Tips for playing tall?

[Aslan Ponto]

I'd really like playing tall a campaign, but every single time I am forced to conquer hostile neighbours, or those who become dangerously strong. Given that AI seldom accepts peace after a short war, most of the times it's necessary to conquer totally them to have peace...and then you meet new hostile factions. And the Imperium levels with their hideous corruption and worse effects appear.

On the other hand, in order to have an steady food supply, maximizing research rate there's no alternative but expanding.

It's obvious that in order to win the campaign, whether it's militar, economic or cultural victories, you must expand, but sometimes you can't help expanding too widely, even towards provinces you didn't even want.

I guess a rule of thumb for this would be sending diplomats to every neighbour, but most of the times they declare war anyway, aside from the luck factor which the diplomatic missions have.

Thanks in advance.

[Salty Nobody]

The key to playing tall is trade and allies. Some factions have asinine victory conditions but for most factions it should be possible to win a military victory with less than 15 controled settlements. I've done this with Parthia, I call it my "diplomatic victory." I've never been able to repeat that (never tried either) but I've won a few times since then with around 40 settlements and lots of allies just by playing "normally" for me.

The key to having successful allies is to pick one already strong faction and align your diplomacy to them. Join all their wars and only befriend who they befriend. Nothing greater than trade agreements with factions they dislike. Stick with your ally and whatever friends they choose to make and help them slowly grow into superpowers. Once you are close to winning send your armies off on expeditions to capture whatever victory regions are still out of your control. If you have extra money feed it to your AIs to help them out. It is highly unlikely your alliances will collapse in such a game, since all the factions involved are well interconnected and on mutually friendly terms.

A reverse and far more risky way of doing this is to pick a faction that is reviled, such as the Selucids, and ally with all of their enemies. Continue dragging far flung neutral factions into the war and ally with them too. Send expeditions to capture far off required objective provinces. If you are fast enough and lucky you win the game before your alliances fall apart.

The third option is to expand anyway and ally with whoever you naturally befriend by smashing your own enemies. This leaves you with many scattered weak allies all over the map. May they never meet!

If your faction can client it is also possible to beat down entire hostile alliances into becoming your clients through peace agreements. This causes a messy diplomatic situation with your own allies at war with them though and I don't recommend it unless it is literally one of the last things you do before you win.

[Captain Custard]

The mod that unlocks all diplomacy options helps, it let's all factions liberate defeated factions creating new allies as well as create both client states and satrapies,satrapies cannot declare war on other factions like clients can and factions currently at war with them are forced to make peace or declare war on you as well