This guide has been updated: 13 November 2021
What is popularity?
Popularity is a score that AI give to you. If your popularity is low they will declare war on you. This counts for computer countries but also inactive players that are taken over by AI. As the inactive players tend to have a lot of troops we want to avoid that they declare war on you.
Diplomacy with AI is very important. When you are fighting a challenging player the last thing you want is being attacked in the back by a player gone AI that declares war on you.
AI never eat, never sleep and they never stop attacking. For many players they can be hard to manage so it's better to keep that flank safe and keep on good terms with them.
So how to keep your popularity high?
First thing you do when you start a new game is to give all AI shared maps. O After day 4 every player that goes AI, I give ROW. Don't give an inactive player AI shared maps as in case he comes back he can see everything you do which is best to avoid. Don't forget to cancel the ROW to peace for returning players.
When you have adjusted all diplomacy settings with AI you do the following:
1st of all the more you trade with them in the market the more friendly you will be to them.
2nd don't skip steps in the diplomacy. If you are at peace, always give trade embargo first and declare war 24 hours later.
3th never attack without declaring war. If you attack without declaring war you get a popularity penalty of -25%.
4th declare trade embargo before declaring war.
5th declaring war to and attacking unpopular nations that AI already declared war on helps your popularity too.
Actions that improve your popularity with AI:
- being enemy with their enemies
- being friends (good diplomatic relations) with them and their friends
- trading with them
Actions that decrease your popularity with elite AI:
- having peace or better relations with their enemies
- having bad diplomatic relations or war with them or their friends
- starting new wars without declaring them
- when producing a lot of troops while already being unpopular
- having troops in their country without right of way
- getting your spies caught by them
- by having the largest army
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Just as a little update, I joined a 1932 Road to War game with Italy, and managed to somehow get my popularity so high multiple countries would grant me right of way and a couple even gave me share map (Czechoslovakia, Switzerland and Albania). In another game I didn't get RoW with nearly as much countries (using Argentina) but somehow managed to get Share Map with Paraguay.
Playing 100 player map, now in day 27. On first day set relations to RoW with all AI countries. My starting day one popularity rating was 73% - before doing anything at all. I have consistently kept the rating in the 70's and is now 83% - always embargoing first, then declaring war, then attacking. At his point none, NONE, of the AI countries have ever changed their relations with me. So if as I saw in an earlier posting on this thread that is an aberration well it is aberrating (is that a word?) me too.
The AI also doesn’t like to see you being friends with their enemies.
I am fairly certain that declaring war on human players counts the same way against your popularity as declaring on AI
Yes I treated both AI and human players the same.
Has anyone actually seen the popularity of you country improve with an A.I. because of trade?
I have not.
The 'popularity' behavior differs from map to map?Restrisiko wrote:
May I ask what kind of map it is?
that would be even more obscure.
Could be true, however.
On the newer version of Supremacy, the morale malus differs drastically from map to map.
I don't think the formula changes, but with larger maps there are more nations and therefore more data points for the AI to calculate your reputation from.WayneBo wrote:
The 'popularity' behavior differs from map to map?
Wait, so the map does not change it?VorlonFCW wrote:
I don't think the formula changes, but with larger maps there are more nations and therefore more data points for the AI to calculate your reputation from.WayneBo wrote:
The 'popularity' behavior differs from map to map?
That was me in my first game. I was Germany and Portugal (AI) offered me Right of Way. But I was being too aggressive so they removed it
I didn't know AI can offer Right of Way.KrestelGaming wrote:
That was me in my first game. I was Germany and Portugal (AI) offered me Right of Way. But I was being too aggressive so they removed it
They do offer RoW, apparently some small country at random early in my current before I joined a coalition and went on a war mongering campaign, always declaring way first, but not always embargoing 24 hrs before (wish they cut that requirement to 12 hrs- the game seems to take longer) ... 
The elite AI is pretty smart!
But don't make it any smarter! ... Small AI countries are easy to beat (e.g. Low Countries, Baltic States, Central America, etc.). Larger AI countries barely intact and abandoned by the human players after some development are more of a challenge (e.g. Russia, Germany, Japan, UK and US in 39 map). If you try to make the first group harder to beat, the second ground will be nearly impossible to beat unless attacked by multiple experienced human players ... 
Yes I know, they are already really smart. That is my point. Keeping it will be ok, but making it smarter would kill this wonderful game.gusv wrote:
But don't make it any smarter! ... Small AI countries are easy to beat (e.g. Low Countries, Baltic States, Central America, etc.). Larger AI countries barely intact and abandoned by the human players after some development are more of a challenge (e.g. Russia, Germany, Japan, UK and US in 39 map). If you try to make the first group harder to beat, the second ground will be nearly impossible to beat unless attacked by multiple experienced human players ...
My experience in my current game with Japan in 39 map appears to be that having the LARGEST armed forces is the dominant factor in determining popularity.Restrisiko wrote:
I'm curious if anyone reports that his dropped popularity actually can be increased again ..(..for that to work, the Elite-AI system must have been revised, that would be very welcome, of course -- but is it so? was that really done?)
.. in my previous experience from the past with several Elite-AI maps popularity, once decreased, worked only in one direction, it was possible to hold / stable popularity by the specified "actions" (for a certain time), but soon as popularity starts to fall it was impossible to increase it again over the existing value.
I have been embargoing first, most of the time reaching 24 hrs, and then declaring war before attacking. The last three countries that I attacked (Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, and an aggressive UK that joined the axis) had a much lower popularity than I (was over 30% for me before I attacked them). Nazi Germany and the UK both attacked my Swedish ally, so I felt that I had to help him out or that he would disappear off the board!
So here are the popularity ratings of the top 3 humans in the 39 map in my current game- 1 hr prior to start of day 20:
1) Japan 7%, 2) UK 1%, 3) Sweden 5%
From my experience in my previous game, I don't expect my popularity to rise as Restrisiko said above. If having the largest army on the map (which happens often for me), it seems that I have no hope of ever increasing my popularity ... 
In your list, the additional penalty when skipping a diplomatic relation (i.e. mostly going from peace or better to war within less than 24 hours) is missing. Is that a mistake in the list, or has it been removed from the source code?freezy wrote:
Actions that decrease your popularity with elite AI:- having peace or better relations with their enemies
- having bad diplomatic relations or war with them or their friends
- starting new wars without declaring them
- when producing alot of troops while already being unpopular
- having troops in their country without right of way
- getting your spies caught by them
I hope that penalty is still there - in my opinion it's very good, almost genious.
In case it is still there, I'd also like to ask: Does it apply the same way to going from RoW to trade embargo or from shared map to peace within less than 24 hours?
And I have another question. If you declare war on a country that had attacked you first (or perform an action that will make your own status towards that country switch to war as well, i.e. counter-attack Does that harm your popularity?
I hope it doesn't. Clearly it shouldn't.
If someone attacks you first, aren't you already at war?
Lots of players are unaware of the popularity mechanic, starting the round with surprise attacks on AI. Following the guidelines in this thread, others were less popular so I avoided AI embargoes (although one AI declared war after a misplayed surprise attack).
Seems that popularity most important toward the beginning of a round, less so later.
In my current game in the 39 map, popularity seems to have a negative bias to the point that most countries have popularity under 5%! ... 
Obviously, both popularity and province morale have many more negative
than positive factors.
If you think it has gotten bad on CoW, try S1;
the starting morale conditions are so bad, core provinces
are in danger of revolting by day FOUR!
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