Agnolia Trade Negotiations Always Immediately Fail

[Flanwaw]

Hey,

I've been encountering a strange issue where, no matter what I seem to do, my attempts to begin trade negotiations with Agnolia in chapter 3 always immediately fail despite doing - as far as I can tell - quite a lot to set things up in their favor. (Building the highway, keeping immigration relaxed, keeping neutral on the political stage as they are). I've tried adjusting a few little things with speed-re-runs up to that point just to see if things change (such as budget allocations and even cracking down harder on the protests) but no matter what I do the results are always the same. The reason they give being that there is too much unrest in the country due to all the protest; but the protests and political unrest issue has already been 'solved' in the taskbar as far as I can tell.

Can anyone give a reason as to why this is happening? Or if this is perhaps a bug I am encountering? I'm finding it tough to keep going with the game having chosen a 'path' that I'm kinda being denied the opportunity to follow for reasons that don't seem to logic out.

Thanks!

[TheGodlike]

Had exactly the same issue. However, I did notice that when picking another dialogue option ("Straight to business" and not saying "Can't you control them" or something like this") the negotiations didnt fail straight at the beginning.

[Chris1996]

ive actually managed to get a trade deal both with angolia and the socialist republic down in the south wezelen? i think, idk how i managed it but it was quite interesting

[RobOda]

Originally posted by Chris1996:

ive actually managed to get a trade deal both with angolia and the socialist republic down in the south wezelen? i think, idk how i managed it but it was quite interesting

I had both on the table but turned the Wehlen one down because I didn't fancy going to kill the Bluds.

Out of interest... Were you able to negotiate the Angland one?

I basically accepted it (high steel tariffs, access to farming) because I wasn't sure if the 'no' options would cause Rayne to turn down the deal completely - this wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't auto-save after the choice lol.

The Angland deal was basically a bad deal that way IMO.

[VanAuger]

I managed deals with agnolia, whelen, and lapiz?

[Davincie]

if i tried to negotiate anything with angland it failed, only sticking to defaults helped despite me accepting their immigrants and building roads. in the long run they were a negative for my nation as well.

backed out of wehlen when they asked for help with their genocide, didn't see a way to get a trade deal without doing that

[sresk]

So the first time I hit the conversation I mentioned the protests outside and the negotiations immediatly failed. I used ctrl-alt-dlt to hard stop the game in hopes of save scumming (i know I'm a dirty cheater). On reload I was able to restart right before the negotiation event and was able to succeed even getting lower steel prices and forming an allianace... now lets see if recognizing that stupid island cuases problems....

[slon02]

I don't seem to have that problem - and even managed to get simultaneous trade deals with Agnolia, Wehlen, and Valgsland.

However, to do that I had to accept higher steel prices and agricultural market access for the Agnolia trade, and I'm not convinced that was worth it, since you get a budget hit and some negative economic modifiers in exchange for a not-that-great positive economic modifier.

[Blind Gardener]

Building the highway into Agnolia helps. So does increasing your police budget.

[Flanwaw]

Originally posted by TheGodlike:

Had exactly the same issue. However, I did notice that when picking another dialogue option ("Straight to business" and not saying "Can't you control them" or something like this") the negotiations didnt fail straight at the beginning.

Seems to be the case that picking this dialogue option causes the negotiations to fail /no matter what/. You can pick literally every other choice that is a positive option for trade negotiations with Agnolia (Build the highway, put budget into policing, relaxing immigration) and if you pick that one dialogue option - poof - all up in smoke. This seems a little bit crazy to me that this one seemingly relatively innocuous dialogue option is so heavily weighted to me (unless they are trying to depict the president of Agnolia as an absolute egomaniac). Devs may wanna take a look at that.

[Seva]

Pick the dialogue option Straight to business. Depending on other decisions you can get some different outcomes. The trade is not that favorable and doesn't do a lot to remedy your financial situation.

[TheGodlike]

It can - you can pick something along the line of "this deal doesnt benefit us" and make them give you a more favorable trade deal (lower steel-prices for example) in exchange for you recognizing that the little island they are contesting is theirs.

[stm8022]

Originally posted by Flanwaw:

This seems a little bit crazy to me that this one seemingly relatively innocuous dialogue option is so heavily weighted to me (unless they are trying to depict the president of Agnolia as an absolute egomaniac). Devs may wanna take a look at that.

I think it's more of the case, Agnolia has a long history of what they perceive as Sordland viewing and treating them as a weaker/inferior subject to exploit. And that particular line comes across as very patronizing/unnecessary and absolutely pushing this particular inferiority sensitive spot button (similar with couple more options during the encounter).

[X_kot]

Originally posted by stm8022:

I think it's more of the case, Agnolia has a long history of what they perceive as Sordland viewing and treating them as a weaker/inferior subject to exploit. And that particular line comes across as very patronizing/unnecessary and absolutely pushing this particular inferiority sensitive spot button (similar with couple more options during the encounter).

That makes sense given the lore, and I think that if you choose that response, it would be helpful to add a line to the PM's dialogue to show that the deal is rejected due to the diplomatic error specifically. Originally, I thought this was the result of not putting more funding into police during the budgeting process; I didn't realize it was an auto-fail due to a dialogue choice.

[Cally]

I've only played the game twice, but both times I had no trouble making trade deals and the alliance. And even offered to continue the "unequal" trade if I recognized their island. I think I may have even picked "Can't you control them," but I can't remember. I definitely had immigration relaxed both times, but only the highway once. I gave them the steel sword as a gift.

The only other thing I can think of is: are you playing as a reformer? Are you trying to create a real democracy or only make superficial reforms? Both times I was making deep reforms that Richter loved and vetoing laws in favor of more democracy. There is mention in the text that Agnolia is a democracy and probably wants to trade with you more if you are also a democracy. But that's speculation.