How do you improve diplomatic relations?

[Ryofu]

How do you guys improve your relations with other nations? I find i can allied with a nation, not do anything against them at all and my relations still decline and i can't seem to improve them with diplomacy

[missu]

one way that always works is giving away money.

the pope receives 500 florins each turn till the end of the game. which is a little bit like cheating because you are very unlike to be excommunicated.

the same works with your allies. as france i allied with the hre in the 2nd turn, and nearly 300 turns later we are still friends with a perfect relationship because i pay them 250 florins each turn till the end of the game.

declaring war at another faction as a favor for your ally did never work for me in negotiations, they always said i wasn't trustworthy. declaring war on another countries enemy is working well. i received a perfect relationship with the magyar after i conquered venice, their enemies capital.

giving regions away as a gift works if you are giving back your enemy's home provinces, or provinces which do not create a border with your fine kingdom.

but in my experience gifting territories is dangerous:
i had a perfect relationship with the pope, he called a crusade to cairo, i conquered cairo and decided to get gaza as a backup. a few turns later i lost cairo, but gaza stayed mine after a few glorious battles and the installation of a turkish buffer zone (they are my ally).
twenty or so turns later the pope calls a crusade on jerusalem. well, two turns later it was mine.
money issues forced me to give up my adventure in the middle east, so i gave gaza and jerusalem to the pope. i got my armies out of the territories and on ships before i gave these provinces away.
the result: relations with the pope are close to excommunication. not a single cross. why is that?!

[Siculus]

one way that always works is giving away money.

the pope receives 500 florins each turn till the end of the game. which is a little bit like cheating because you are very unlike to be excommunicated.

the same works with your allies. as france i allied with the hre in the 2nd turn, and nearly 300 turns later we are still friends with a perfect relationship because i pay them 250 florins each turn till the end of the game.

declaring war at another faction as a favor for your ally did never work for me in negotiations, they always said i wasn't trustworthy. declaring war on another countries enemy is working well. i received a perfect relationship with the magyar after i conquered venice, their enemies capital.

giving regions away as a gift works if you are giving back your enemy's home provinces, or provinces which do not create a border with your fine kingdom.

but in my experience gifting territories is dangerous:
i had a perfect relationship with the pope, he called a crusade to cairo, i conquered cairo and decided to get gaza as a backup. a few turns later i lost cairo, but gaza stayed mine after a few glorious battles and the installation of a turkish buffer zone (they are my ally).
twenty or so turns later the pope calls a crusade on jerusalem. well, two turns later it was mine.
money issues forced me to give up my adventure in the middle east, so i gave gaza and jerusalem to the pope. i got my armies out of the territories and on ships before i gave these provinces away.
the result: relations with the pope are close to excommunication. not a single cross. why is that?!

Let me see if I have this straight: You pulled out all of your armies from Palestine (Jerusalem and Gaza) and gave it to the Pope and you cannot figure out why he's upset with you?

Siculus

[Cardinal Roland]

Hah! What a good question! Let us just accept one thing here - diplomacy is about human relations and that is going to be difficult (to nigh on impossible) to accurately reflect in a computer game!

Having said that, the Diplomacy in DLV works far better than in the main game. I keep my Allies sweet with money - but do not go over board, I typically give 100 Florins a time to those factions with which I want to curry favour, no more. Its a little bit like Christmas - its not the amount but the giving that counts.

I did go on a Crusade to some God forsaken land in Africa, just to win good charateristics for my King (small hope that - he still offended everyone and seemed to even upset small children when he approached them!!!) and promptly gave it to the Papacy (obviously after sacking it and tearing down every building worth any money - I thought the Pope would like to defend this outpost, so I took my army off and got something useful with it in Europe instead!!). Crusades seem useless to me - you get little in return, you get some far off outpost full of swarming foreigners all of them trying to cut you up with wickedly crooked blades and ultimately you go bankrupt trying to defend these fly ridden pits - let the Pope think less of me, I'll build a cathedral instead and get around to the Holy Land when I get around to it. The best thing is to impress the Pope later in the game not in the first 5 seconds!

My advise is simple - at the game's start send your Diplomats out and sell Alliances and Trade treaties for all your worth, this will stand you in good stead for most of the game. Thereinafter just bung the odd 100 Florins to those factions that you need to (your neighbours) as for the rest let them go hang by the time they get upset with you hopefully you are so strong you really don't care a fig!

If you are a catholic faction build churches regularly, they are a wise investment and the Pope likes them (double whammy). Otherwise get a big army together and crush your enemies under your iron heel and listen to the lamentation of their women!!

[missu]

Let me see if I have this straight: You pulled out all of your armies from Palestine (Jerusalem and Gaza) and gave it to the Pope and you cannot figure out why he's upset with you?

Siculus

yes, you have understood me.

before i gifted the levante to the pope, i had given tunis to him. the relationship remained perfect-
until i started to get my troops out of his territory. the little distance i travelled over land that belonged to the pope resulted in losing 5 crosses.
so i thought it would be wise to get my troops out of palestine BEFORE i give it to the pope.

[Ryofu]

Always ask for military access before giving a territory away. Actually i find giving a territory a very good way to make an AI faction do whatever you want them to. I found you can Ally with them, get military access that previously 100k florins could not buy, make them attack their ally etc etc.

As for the giving money, i noticed that if I don't ask for anything in return the AI faction tends to refuse. Anyway to get around that? I just think my relations with France after 3 marriage alliances should not still be so-so.

On a side note. How screwed up have you ever made a family tree? I had the AI French faction heir marry his mother's sister because i married off my princess to the original french faction heir at the start of the game

[cordia75]

Having played the Danes, then now the Scots, I found something interesting.

At the start of the game, I went all out with my sole diplomat to seal alliances with as many factions as I could (just offer them trade rights, map info and alliance, they hardly refuse at the start). Soon I think I had every faction as an ally, although actually I only offered trade rights to the English because they are my mortal enemy, but when i was building up my economy, seeing those rather big English armies hovering around in their nearby provinces got me to offer a temporary alliance.

So when I was ready to take on the English (I had already taken all of the North and most of Ireland, except Cashel which repulsed me as well as 2 full English armies), I send in a diplomat to break off the alliance formally (didn't want to spoil my rep too much). Doing this, I swept in my armies and took Nottingham, then York the next turn.

The sweet thing is that 5 factions went to war with the English the turn after I declared war on them. I had a very reliable rep and all these were my allies. Sweet huh

Another thing I learned to reduce cost, albeit a minor one, is to swoop spies in for a quick recon then swoop them back to my own lands, not keeping them in enemy lands over the end turn, thereby not paying the extra florins for upkeep in foreign lands. This is possible cos of the high movement rate

[Premaximum]

I've got some very good relations with the HRE in my current Denmark game, and I haven't had to do much at all. I gave them a marriage alliance towards the beginning of the game (Their princess to my heir), and then just left them alone for about thirty turns. They remained amiable with me the entire time. Then they got excommunicated for attacking France. I checked quickly to see what age the Pope was (60, he was about to die) and decided to go ahead and help him out in his war as opposed to following the Pope's orders and canceling the alliance.

A declaration telling him I would help him in war, and then marching across France's settlement got me up to Very Good Relations. Taking Paris got me to Perfect. *shrugs*

[Premaximum]

There's an option to the left of "Offer" in a little circle that allows you to simply "Gift" florins to a faction. This will give them to the faction with no strings attached. I've never had it declined.