Dealing with strategic threat?

[Smashing]

I don't understand this mechanic at all. I'm listed as the largest strategic threat in the game and being hammered on all sides to the extent the game has become almost impossible to continue yet I only just have the resources to maintain 4 armies. I'm winning most battles but simply cannot be everywhere at once and as soon as I win on one side, someone suddenly declares war on the other and marches into the cities / farms completely tanking the economy.

I also keep losing trustworthiness from others breaking their treaties with me...

Also other factions are larger than mine yet only viewed as minor strategic threats and the AI ignores any other wars they have and just makes a beeline for my settlements. I understand the game is supposed to maintain a challenge but the whole "all AI attack you all the time" thing is tedious.

[Fang]

Trustworthiness loss is somewhat unavoidable. You can stop it from going out of hand, but at some point, unless you're some diplomatic genius, it'll happen. The AI pulling you into stuff is the biggest problem.

If your trustworthiness is low it usually won't affect your closest allies. They'll still like you. Enemies however will be even less likely to accept peace unless you dominate them.

The trick is to always stay on top of the amount of enemies you have, and try to eliminate them all individually while appeasing others as much as possible to delay the inevitable. Non-aggression pacts sweetened with some food is an effective method.

Once you've proclaimed yourself emperor, you're kind of commited. It's really hard to make radical changes to your political position at that point. Enemies will really hate you.

This is why vassalizing a couple and making some allies even when direct conquest would benefit you more, can help ease the pain of the lategame 'total war' phase.

I assume you're already King rank or equivalent? If so you should be powerful enough to slowly pick off your enemies even if it means giving up some land somewhere else. Try to go around and see if there's still someone that would sign a peace deal with you.

[PFC Demigo [29th ID]]

Well duh the Higher Rank you are, the more people are going to hate you and declare War.
You become Emperor will just increase it the more with the other 2 Emperor fighting to become True Emperor.
Should have properly plan out your troops and resources and land.
Its the same with Shogun 2 on Realm Divide where everyone declare War at you.

[Smashing]

No I'm not even a Duke... I had a Vassal who betrayed me after 2 turns (that I then got a diplomatic penalty for). I had a marriage with one of the people who declared war, had a non-aggression pact and trade with another and just non-aggression with the third. This is after I made expensive peace with 2 other factions who attacked when I was busy elsewhere.

I can understand this happening late game but I'm just about getting midgame and the entire map is red hating me, including people in the coalition except for 2 factions with 1 region each. The coalition allies refuse to help in any of the attacks. It's ridiculous. Literally haven't broken any treaties and only declared war once in the entire game yet I'm being attacked so frequently I can't do anything except constantly fend off invading armies.

[PFC Demigo [29th ID]]

If you move your mouse on the Faces you can see why they hate you. If everyone on the Map is Red Label then you;re doing something wrong.

[Smashing]

Originally posted by ♋️LunarCainEX🐶29ID:

If you move your mouse on the Faces you can see why they hate you. If everyone on the Map is Red Label then you;re doing something wrong.

No I'm doing nothing wrong. I've got low trustworthiness because of the AI breaking treaties and I've got the highest strategic threat of any of the factions I can see, despite being smaller or equal in size to them. I've literally broken no treaties myself and the threat level has no relation at all to the empire size.

Hence the thread, I'm getting late game treatment mid game.

[Fang]

Originally posted by Smashing:

Originally posted by ♋️LunarCainEX🐶29ID:

If you move your mouse on the Faces you can see why they hate you. If everyone on the Map is Red Label then you;re doing something wrong.

No I'm doing nothing wrong. I've got low trustworthiness because of the AI breaking treaties and I've got the highest strategic threat of any of the factions I can see, despite being smaller or equal in size to them. I've literally broken no treaties myself and the threat level has no relation at all to the empire size.

Hence the thread, I'm getting late game treatment mid game.

The AI breaking treaties with you does not affect your trustworthiness. Trade agreements, non-aggression pacts, etc.

The problem is sometimes you get locked into a stalemate where either choice makes you lose.

If a vassal calls you to war against someone that declared war on them:

1. If you help them, but you recently went to war OR have *any* treaties with the aggressor, you lose trustworthiness because it's an indirect betrayal.

2. If you don't help them, you've shirked your duty as a master and lose trustworthiness and they declare their independance.

[Smashing]

Originally posted by Fang:

Originally posted by Smashing:

No I'm doing nothing wrong. I've got low trustworthiness because of the AI breaking treaties and I've got the highest strategic threat of any of the factions I can see, despite being smaller or equal in size to them. I've literally broken no treaties myself and the threat level has no relation at all to the empire size.

