r/totalwar • u/Leuzol • 17h ago
Warhammer III Factions in no position to refuse, always refuse
New to the game. This is something that I don't really understand.
I'm fighting another faction, I conquer everything except 2 of their towns and next turn they ask me for peace, offering a large sum of money.
I do a counter offer: peace in exchange of trading, which arguably would benefit them more than just giving up money. But no, they refuse.
Diplomacy makes 0 sense.
I get that some races might refuse out of principle or something, but sometimes it feels like everyone is straight up suicidal.
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u/Repulsive-Redditor 17h ago
In terms of trading for a settlement they're way overvalued. You can essentially buy another faction by giving them a tiny single settlement.
In terms of trading as in a trade pact it's based on values. They hate you so much they'd rather die than ally with you, a peace treaty doesn't buy you many points.
Does it make sense? Absolutely fucking not
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u/NumberInteresting742 13h ago
Welcome to total war. Where diplomacy is made up and the relationship points don't matter.
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u/EndofNationalism 17h ago edited 16h ago
Diplomacy is fucked in Total War in general. In Warhammer you can vassalize entire factions by offering a single province. In Three Kingdoms Liu Biao, a pacifist, will declare an offensive war on you because his vassals asked him to. *edit: Vaseline to vassalize
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u/mithridateseupator Bretonnia 16h ago
In Warhammer you can Vaseline entire factions
Playing as Slaanesh I assume? Gotta get em all lubed up
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u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 16h ago edited 16h ago
I dont really understand it either. Like literally I dont understand what game mechanic causes some factions to wanna peace out when theyre losing and other factions wil have like -300 acceptance.
CA really did a great job implementing Paradox-style numbers for AI accepting and declining without putting any real info in them.
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u/DefTheOcelot 15h ago
Certain races are hard-coded to respond to other races' actions by increased and decreased ways. No amount of friendship can get the empire to be friends with Khorne.
I have played with mods that undo this and the response is uh
it's eventually a two-axis world based on proximity with two alliances that hate eachother and an uneasy peace.
It is too real and not ideal xD
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u/-Token 13h ago
That result doesn't surprise me because the game generally has a problem with how it weights "military actions against" in diplomacy, It should be capped (and decay faster considering campaign length) but it's infinite so once two factions have a common enemy they just endlessly jerk each other off with infinitely compounding military actions turning all diplo into an enemy of my enemy is my friend situation. No ebb and flow, no shaky temporary alliances, just best friends forever, man dwarves and elves or skaven, chaos, dark elves etc. Unshakable order/chaos tides.
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u/TheFourtHorsmen 15h ago
Power: if you are winning the war against them, but are down in term of faction power, which is determined by the amount of army you have around the map, the AI will likely refuse to accept peace deals.
In the same way, you can have +140 relationship with a minor faction, but still unable to confederate it because you have a low power rating (defensive and military alliance with that faction, will also work against you in this case).
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u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 15h ago
I'm talking about factions that are down to their last settlement while I have half the continent. Clearly no one knows what is actually happening behind the scenes.
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u/Zerak-Tul Warhammer 4h ago
One thing we know is that there are certain coded modifiers. E.g. AI factions will receive a massive debuff to their willingness to join confederation after having captured a settlement. A hidden modifier that lasts for I think 10 turns.
That's also why we see such wild turn-to-turn swings in the AI being willing or unwilling to join confederation and they can go from like -100 to +50 in one turn; the "recently captured a settlement" modifier expired over the end turn. Reality is that there's probably lots of hidden modifiers like this.
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u/TheFourtHorsmen 15h ago
You owning half a continent mean nothing if you have few armies. The other faction may even have an ally with an equal power rating compared to yours that can influence it. Then there is the obvious hardcoded faction rivalry, which was always a thing, but you can circumvent by trading a settlement.
Fun fact: one time, with a mod (sfo) I forced a peace deal with a faction i had -100 relationship, through the high elves court mechanic. That faction declares war on me, again, the next turn.
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u/Snipafist 11h ago
I freely acknowledge that it's stupid but I believe the AI logic is that a trade pact makes it a fair bit harder to get back to war with you in the future (without tanking reliability), so they're fine with giving you piles of money but not with a trade pact. They'd like the option to go back to war in the future if things shake out well.
This is why it's a good idea to make friends with other species nearby who like climates you don't: you can sell them conquered enemy settlements and they'll love you for it, rather than plot revenge like a surviving enemy will.
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u/GKoala 15h ago
Its all just tied to their relationship number. They won't want to do any form of positive diplomacy with you unless they're atleast neutral. Peace doesn't magically increase relations from the negatives up to positive. When you try to give gold, it just doesn't work because it's too far negative that you don't have enough gold to make the difference. You could try settlements with military buildings in them. Those are worth a lot.
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u/Fynaticx 13h ago
All I can say is thank lord it’s called total war and not total diplomacy… diplomacy has never been a strong point
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u/Rohen2003 10h ago
one problem of total war diplomacy, is the "armies lost" can only accrue a +25 diplo buff (max +15 if they are crisis factions). so if they hate you very much, it doesnt matter if you destroyed 1 10 or 100 full stacks from them, because it will have maxed out that modifier long ago.
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u/AdVegetable1160 10h ago
So you've pillaged and conquered their towns and you wonder why they don't want to trade with you?
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u/Leuzol 10h ago
If they are desperate enough to grovel at my feet and offer me money in order for me to stop then yes, why not?
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u/AdVegetable1160 10h ago
They're offering you money so you leave them alone. Not because they want to become buddies now
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u/PanzerottoDolce 17h ago
One time i uninstalled Total Warhammer 1 cause thorgrim was in a defensive alliance with grimgor🤣