give them money, it's not that hard.