How to Stabilize Borders with Minors?

[lloydster4]

Noob player here. Pretty confident in Beginner games, mostly overwhelmed in Regular.

During early game, I often find myself using a large chunk of manpower just to block non-hostile minors from gobbling my borders. Is there a diplomatic way to stop them from seizing territory? I'm assuming there's a stratagem card for this, but idk which council/profile is required.

Just to be clear, I'm referring to a minor faction that I am not currently at war with. Usually nomads or farmers.

[boomboomf22]

In theory, (seems to vary from game to game) you should be getting minor make peace stratagems from your starting council (assuming you have them generating stratagems and not just political power) the foreign council can also generate them, tho your starting council should be generating enough stratagems that you shouldn't need to rush your foreign council.

That has been my experience anyway.

[Twotribes]

Make peace only works IF they declare war on you. And the other solution is a game killer kinda, You can get minor cards that let you befriend them and then make them a tax paying ally of sorts the problem is you can not then later attack them because of heavy negs for it, the new builds do have 2 cards that can change that one gets them to join you freely the other threatens them to join you. The problem I am having is the skill check for them is TOO damn HIGH.

Also depending on their Government if you start taking their land some of them will ask you to clarify your position which establishes known borders BUT not all minors do it. Clarifing will stop the border loss and won't keep you from attacking later.

[Tomn]

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

Make peace only works IF they declare war on you. And the other solution is a game killer kinda, You can get minor cards that let you befriend them and then make them a tax paying ally of sorts the problem is you can not then later attack them because of heavy negs for it, the new builds do have 2 cards that can change that one gets them to join you freely the other threatens them to join you. The problem I am having is the skill check for them is TOO damn HIGH.

Also depending on their Government if you start taking their land some of them will ask you to clarify your position which establishes known borders BUT not all minors do it. Clarifing will stop the border loss and won't keep you from attacking later.

Not true - you can make peace while your relationship status is unclear and it'll clarify borders and stop border flipping.

[border10]

There's a Minors card named Propose Peace that will work even when not at war with them. Seems odd that you don't have to be at war to propose peace but it does work. Stops them dead in their tracks. I'm pretty sure I've only used it on Farmers. I'm unsure if it will work on the less peaceful minors.

[ramnblam]

Minors will often ask you to normalize relationships where you pick if you want to be friends or enemies. If you choose to be friends the border rules now apply. I have found situations where minors start stacking on your border and it's easier just to declare war before they cut off your roads or get to close to your cities.

[VoodooDog]

i think he is talking if they are not at war.
i kinda have the same problem, minors have some walkers and walk all over my water mine constructino site and destroy it. i cant attack it because that would declare war on them...
really kinda annoying.
if i pull to many troops the walker just runs away across sand dunes and i cant follow

[Tomn]

ORIGINAL: VoodooDog

i think he is talking if they are not at war.
i kinda have the same problem, minors have some walkers and walk all over my water mine constructino site and destroy it. i cant attack it because that would declare war on them...
really kinda annoying.
if i pull to many troops the walker just runs away across sand dunes and i cant follow

Again, you can propose peace to minors even if they're not at war with you.

Note that not all minors are equally happy to hear out peace offers, though.

Edit: To clarify, minor relations go like this:

Unclear (Starting relation, borders are fluid and can change with troop movement) -> Peace (Borders are fixed and will not change) -> War (self-explanatory) -> Peace (If the propose peace card is used and accepted).

This doesn't include protectorates or client states of course.

[lloydster4]

After some more experimentation, I've found that many minors just aren't open to diplomacy at all (Any dice check higher than 200 might as well be 200,000). Strangely enough, I was playing an autocracy and happened to get a couple "offer military advisors" events with a group of local Raiders. Our relations got high enough that they formalized the border and later I played a stratagem to convert them to a protectorate.

Overall, it seems like walling is the best strategy until you can gather the necessary tech and manpower. Decision events are too random to rely upon consistently, but you'll get lucky sometimes.

Side note: Under the reports tab, I found a reference table for stratagem cards that is extremely helpful for looking up which councils/profiles generate which cards.

[Malevolence]

There are cards to drive that 200 number down.

Mutants are never peaceful.

[diamondspider]

I just kill them off or hold them. I need their territory in any case.