Why is diplomacy in every total war game such garbage -.-

[rakkhot]

I had this vasal from pretty much the beginning, I made every other clan my enemy just because I wouldn't abandon my vasal wich got attacked by everybody and now they attack me too. Is there any total war game where the factions make decisions based on logic?

[Elitewrecker PT]

Nothing survives Realm Divide.

[Hat8]

Originally posted by rakkhot:

I had this vasal from pretty much the beginning, I made every other clan my enemy just because I wouldn't abandon my vasal wich got attacked by everybody and now they attack me too. Is there any total war game where the factions make decisions based on logic?

Everybody betrays you with Realm Divide. Loyal allies simply last longer before the betrayal.

You can create allies after Realm Divide if you want loyal allies.

[rakkhot]

Yea, I understand that it's a game mechanic, that's why I'm asking, is there any total war game where the factions make diplomatic decisions based on logic and not some convoluted game mechanic?

[Hat8]

Originally posted by rakkhot:

Yea, I understand that it's a game mechanic, that's why I'm asking, is there any total war game where the factions make diplomatic decisions based on logic and not some convoluted game mechanic?

The diplomatic AI for all of the games is bad but they have good work arounds.

In Shogun 2 everybody is supposed to betray you and that makes sense for the period.

In Atilla the AI behaves based on its current leader.

[easytarget]

You might want to read the title of the game series again because I"m thinking you may have missed an important point. It's not called Total Diplomacy, it's called Total War.

And Realm Divide is the game god's way of telling you yes little clan leader, everyone on the island is in fact aware you are actively trying to make yourself Shogun, and not surprisingly all of them have decided they'd really rather you didn't become Shogun and declare on you.

[Akechi]

Originally posted by easytarget:

You might want to read the title of the game series again because I"m thinking you may have missed an important point. It's not called Total Diplomacy, it's called Total War.

And Realm Divide is the game god's way of telling you yes little clan leader, everyone on the island is in fact aware you are actively trying to make yourself Shogun, and not surprisingly all of them have decided they'd really rather you didn't become Shogun and declare on you.

A fine clear way to describe Total war: shogun 2

[rakkhot]

Originally posted by easytarget:

You might want to read the title of the game series again because I"m thinking you may have missed an important point. It's not called Total Diplomacy, it's called Total War.

And Realm Divide is the game god's way of telling you yes little clan leader, everyone on the island is in fact aware you are actively trying to make yourself Shogun, and not surprisingly all of them have decided they'd really rather you didn't become Shogun and declare on you.

I was already at war with pretty much everybody before I took kyoto, that's not my gripe, I could even life with the fact that strong allies would turn their blade against me.

My problem is that it doesn't make any logical sense for my weak vasal wich only still exists because I pretty much am already fighting total war against all other clans to turn it's blade against the only shield that protects them from destruction.

It doesn't make any logical sense that weak clans whom are barely surviving are going to fight against one of the strongest clans wich doesn't attack them or possibly even defends them against other strong clans.

[rakkhot]

But as I said, the idea of my post was more to see if someone knew of a total war game where the diplomacy options mean more than just a paint job. Thanks for all the answers.

It wasn't my intention to throw shade your enjoyment of the game, it's just something that annoys me in the Total War franchise.

[Elitewrecker PT]

I haven't played Three Kingdoms but people say it's the one with the deepest diplomacy at the moment.

[Hat8]

Originally posted by rakkhot:

But as I said, the idea of my post was more to see if someone knew of a total war game where the diplomacy options mean more than just a paint job. Thanks for all the answers.

It wasn't my intention to throw shade your enjoyment of the game, it's just something that annoys me in the Total War franchise.

What do you mean by "good diplomacy" anyway? Do you want to never be betrayed? Do you want an aggressive ally that will challenge you?

[Hat8]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

I haven't played Three Kingdoms but people say it's the one with the deepest diplomacy at the moment.

It is horribly broken and easy to exploit.

[rakkhot]

Originally posted by 786543:

Originally posted by rakkhot:

But as I said, the idea of my post was more to see if someone knew of a total war game where the diplomacy options mean more than just a paint job. Thanks for all the answers.

It wasn't my intention to throw shade your enjoyment of the game, it's just something that annoys me in the Total War franchise.

What do you mean by "good diplomacy" anyway? Do you want to never be betrayed? Do you want an aggressive ally that will challenge you?

I would like decisions that make sense.

For example: that the other strong clans don't want you to be shogun even if you're allied with them, that can make sense, is still a little far fetched that litereally everybody has somethbing against that but it could work.
That a clan wich is struggeling to survive and needs your help because it gets attacked by pretty much everybody would even spend a thought on the struggle for the shogun title doesn't make sense.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Attila and Thrones of Brittiania have pretty nice diplomacy.

In contrast to Shogun 2, the attitudes of the factions take greater stock of past interactions, and there are more modifiers. And as 786543 pointed out, faction attitudes are shaped by the leader's temperament, not just hard coded by faction. Another thing is you have cultural influences, which is absent from Shogun 2 because everyone has the same culture. Vassals tend to be much easier to manage in Attila and Thrones as a result of all this.

That said, I agree with Easy Target that, really, having a more tame diplomacy would just result in no challenge to the player whatsoever: you would just stroll your way to victory.