Hence the thread, I'm getting late game treatment mid game.

The AI breaking treaties with you does not affect your trustworthiness. Trade agreements, non-aggression pacts, etc.

The problem is sometimes you get locked into a stalemate where either choice makes you lose.

If a vassal calls you to war against someone that declared war on them:

1. If you help them, but you recently went to war OR have *any* treaties with the aggressor, you lose trustworthiness because it's an indirect betrayal.

2. If you don't help them, you've shirked your duty as a master and lose trustworthiness and they declare their independance.

Except that didn't happen. My vassal declared independence without asking for assistance in a war 2 turns after I vassalised them and then I got the penalty for breaking the agreement. I checked it with the autosave.

[Fang]

Originally posted by Smashing:

Except that didn't happen. My vassal declared independence without asking for assistance in a war 2 turns after I vassalised them and then I got the penalty for breaking the agreement. I checked it with the autosave.

Odd. Maybe send the save so we can check it out? It might be that the vassal that betrayed you, had its independence supported by a faction that you had a treaty/recent war penalty with?

This is the most politically complicated Total War game ever so it's tricky to say!

[Smashing]

Originally posted by Fang:

Originally posted by Smashing:

Except that didn't happen. My vassal declared independence without asking for assistance in a war 2 turns after I vassalised them and then I got the penalty for breaking the agreement. I checked it with the autosave.

Odd. Maybe send the save so we can check it out? It might be that the vassal that betrayed you, had its independence supported by a faction that you had a treaty/recent war penalty with?

This is the most politically complicated Total War game ever so it's tricky to say!

I don't have the save before and after that specific event as it was just an autosave but I have my current save. Every faction I'm at war with there I previously had non-aggression treaties with that every single one of them reneged on without warning.

It's feeling like the idiotic Medieval 2 AI that just completely ignored diplomatic status, only it's much harder dealing with the army spam in this one.

[Straybow]

I do get the feeling that yuan shu is from milan :)

[scoorh]

*legendary diff

if a peacful faction is in a coallition and you are at war with one of the coallition member that member can request other to join war against you regardless of their status with you.

I have started playing as Cao Cao and I tried to use his special diplomatic power to make as many friendly faction as possible around me so I could focus on one direction expansion.

However... that mofoka Yuan Shao is just putting everyone into his coallition and randomly declares war one me in every single game even if he is like 100+ with me.

Therefore he then proceed to call his coallition partners to join his war against me and I'm just with war against everyone. Every single time I restart the campaign

[Dr_Kira]

legendary diff is not supposed to bee balanced tho, pretty sure vh as well is stacked agaisnt you a lot.... (I don't know yet the specific changes on 3k)

[Smashing]

Only one person who randomly declared war got dragged in as a result of a coalition, the rest have declared war on their own. It's only regular difficulty and you have numerous other lords with more regions than me who have minimal threat yet I have almost the highest threat level with only 6 commanderies and 4 armies. If I confederate with the faction that declared independence, I get -60 relations with just about everyone. They only have 1 city...

Also Yuan Shao isn't in the game as I took him out quite early (although his successor faction is on of the ones at war).

[Carolin]

"This is after I made expensive peace with 2 other factions who attacked when I was busy elsewhere."
So these 2 faction people are happy and then start to distrust you, why? hmmmm maybe because you made peace with 1 faction who killed people in the other faction? or had relatives killed by the other faction? or maybe:

"had a non-aggression pact and trade with another and just non-aggression with the third. "
or maybe you were trading with their enemies and giving their enemies supplies???

"I had a marriage with one of the people who declared war"
And all the while you kept trading with the people that are the enemy of their family

or if you married the daughter of that family and then you made peace with the people that killed her brother, they will hate you.....actually, there are a lot of people relationships in the game. If you killed a general/executed them all their family and friends will hate you and sometimes they also have friends in a different faction. so you should always release people

[Smashing]

Why is everyone determined to offer some extremely complex explanation for why things are so bad? It's not a fault of trade deals or marriages or making peace. The clue is right there in the thread title, it's that I have the highest strategic threat of any character by a long way despite still being relatively small and attempts to improve relations fail because they are all reneging on any deals that are made.

It's not complex, it's just either the mechanic not being explaining why your threat level would get so high when still relatively small or it's the diplomacy AI screwing up causing the AI to just hate you no matter what you do. Making peace should not gradually cause everyone to hate you more as that would be a ridiculous mechanic, you'd be locked in a never ending spiral or worse relations just by ending wars.