I really wish the devs would chip in abit on this topic, cause I'm pretty sure we arent the only 2 who things this mechanics is "flawed" in its current state.
I've tried different approaches to see, but pretty much the overall lack of desire for peace is the issue.
Basically the only times we get peace is when "its too late" for that other faction to recover, cause as soon as we have peace, then another will pounce on them, which dooms them to a slow death typically.
On the other hand we never get peace if we are loosing either, unless a 2nd declare war on us, thus the chain of wars(endless wars).
They need to add some war-weariness and highr desire for peace, cause lets be blunt its supposed to be a sandbox, but if you can only do 1 thing if you are part of a faction then its a warsimulator.
As for the "homicidal maniac" well there is 2 ways to avoid this.
1. kill them on the battlefield, this may take alot of tries tbh, but sometimes you can be lucky
2. bribe them to join your faction(this is imo abit too hard atm for landless clans and or they are too loyal for too long(seriously they have been very poor for decades and have 0 land, but still stick with the faction..)
Ideally before you try this, do have 25 in relations of higher, so that first speech check can crit so you get 2 of 4 checks passed.
Not to mention alot of money, even for small landless clans it can take several 100k denars.
(The issue with this of course is that they defect later on..)
Depending on which build you are playing atm in 1.62 beta you can now make peace with minor clans(like those who have left a faction, and are independent(same for rebel factions, that survive, but loose their lands later on, and then declare war on all)
Intresting, so I've had a much more enjoyable game this one I started today.
The core difference being that I have 1 clan member leading a party.
He have atm limited his wages to about 600 denar(he wasnt ideal set up from start, so he didnt have much steward skill, so he couldnt really hit that mark "normally" unless I gave him high tier troops.(he's gotten it now so he's able to form ok sized party).
However the key change in my play is that in wartime if we are "looseing too much" I will go max partysize.
But during wartime and peace, I typically have much less than that, I can atm command 164 troops but typically just go around with 100.
Overall the ai seems much more keen on peace, and progress is slowed down quite abit, so at this rate there is a point to legacy.
We've only taken 1 town + 1 castle in total from 1 faction and the same from another.
We've lost 1 castle, and its not likely to get back, but its also good we've lost it as then its less likely that this 3rd faction is going to attack.
(I'm Sturgia as always, We lost caelus castle or what its called, near Battania to them, and well since then Battania and Vlandia have been at it for decades on and off abit).
Epicroeta + Melacolva is the 2 things we've taken from NE.
Makeb and Usek from Khuzait.
Normally by this time, we'd have all the castle and towns up to Makeb.
Prolly a few Battanian citys, and NE up to Rhesos Castle typically + Epinosa castle and maybe Amprela.
So by dialing down the size of my own party, and companions and thus not haveing to fight for cash or smith etc too much, I typically is in the + denars pr day from my 4/5 workshops + income from Epicroeta(which I control).
Still bit early, but overall it looks like this dialed down the agression another notch, but I know I know, we get 1-2 more towns, and we'll be hitting that sweetspot where its more or less endless wars again or until we loose enough.
Then again all theese observations could be somewhat false positives if they tweaked something in the ai in the last hotfix they applied the other day.
This is the first one since then, and I wanted to test my theory, that if player party is "too strong" it kind of boost the power of the faction too much, and thus warmonger!
--
Edited, well I've tested it more, and it actually seems to behave as "we've want" it more peace with even long durations of peace.
No more endless wars/locked in chain-wars.
While some factions imo still needs abit of tweaking - Empire factions seem to hire merc companies "too much" so to some degree they prolong battle bit longer, but not crazy like it was.
Howver Khuzait which is generally much more poor, dont hire enough, where they should have.
I never thougth I'd say it, but they may need to be buffed abit finannacily to counter the other factions abit, like nothing much, but a minor subtle tweak(I'm sure if the player is in the kingdome its not needed at all, but judgeing from the wars we have with them vs the other factions, they are way weaker and submit much easier, never hire merc companies or maybe 1, not like the others 5+..)
