Why do my diplomatic relations always degenerate?

[Albion Crusader]

Something that seems to happen again and again in all my campaigns is that my faction is never very popular with other factions. My relations are always poor or worse. I don't know why this is so. Especially considering that I try my best to behave honourably towards other factions.

I'm strongly suspicious that poor relations may be caused by not conducting diplomacy with other factions. Simply ignoring other factions causes them not to like you. However, I'm not sure this is the case.

Does anyone have a deeper understanding of diplomacy than I do? Any good online guides?

[Brenil]

It's very simple.

There's a code in the faction_standings.txt that defines how factions relate to one another. Various actions have a reaction in terms of relations. However, what you're speaking about is called faction standings decay.

This is directly related to nothing more than the campaign AI difficulty. CA abstactly increased the difficulty of the campaign by making your relations decay over time with other factions no matter what you do. The only way to counter this is by doing things postive for a faction (gifts, attacking their enemy, being their allies, ect), yet you'll have to do this somewhat regularly to keep it from going down, as faction standing difficulty decay is constant throughout the campaign.

Off the top of my head and to the best of my knowledge here's a break down of how decay works per difficulty:

Easy = Over the course of every 50 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to 'Good' (I think), barring outside influences.

Medium = Over the course of every 50 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to "So-so", barring outside influences.

Hard = Over the course of every 50 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to "Very Poor", barring outside influences.

Very Hard = Over the course of 40 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to "Abysmal", barring outside influences.

So for the best results for rational AI, play on medium campaign AI difficulty.

[UhOhIt'sAnArrow]

It's very simple.

There's a code in the faction_standings.txt that defines how factions relate to one another. Various actions have a reaction in terms of relations. However, what you're speaking about is called faction standings decay.

This is directly related to nothing more than the campaign AI difficulty. CA abstactly increased the difficulty of the campaign by making your relations decay over time with other factions no matter what you do. The only way to counter this is by doing things postive for a faction (gifts, attacking their enemy, being their allies, ect), yet you'll have to do this somewhat regularly to keep it from going down, as faction standing difficulty decay is constant throughout the campaign.

Off the top of my head and to the best of my knowledge here's a break down of how decay works per difficulty:

Easy = Over the course of every 50 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to 'Good' (I think), barring outside influences.

Medium = Over the course of every 50 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to "So-so", barring outside influences.

Hard = Over the course of every 50 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to "Very Poor", barring outside influences.

Very Hard = Over the course of 40 turns your relations with each AI faction will attempt to normalize to "Abysmal", barring outside influences.

So for the best results for rational AI, play on medium campaign AI difficulty.

Need to make a more extensive thread about htis topic o.O

[Germanicus75]

Very useful, thanks Brenil +rep

[Albion Crusader]

Yep, very useful Brenil! Thank you.

[5h@\/\/|\| [TNT]]

very good indeed! nice job

[Silent Assassin]

It also depends on what you do in your campaign.

Execute prisonners on the battlefield or when you capture a city(sacking also). Trespassing, betraying your allies, getting caught trying to kill a general with one of your assasins. Attacking an allie of your allies are some of the reason that cause your REP to go down and also like BrenHill said it`s scripted with the difficulty you play

[Beiss]

Relations should constantly improve with any factions you trade with, if nothing else happens. I think.

[nemovadit]

Except that grabbing one's neighbours trading goods along with the territory has been as ancient a custom as mankind emerged from nowhere! There are some papers around that show that the more long range trade you have, the lesser the opportunity cost of a war with a neighbouring country. In other words, if England is making a lot of money from trade with Portugal, and not so much from trade with Scotland...

[Brenil]

There are several variables attached to faction relations. 1.2 fixed the allied decay by making it stronger than the normal difficulty decay, therefore why your relations usually go up instead of down with allies now.

However, the campaign difficulty decay is still quite brutal and most AI mods (okay just mine and UAI that I know of), either change this or remove it altogether. Yet, other variables include the following:

1) Enemy of my enemy - increased relations to factions at war with X nation.
2) Ally of my Ally - increased relations to factions allied with X nation.
3) Enemy of my ally - decreased relations with enemy of allied nation
4) "Big Poppy syndrom" - get too big and other nations will hate you more, attempting to form alliances against you.
5) Is my enemy - nations you're at war with will decay, obviously.
6) Is my ally - nations you're allied with will improve.

That's just an example, I believe there are a few more that I didn't mention (I don't have the file infront of me), yet the key to remember is these all attempt to normalize at a different rate with different turn requirements. So don't take these as individual responses, yet as a mixture.

For example, if you have allies and are at war with anyone (or your allies are at war or have allies) and you're playing on medium difficulty, you're relations with nations you're not at war with will still go down due to a long cascading effect of enemies of allies, allies of allies, ect.

It's all a wicked web of lies and treachery.

[Germanicus75]

Nice work Brenil.

[dunehunter]

Is there any way to change this without using a mod? Like, changing some numbers in the unpacked data files? Also, sorry for going a bit off-topic, but I made some changes to the "corruption through distance" thingies, but they don't appear to show up ig :s it's possible that the cities don't get it anymore, but the symbol for it still shows up for some reason.

[The Walrus]

Is there any way to change this without using a mod? Like, changing some numbers in the unpacked data files? Also, sorry for going a bit off-topic, but I made some changes to the "corruption through distance" thingies, but they don't appear to show up ig :s it's possible that the cities don't get it anymore, but the symbol for it still shows up for some reason.

Well the game to my knowledge(I have modded M2TW that much) runs from the .pack files even if you unpacked. Hm let me find the command to use the modded files(gah sloppy bookmarks )

[5h@\/\/|\| [TNT]]

Well the game to my knowledge(I have modded M2TW that much) runs from the .pack files even if you unpacked. Hm let me find the command to use the modded files(gah sloppy bookmarks )

follow this to tell you how to set up the game to use the unpacked file.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76289

go down to set up io.file_first

then follow directions....GL