User Guide

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view screen is divided into two halves. The left
side provides information about your country’s
reputation and any diplomatic conditions that
are currently in force; the right side shows a
scrollable list of countries and your current re-
lationship value with each.
Like prestige, your country’s reputation has
a very large effect on your relationship with
other nations and the way that they are likely
to behave towards you. Reputation is a reflec-
tion of the way that other realms regard your
overall level of trustworthiness and degree of
international belligerence. Your country’s
reputation is displayed as text in the interface,
although you can hover your mouse over the
text to display a tool tip that shows the exact
numerical value.
Your reputation will suffer if you declare
wars without any sort of territorial claim or
provocation, or if you gain ownership of an-
other country’s provinces when negotiating
a peace settlement. It will also be damaged if
you make diplomatic threats, or when you are
caught engaging in espionage. Forcing another
nation to become your vassal is viewed as a hos-
tile act, and the outright annexation of a realm
is the most worrisome of all possible actions
you could take.
Having a poor reputation will cause other
realms to view your country as a dangerous
threat to their security and continued survival,
and they will become increasingly disinclined
to accept any of your diplomatic proposals. If
your reputation reaches epic depths, you could
become “despised throughout the known
world” and countries may even unite in an at-
tempt to destroy you.
As a side note, if you visit our community
forums you will frequently see the term “bad-
boy” used to describe the numerical value as-
signed to your country’s reputation. A “badboy
war” is the result of crossing the relationship
value threshold in the game, usually spark-
ing an international vendetta to destroy your
realm.
Diplomatic Summary
Any existing diplomatic conditions will be list-
ed below your reputation. This can include alli-
ances, wars, royal marriages, and other similar
special relationships that you have with other
countries. The majority of these are agree-
ments that you may reach with other countries
by sending your diplomats there with a propos-
al; however, there are also a few that may ap-
pear due to other causes. The two most notable
of these are an “enforced peace” and a “casus
belli”.
A “casus belli” is a Latin term meaning
“good cause” (or “just cause”). It indicates that a
realm has a recognised, legitimate reason to go
to war with another nation if it so desires. If an-
other country owns one of your core provinces,
you will automatically gain a casus belli against
that realm. While that is the most common
reason for a casus belli, there are several other
diplomatic actions that can result in a country
gaining a temporary casus belli. Declaring war
on a country with which you have a casus belli is
not viewed as a dishonourable action, so it will
not affect your reputation nearly as much as de-
claring war without one. If you subsequently
defeat that country, any territorial gains you
might make as a result of the peace terms will
also have less of an impact on your reputation.
After negotiating a peace settlement there is a
period of five years of enforced peace between
the countries involved. Violating a truce is pos-
sible, but a nation’s reputation will be severely
damaged for doing so. We’ll discuss this in de-
tail in the Diplomacy section of the manual.
Relations
The list on the lower right side of the interface
shows your current “relationship value” with
all of the other countries in the world that you
have encountered thus far in the game. This is
a numerical value that will range between -200
(the country despises us to the core) and +200
(we are a beloved friend). The middle value of
0 indicates that the country is generally neutral
towards you. Over time, any relationship value