War. War never ends.

[Jamey]

I'm in the midst of an Hayasdan game and have simply hit a brick wall with the diplomacy. I hit a similar brick wall with my Rome campaign, which was how I started getting back into DEI. I thought that I understood diplomacy better after reading some guides (particularly in that I have maintained my Steadfast reputation other than short time periods after taking actions that impact it).

However, I cannot end my current war. I'm playing the Steam workshop version of the mod, in case that is relevant.

I control Hayasdan, Kavkos, Bosporus, and Sarmatia (as well as Samosata, Trapezos, and Siracena). To conquer Sarmatia, I had to declare war on the Apulii. Their alliies are the Getae and Lugii, whom they called in.

After I crushed an Apulii army and took Olba, the Apulii were willing to accept peace for nothing. However, no matter what I do, I cannot get peace from the Getae and Lugii. I tried offering nearly 30k to pay for a peace treaty, but with that offer both stay on Low likelihood of success and refuse to accept it. As neither of them has a land border with me or access to ships, there is no reason for them to think they can actually prosecute this war in any way. For that matter, given how the logistics system works, I don't think I can send troops into their land to force peace.

This has gone from annoying to critical because I realized that Rome has entered into agreements with them, so now my relationship with Rome sucks (which I think implies that Rome has Non-Aggression Pacts with both of them as neither barbarian faction has ports for trade and Rome has no alliances, defensive or otherwise). At the point I'm at, every time I hit "end turn" the RNG rolls and either Rome joins the war against me (canceling trade and I think non-aggression with me as well as causing them to pull troops off their war with Carthage to put them on ships for me to sink) or Apulii rejoins the war they peaced out of a few turns ago (or both!).

This seems to just be an endless cycle of war. Must I pillage or conquer Germany and Dacia to get peace with a couple of small barbarian factions? Or am I missing something? Also, is it possible to end a war with multiple factions? Or will they constantly call their allies back into the war?

My strategic plan was to complete conquering Sarmatia (which I have), make peace (which I cannot), and then finish conquering Scythia (or at least Samandar) so that I would have short borders up north and could focus on the impending war with Seleucia and Galatia (they just allied and are at war with my defensive ally, Pontus, which remains a one province state).

I recognize that this is probably just brain dead Total War diplomacy. I'm hoping that someone has a suggestion that can help me end this war, as I find the situation rather preposterous.

[meerkatology]

if u want to pacify a faction that you don't want to conquer their area in, you can liberate and form border with ur liberated ally, they wont be able to attack you with ur libberated ally in between and the war is effectively over despite being at war until they declare war on ur ally + kill them, if they do just rinse / repeat.

[KAM 2150]

Also the more wars you have, the weaker you appear to the AI so nobody will want peace and more random factions will join. That is why wars need to be started with care and preparation.

[Jin-]

I recognize that this is probably just brain dead Total War diplomacy. I'm hoping that someone has a suggestion that can help me end this war, as I find the situation rather preposterous.

This, it belongs to the same category where people wont trade with you even with + 100 relationship and if they trade, they break it next turn and declare war

[Iridium31]

Are there any factions either the Getae or Lugii would suffer a relation hit with from accepting peace? To throw out an example, you said Rome hates you now because they established some type of agreement with the Getae and Lugii, whom you're in a war with at the moment. If Rome hates you the Getae and Lugii might take a diplomatic hit with Rome if they decide to accept peace. If they border Rome this could be problematic for them. The Seleucids and Galations fit the same line of thinking if the Getae and Lugii are on good terms with them. See where this is going?

This is the type of stuff you look for with diplomacy. The domino type effects that would occur if diplomatic action A, B or C were to happen.

It's entirely anecdotal but I believe much of the diplomatic behavior is randomly generated at the game start. In some games getting trade is like pulling teeth, AI factions frequently declare war out of the blue, etc. In others you can build a fire and sit around it singing kumbaya with all of your neighbors relatively easily. Perhaps it's just all of the variables adding up a specific way. Sometimes it feels like there is more to it than that, however.

[Jamey]

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

I rolled back my game a bit and didn't start this war because I couldn't find any way to break up this hugbox. The three barbarian tribes and Rome had a common enemy (another tribe between them).

They probably didn't want to make peace with me because our war made Rome happier, but it still is absolutely bizarre from my standpoint. This is especially true with how opaque the diplomacy UI is.

