Diplomacy done opposite?

This would have merits and.... reverse merits?

The merits would be less steamrolling, the cons would be that I as a player is now supposed to be ranked nr 2 instead of nr 1 (easily done though).

I think the score system should mean less with whom the ai decide to go to war with...
But I have odd ideas about everything I guess.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

It makes sense in an opportunistic, purely selfish way - AIs want to pick on weaker opponents and capture cities easily, they want to avoid conflict with stronger enemies that might take their cities. It's terrible for gameplay purposes though; the last thing you want to do is push weaker players even farther behind, and boost stronger players even farther ahead, it forces players into extremes where they're either hopelessly losing and easily steamrolling.

The interesting thing is, in real life, nations often 'game the system' and take the apparently counter-intuitive action of protecting weaker nations and picking fights with stronger ones. You could say they do this because it's morally right, but honestly I think it's more practical than that - they realize it's not to their benefit to let powerful rivals get even stronger. WWII-era Britain and France didn't exactly ally with Germany (their main rival) to pick apart Belgium (a small country acting as a buffer between Germany and France); they deliberately sided with Belgium, at little direct benefit to themselves, just to stop Germany from grabbing up Belgium and becoming even more powerful.

Of course in the same war we have an example of the opposite taking place, FE-style politics - powerful Germany and Russia, natural rivals, signed a truce with the tacit agreement to split weaker Poland (a buffer country between them) down the middle, to the immediate benefit of both countries, in stark contrast to the British/French approach of attempting to maintain the balance of power by opposing a rival's expansion. It's a valid ideological divide - Britain and France were democracies, Germany and Russia dictatorships.

So it's not unreasonable or unrealistic for nations to behave either way, really I just wish there was more variety to FE's diplomacy - right now all AIs grovel before stronger nations and declare war on weaker ones like clockwork. For example, it would make sense for the Kingdoms to help out weaker players in order to team up against powerful ones, while Empires do the opposite, opportunistically gobbling up any player that shows a sign of weakness while fearing powerful players.

The thing I did to solve this ganging up on the weak diplomacy issue was to link wonders to the influence resource. This seems unrelated, but when larger factions are spending all their influence on wonders, the weaker factions can save it up. Saving it up in my mod greatly increases relations. So you can specialize your cities in diplomacy by hoarding every bit of influence. You also get alot from Prestige, which can be strategically accumulated with the right faction traits. I hope the vanilla game includes some more in depth factors like this for diplomatic relations.

This

And this

Well I just feel that only being able to use Inf and cash when trying to make peace is a... very limiting.. Does your mod affect that to? 

Unfortunately, I can only do what modding allows. I have a better setup as far as relations overall. For instance, if a faction has +1 Faction Power over you, they will not change their demeanor. That setting has been increased so that they need +100 Faction power to feel a little superior. They need 200 to feel very powerful. They need +500 to feel they are dominating you. That was from +1, +20, +50 in vanilla. So there are some problems like this that I can solve. I can't add new factor to relations yet, but I have made a request for the devs to increase what we can do. There are other things that I did, like make the close borders penalty high enough to start a war. These things are balanced with each other so that a strong faction only goes to war with nearby weak factions. Little things like that are so very needed to fix diplomacy. Increasing the penalty for starting a war prevents the dog pile effect as well.

Influence is a powerful thing. It ties diplomacy into every possible game mechanic. For instance, I can make a quest that could give you enough influence to avoid a war. I could even make a quest that ends all wars in the realm and solidifies your influence dominance. But as many say, some new core mechanics to diplomacy and really Sov-Sov interaction are needed to make this aspect flourish. Hopefully we get some of that in the expansion.

Hmm I really like that:

I can make a quest that could give you enough influence to avoid a war. I could even make a quest that ends all wars in the realm and solidifies your influence dominance.

Is there anything you can do about the non aggression pack being used as toilet paper? 

And if I'm not mistaken this changes are all in the grand scheme of you mod right?

Is there anyway to just get the diplomacy fixes? 

Yes. If you want to take my mod apart and find all the stuff you like, you can add it to your game. I would separate everything, but there is so much content it would take as long as it did to put it together. Honestly, my mod is superior in balance, depth, features. It's more challenging, but for the right reasons.

lol you have actually convinced me to just use it

Is it easy to uninstall? 

(If the information is in the mod page then don't waste your time answering )

Although it is easier to negotiate from a position of strength.  If you are 300 points behind, there is not much incentive for another faction to ally themselves with you and declare war on the faction that is 300 points ahead of you, and 150 points ahead of the one you are asking.

If the faction that is the farthest ahead asks the middle of the road guy to go kill you, there is much more incentive to do so.

Yeah, A human player sometimes is willing to dog-pile the weakest, and sometimes sees an opportunity to pull together an alliance against the strongest.  It would be interesting if AI would also evaluate both kinds of choices too. 

For example you might trigger the bravery to attack the leader or a stronger neighbor when you get an important military tech in; when you finish your barracks and training grounds in your main fortress; or simply out of opportunism (target is in another war) or desperation.  No matter what triggers this decision you would look to bribe in one or more allies.  Maybe some of this is already there but I don't think I've yet seen an AI declare on a target with higher "score".

Anyway, more variety in the diplo game would be fun.