It's an RTS game, at the end of day: it's about base building, unit production, and eliminating all competing factions from the board, just like the first such titles of the genre in the 80s. It isn't a politics or diplomacy simulation, like a CK2 is.

[rakkhot]

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Attila and Thrones of Brittiania have pretty nice diplomacy.

In contrast to Shogun 2, the attitudes of the factions take greater stock of past interactions, and there are more modifiers. And as 786543 pointed out, faction attitudes are shaped by the leader's temperament, not just hard coded by faction. Another thing is you have cultural influences, which is absent from Shogun 2 because everyone has the same culture. Vassals tend to be much easier to manage in Attila and Thrones as a result of all this.

That said, I agree with Easy Target that, really, having a more tame diplomacy would just result in no challenge to the player whatsoever: you would just stroll your way to victory.

It's an RTS game, at the end of day: it's about base building, unit production, and eliminating all competing factions from the board, just like the first such titles of the genre in the 80s. It isn't a politics or diplomacy simulation, like a CK2 is.

Thanks for the answer, then I will have to check out those.

It isn't a diplomacy simulator yes, but when you put something like diplomacy in the game, then I expect that it is more than just window dressing.
There are many ways you could make the diplomacy system better without having to create a diplomacy simulator, for example it should be much harder to make allies, but when you finally make some then it should be a real ally not just someone that will take a little more time before he knives you in the back. There are many small things you could tweak wich would make for a much better experience and the fighting would still be exactly where it was before.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by rakkhot:

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Attila and Thrones of Brittiania have pretty nice diplomacy.

In contrast to Shogun 2, the attitudes of the factions take greater stock of past interactions, and there are more modifiers. And as 786543 pointed out, faction attitudes are shaped by the leader's temperament, not just hard coded by faction. Another thing is you have cultural influences, which is absent from Shogun 2 because everyone has the same culture. Vassals tend to be much easier to manage in Attila and Thrones as a result of all this.

That said, I agree with Easy Target that, really, having a more tame diplomacy would just result in no challenge to the player whatsoever: you would just stroll your way to victory.

It's an RTS game, at the end of day: it's about base building, unit production, and eliminating all competing factions from the board, just like the first such titles of the genre in the 80s. It isn't a politics or diplomacy simulation, like a CK2 is.

Thanks for the answer, then I will have to check out those.

It isn't a diplomacy simulator yes, but when you put something like diplomacy in the game, then I expect that it is more than just window dressing.
There are many ways you could make the diplomacy system better without having to create a diplomacy simulator, for example it should be much harder to make allies, but when you finally make some then it should be a real ally not just someone that will take a little more time before he knives you in the back. There are many small things you could tweak wich would make for a much better experience and the fighting would still be exactly where it was before.

That's in essence what they did with Rome 2, Attila and Thrones, although with Rome 2 it is stymied by some really poor faction mechanics and army exploits.

With Thrones and Attila, you can keep allies right through the entire game relatively easily, by basically just doing or not doing common sense things, like in actual history. At the same time, "actual history" entails context, which I'll touch on at the end.

However, these other TWs arguably suffer for that, in the overall design and in comparison to Shogun 2, simply because no AI can even hold a candle to what a human mind will think, so if the player is duplicitous and cunning, he will just exploit the hell out of the AI and have a pretty boring, grinding campaign.

This is really evident in Attila, and with Thrones too, depending on which build you're running. Thrones with the latest patch plays more like Attila or Rome 2, and imo majorily suffers for it; with the patch before the last one, it played more like Shogun 2, with an opportunistic AI scripting, and the campaign is much more challenging as a result.

The thing is with Shogun 2, its relative simplicity belies its depth, kinda like checkers.

In other words, there actually is a deep diplomacy game in Shogun 2, but it is very much wrapped up within the world and schema of the game.

For example, you can actually keep the same ally, or even vassals for that matter, in Shogun 2, from early game, up through Realm Divide, all the way to the campaign victory video...it's just you don't do that by doing some vague rubric of "real life diplomacy"...you do it by mastering the diplomacy of the game itself.

You can't just discard diplomacy in Shogun 2 and hope to win well, at least not on Legendary, and this includes forming allies and such. You just have to learn how and when to form them.

In other words, in some other games, you form an alliance when a "good ally" presents themselves, whereas in Shogun 2, you *setup the conditions* to *create* a clan in such a state that it has no real choice but to be your ally, and you use them for very, very specific purposes; you don't form alliances in Shogun 2 because it's "better to have allies," you form allies when there is an enemy that can be used to take down another enemy.

In some respects, this comes full circle, and isn't all too dissimilar from real history, if you look at all of the betrayals, flip flopping oaths, and hijinks that happened in the real Sengoku, which is what I alluded to earlier when mentioning context.

Look at Mitsuhide and Nobunaga, for instance. Even more, look at Hideyoshi, who by all evidence was a co-conspirator with Akechi, thus back stabbing not only his lord Oda, but backstabbing the guy he helped backstab Oda with, while cutting an inside deal with the ostensible enemy (Mori), and then look at how Oda's own son spazzed out around the same time, going from rebel, to loyal, to rebel, to loyal again; then Ieyasu's son at the same time also acting spastic, and the actions of the clans leading up to Anegawa...all of this and more within the span of only a few years.

It's kinda like what Charles de Gaulle said, when asked about diplomacy: "France has no friends; only interests."