Possible Reputation "Exploit"/Weird Diplomacy Feature

[TheJustlyParanoid]

Came across this more by luck than anything. Was looking around for guides on improving reputation without having to mess with game files, then read one that claimed that offering to attack rebels and then doing so improves reputation.

Started up a game, made a few allies, then started bartering to attack the rebel faction. Only gets me a few hundred gold for the work, but then again it's not like I wouldn't have to take care of the issue anyways.

Where things get strange is that things actually worked the opposite way around. Bit by bit I notice my allies' reputations steadily improving with each completed "deal" of attacking some rebels.

Start up another game, cheat in some money (because naturally the AI offers hundreds yet demands thousands), start sending out diplomats everywhere, and go around paying the various AI to go rebel-hunting. Lo and behold, with enough of these weird little deals (Somewhere in the 8-10 range) my reputation is almost perfect by turn 10 (On Normal difficulty, for reference). Also improved diplomatic relations in the process, although that may be more to letting the AI decide the payment without trying to haggle.


TL;DR: Pay the AI to attack rebels for easy (albeit a little pricey) reputation boost.

[Wizard of Woz]

Don't know why everyone is always concerned about allies. You have to conquer thier land eventually anyway so why waste the time?

[Gigantus]

If you are looking for some real exploits check this out:

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/entry.php?236-Medieval-II-is-a-perfectly-balanced-game

[TheJustlyParanoid]

Originally posted by Wizard of Woz:

Don't know why everyone is always concerned about allies. You have to conquer thier land eventually anyway so why waste the time?

Mostly I just love the idea of vassalizing other nations, but they tend to be a bit too resistant to actually ending the forever-wars unless your rep is sufficient. Pretty sure that vassal territories are counted as under your control as well as far as victory requirments are concerned, although I have yet to experiment with such a thing.

Having a few less provinces to have to worry about managing directly as my own territory grows larger and larger is a bonus.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Wizard of Woz:

Don't know why everyone is always concerned about allies. You have to conquer thier land eventually anyway so why waste the time?

Which is why I like Eu4 more, you want to conquer yes, but you also want pretty borders to naturally end up with allies outside of your target

[temperate06]

thanks for the tips, road to "Very Reliable" on turn 20

[accipiter]

it's a slight tangeant, but if we're on the topic of faction standing/reputation...

i'd like to remind everyone reading this that there is an incredibly Critical bug in the base game that CA never fixed, which kind of breaks the entire faction standing mechanic and even a lot of the diplomacy as a whole.

Basically, genius CA forgot to add 3 semicolon [ ; ] characters in the descr_faction_standing.txt file of the game, which causes every other faction on the map to hate you for peacefully occupying a captured settlement.

normally, the game has a mechanic where everytime you capture a settlement:
if you exterminate population, everyone really hates you or it.
if you sack, everyone dislikes you for it, but not a lot,
if you peacefully occupy, everyone likes you for it quite a lot.

but because of the bug, everyone will hate you for peacefully occupying about as bad as if you sacked (slightly worse).

so if you want to maximise your reputation in the vanilla game, you NEED to always SACK every single place you capture, never peacefully occupy cause they will hate you for it even more (so stupid).

surprisingly few people (even in the modding community) seem to be aware of this bug in my experience.

(i can make a thread how to fix the bug if there is demand for it: it's as simple as opening a .txt file and adding the missing 3 semicolons, you just have to know where to look for which i can explain)

[Preacher]

Originally posted by accipiter:

it's a slight tangeant, but if we're on the topic of faction standing/reputation...

i'd like to remind everyone reading this that there is an incredibly Critical bug in the base game that CA never fixed, which kind of breaks the entire faction standing mechanic and even a lot of the diplomacy as a whole.

Basically, genius CA forgot to add 3 semicolon [ ; ] characters in the descr_faction_standing.txt file of the game, which causes every other faction on the map to hate you for peacefully occupying a captured settlement.

normally, the game has a mechanic where everytime you capture a settlement:
if you exterminate population, everyone really hates you or it.
if you sack, everyone dislikes you for it, but not a lot,
if you peacefully occupy, everyone likes you for it quite a lot.

but because of the bug, everyone will hate you for peacefully occupying about as bad as if you sacked (slightly worse).

so if you want to maximise your reputation in the vanilla game, you NEED to always SACK every single place you capture, never peacefully occupy cause they will hate you for it even more (so stupid).

surprisingly few people (even in the modding community) seem to be aware of this bug in my experience.

(i can make a thread how to fix the bug if there is demand for it: it's as simple as opening a .txt file and adding the missing 3 semicolons, you just have to know where to look for which i can explain)

What lines do I add these?

[Gigantus]

Simply install and play my Bare Geomod set up - it's one of the fixes it includes. It also saves you from unpacking files and making the game mod compatible. Otherwise it's the Grand Campaign: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?352216

[Preacher]

Originally posted by Gigantus:

Simply install and play my Bare Geomod set up - it's one of the fixes it includes. It also saves you from unpacking files and making the game mod compatible. Otherwise it's the Grand Campaign: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?352216

Thanks fam

[Gigantus]

Originally posted by Preacher:

Thanks fam

One is glad to be of service

[JBGarrison72]

A single line in a text file... why can't CA just patch this already... decades later and it's still a problem?

[Preacher]

jw why is the geomod file flagged as a trojan for some virus checkers?

[Gigantus]

Because it looks up the registry entry of the game to create a directory with an essential BAT (batch) file in it.

[Preacher]

Originally posted by Gigantus:

Because it looks up the registry entry of the game to create a directory with an essential BAT (batch) file in it.

thanks man (yeah i just got around to downloading the mod xd, been wanting to do it since september lol)

[Gigantus]

Bare Geomod is essentially the default grand campaign with a number of small fixes (all factions playable, reputation fix etc) and mostly it's designed as a base for modding - a lot of the fixes are 'under the hood' (like the port fix that crashed the game if a new map was generated).
And it got it's name from the mapping tool that it has been optimized for.