On the other hand, if you're 300 points behind the leader and someone else is 150 points behind the leader, then an alliance between you and the guy 150 points behind the leader will at least bring the sum of your power ratings closer to the leader's power rating, and may even surpass the leader's power rating (if the leader had a power rating greater than 450). Alternatively, depending on the relative difference in power between me (lagging 300 points behind the leader) and you (lagging 150 points behind the leader), I might look like a tempting target for you to take over to reduce the gap between you and the leader - but if I'm at 300, you're at 450, and the leader is at 600, I should look like a strong enough target that you would consider not invading me to make up the difference in power, and I'm also a strong enough faction where I should be a viable ally for you to consider in a bid to challenge the leader. If this were something less close (say I'm at 30, you're at 180, and the leader is at 330), I'd be a very tempting target to take over in a bid to reduce the leader's lead, since I'm not strong enough (at least by power rating) without allies to challenge you in a war, and I'm also not strong enough to bring much to an alliance with you, unless by bringing me into an alliance you could secure my allies for your attempt against the leader. Absolute differences in power can be very misleading, and are a rather poor basis for the diplomatic modifiers.

I personally think that the diplomacy modifiers based off of power ratings should be based on the relative difference in strength rather than the absolute difference in strength (so, (my_strength - your_strength)/(my_strength) when determining my diplomatic modifiers towards you, and (your_strength - my_strength)/(your_strength) when determining your diplomatic modifiers towards me) since there at least should be huge differences between the difficulties of defeating a nation of power 30 when your power is 330, and defeating a nation of power 300 when your power is 600, and defeating a nation of power 3000 when your power is 3300. In the first situation I should completely dominate the lesser nation, in the second I should still be dominant, but it should take a fair amount of my strength (roughly half) since the opposing nation, while weaker than my own, is at least closer to being in the same weight class. In the final case given, I should not have wanted to go to war with that particular enemy unless I was certain that I could focus my Empire's full strength against that particular nation, or that the other surviving nations are so weak that they could not threaten me even in conjunction with my target. Strength 3000 versus strength 3300 should be a very tough war, with only small changes in the strategic situation having the potential to greatly tip the balance of power. If two such nations were to fight one another, the stronger should still need to put about 90% of its strength into the war effort if 100% of the strength of its opponent is involved.

If the USA used the current diplomacy system in FE, we'd have stormed Canada years ago.  Which makes zero sense to me.  Nothing better than watching the movie "Strange Brew" while drinking a Molson with "sunglasses at night" playing in the background.

I think there should be a diplomacy modifier like 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' if you're actually getting into scraps with someone they don't like or are at war with.  Unless the AI is paranoid, in which case it's more like 'Yeah I think you're going to backstab me when the dust settles.'

What's annoying is that the reasoning behind the modifiers that I can see are not always clear, or seem bloody irrelevant.  'I like war, don't you?' is kinda silly when I'm at war right now.  'We want to bring order to the world' - great, what does that actually mean and why do I get a -3 modifier for it?

"I like war, don't you?" means they are a warlike faction and gets negative bonuses to everyone to simulate their desire for war (it's not a question).

"We want to bring order to the world" means they think they got the game in the bag (their score is high) and are pushing to the finish line (by mowing over everyone else). The stronger they are, the higher the penalty.

As for the OP, I don't think it should be one way or the other. Wars of opportunity (like it is now) SHOULD exist, picking on weaker factions to grow stronger is something I think we all can understand. However, there should also be times when you see a certain faction growing too strong and several factions band together to take them on. This would probably make a far more ideal "final war" situation. I think there's room for both type, and more varied responses (depending on faction/leader) would make the game better than just making it one way or the other.

His mod is also humble.

The AI should both Destroy very weak factions AND gang up on very powerful ones, while also looking for opportunities to declare war on those that are already engaged. Anyone who has played MP Dom3 enough knows this is the strategy.  Weak nations, you take over and you do so very fast before another can attack it or you and force you to fight on multiple fronts.  When a single nation starts to become very powerful, the other middle nations should gang up on it to take it down, otherwise they are giving in to defeat.

Okay, now this is just silly.  I negotiate to go to war with Pariden who are at war with a fellow Kingdom.  Instead of being appreciative and understanding about me riding to the rescue, I get 3 negative diplo points each from 'You attacked a Kingdom!' and 'You attacked a fellow Kingdom!' and my non-aggression pact is revoked.

Thanks for that, I was just trying to help. 

True, the AI is pretty clueless, one of the reasons I disregard the AI in the current game and call it a game for conquest. (I like when diplomacy is actually important ;))

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

This would be a great start.  

I'd like to see positive/negative modifiers that reflect history (within reason) and general behavior.  Regardless of size/money/military/technical superiority, it would be very difficult to persuade the US govt. to go to war with Canada, Mexico, Britain, etc.  And if the govt. was somehow persuaded, there would be a substantial increase in "unrest".  A mechanic like this could also lead to interesting play if Dynasties are ever reintroduced.  It would allow for modifiers to diplomacy based on family ties, for example.  It doesn't need to be a super-deep mechanic (though I wouldn't have a problem with that), but just enough to encourage more realistic/satisfying and consistent behavior.

i approve of this thread.

Well at th bare minimum it should be a dynasty system like CK2 at the minimum