[drillmaster]

Are your enemies big? How much land do they have? How many armies? Did you recently defeat them? Whats tour diplomatic standing with them? -100? -400? Where are your armies? All these affect peace options.

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[Dumanthis]

In Attila's Age of Charlemagne there is neat feature called "War weariness" which does what it sounds like: the AI factions are more prone to sue for peace whenever the war status is getting longer and longer. Wonder If such a thing could be done in Rome II Really annoys me though since Rome II and Attila should have been the SAME game.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Really annoys me though since Rome II and Attila should have been the SAME game.

That's actually one of my biggest complaints.

[Ichon]

The normal thing for TW is that AI will not accept peace until they are almost defeated, or they are very far away and have some other wars going on. However if they get into a friendship block their neighbors will avoid war with them leaving their war with you the only thing going on and also drawing their friends on down the chain to dislike your faction and whoever you are friends with.

This isn't terrible most of the time but really noticeable if you are late to the making friends game- fewer factions will want to be friendly and more DoWs will occur making your faction seem even weaker, etc. Really the safest route is always to make as many armies as you can afford and avoid diplomatic relations unless you can make a solid buffer client state or there is only 1 faction on some border with their current enemies facing a direction you don't plan to expand towards for awhile. Even then if your friend/client wins their war they can drag you into an unwanted war with their new neighbors but that usually takes quite a few turns to happen and you probably can afford new armies to deal with it by then.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

The normal thing for TW is that AI will not accept peace until they are almost defeated, or they are very far away and have some other wars going on. However if they get into a friendship block their neighbors will avoid war with them leaving their war with you the only thing going on and also drawing their friends on down the chain to dislike your faction and whoever you are friends with.

This isn't terrible most of the time but really noticeable if you are late to the making friends game- fewer factions will want to be friendly and more DoWs will occur making your faction seem even weaker, etc. Really the safest route is always to make as many armies as you can afford and avoid diplomatic relations unless you can make a solid buffer client state or there is only 1 faction on some border with their current enemies facing a direction you don't plan to expand towards for awhile. Even then if your friend/client wins their war they can drag you into an unwanted war with their new neighbors but that usually takes quite a few turns to happen and you probably can afford new armies to deal with it by then.

Some solid points there.
I could also add that treaties with distant factions and even trade agreements, will probably hurt you more than you think.

[Ichon]

Some solid points there.
I could also add that treaties with distant factions and even trade agreements, will probably hurt you more than you think.

If your faction has cultural aversion penalties... avoiding trade with all but close neighbours is usually best as it will simply provoke random DoW and make diplomacy much more difficult at least until your faction relative power is above most other factions.

If your faction doesn't have diplomatic penalties and if you take the skills offering minor diplomatic boost and send your opposition political party characters on diplomatic missions you can get trade from quite far away safely and it really expands your diplomatic options since it tends to bring in lots of friends. Some of your friends will lose their wars but so long as you only did trade pacts the winners rarely will hate you enough not to accept trade pact turning them friendly after some time has passed.

Honestly simply playing with a faction that has cultural aversion penalties is like bumping up the difficulty level 1 or even 2 bumps in the first 30 turns. If you get a handle on it not much different later in the campaign since expansion will bring same penalties to every faction eventually but trying to deal with multiple wars win DEI with the slower replenishment is much harder than in the base game.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

If your faction has cultural aversion penalties... avoiding trade with all but close neighbours is usually best as it will simply provoke random DoW and make diplomacy much more difficult at least until your faction relative power is above most other factions.

If your faction doesn't have diplomatic penalties and if you take the skills offering minor diplomatic boost and send your opposition political party characters on diplomatic missions you can get trade from quite far away safely and it really expands your diplomatic options since it tends to bring in lots of friends. Some of your friends will lose their wars but so long as you only did trade pacts the winners rarely will hate you enough not to accept trade pact turning them friendly after some time has passed.

Honestly simply playing with a faction that has cultural aversion penalties is like bumping up the difficulty level 1 or even 2 bumps in the first 30 turns. If you get a handle on it not much different later in the campaign since expansion will bring same penalties to every faction eventually but trying to deal with multiple wars win DEI with the slower replenishment is much harder than in the base game.

Sure. Couldn't agree more.
The thing is most players aren't used to Diplo in Total War series, as Diplomacy is quite broken. We could surely gain a few things by paying attention from the early stages of the game though.