How in heck to get factions to unify with Liu Bei?

[Agent]

I'm like 80 or 100 turns into a campaign with Liu Bei. One of the points of his faction is the ability to confederate (unify) with factions from the start, and playing Liu Bei's story requires unifying with one or two other factions.

I cannot for the life of me get anyone, anywhere, at any time, to accept unification. It's usually not even close. I've tried with factions that are much bigger than me, factions that are much smaller than me, factions that are the same size as me, factions that really really love me, factions that hate me, factions that are rich or poor, close or far, you name it I've checked.

They just won't do it under basically any circumstances. You'd think someone weaker than me, that really loves me, and that is basically surrounded by my lands would maybe go for it? But no, because I'm a "threat". But if I'm not stronger they don't want to do it because... reasons.

How? I won't even get started on getting the other Liu to unify with you for the mission, I'm just trying to get somebody, anybody, ever to do this thing.

[Brakiros]

Abuse the ultimatum bug, it's a very broken peace of diplomacy you can use the ultimatum war setting to confederate

[Xander Tyrann]

One of this biggest things is that they are losing a war pretty badly. If they feel like they are going to be destroyed and are friendly to you then the chances of unification go up quite a bit.

Just get friendly with some faction who are having a hard time with non aggression pacts, trade deals etc and you should see the opposition to the idea drop to 50 and if they are losing a war the situation modifier can rise above 50 which is generally how i've done it.

Saving the arse of your friends may make them like you (slightly) more but they won't feel the need to give away their faction to you.

Doing it this way will also make the leader of the faction who joins you not have a grudge against you.

I unified with Gongsun Zan and that bandit girl this way . Was 2 points away from Liu Biao accepting before Yuan Shao attacked one of my vassals and the war turned in Liu Biao's favour.

[shde2e]

Originally posted by Xander Tyrann:

One of this biggest things is that they are losing a war pretty badly. If they feel like they are going to be destroyed and are friendly to you then the chances of unification go up quite a bit.

Just get friendly with some faction who are having a hard time with non aggression pacts, trade deals etc and you should see the opposition to the idea drop to 50 and if they are losing a war the situation modifier can rise above 50 which is generally how i've done it.

Saving the arse of your friends may make them like you (slightly) more but they won't feel the need to give away their faction to you.

Doing it this way will also make the leader of the faction who joins you not have a grudge against you.

I unified with Gongsun Zan and that bandit girl this way . Was 2 points away from Liu Biao accepting before Yuan Shao attacked one of my vassals and the war turned in Liu Biao's favour.

Basically pull a Yuan Shao-Han Fu maneuvre.

[tree of gingers]

Originally posted by Lightbane:

Abuse the ultimatum bug, it's a very broken peace of diplomacy you can use the ultimatum war setting to confederate

i don't think it's a bug. when you're just starting out with vassalising everyone or confederating everyone, you kinda need to use ultimatums. if a faction really is way weaker than you, it makes sense that they'd be scared of an ultimatum. and the hit to your trustworthiness does seem to affect your diplomacy a fair bit though i'm not exactly sure how it works

look at it this way, it's still harder to do than it is for ai yuan shao