is it possible to maintain a good and healthy alliace with a faction, and if so- how!

[cowkiller]

hi everyone,

ive been wondering for a while weather you can actually maintain a strong relationship with another faction for say atleast about 30 years, i have a coupple of questions i need ansering :help:

1. are you more likely to maintain a alliance with some civilised nation ( Greece, Macedonia, Egypt, Romans etc. etc.)
or more likely with tribal people (Gaul, , britania and germania?- or is their no difference at all

2. does the said diplomats skill affect how strong an alliance is

3. does doing certain things ( gibing big gifts of money) change the likely hood of betrayal

4. does previous track record history, say you previous murdered their leader affect the alliance?

5. does them being in a said region affect there outcome of an alliance ( say Gaul where in Egypt or in Greece will it change the effect of the alliance)

6. finally, any tips :blush:

[ReluctantSamurai]

Diplomatic skill has no effect on the strength of an alliance. Neither does civilized vs barbarian.

Two tips:

Never make an alliance with a faction you have a common border with. That is tantamount to a backstab and an invasion. Only if you have local overwhelming superiority will this not happen.

Never, never, ever make an alliance with the Greek Cities. They are the biggest back-stabbers in the game, bar none. I once saw them switch sides three times, attacking their former allies TWICE!

[Myth]

Depends on the difficulty. Anything greater than Medium makes your relations with everyone worse as time goes on. Anything lower than Medium makes them better over time. In general, at VH, you'll be hard pressed to find meaningful allies. But in Vanilla RTW you can just steamroll everyone anyway.

[wumpus]

Never, never, ever make an alliance with the Greek Cities. They are the biggest back-stabbers in the game, bar none. I once saw them switch sides three times, attacking their former allies TWICE!
Yep--the same goes for Romans. I had trade relation with them, even gave them gifts of money, yet when they invaded Thrace or Macedonia or Sicily, they attacked me anyway. Too late, because I was expanding territory, they were also expanding [you can say we're both imperialists] and clashed in many games. Better make an alliance with Sarmatia or someplace. Hawooh.

[Amaethon]

Never, never, ever make an alliance with the Greek Cities. They are the biggest back-stabbers in the game, bar none. I once saw them switch sides three times, attacking their former allies TWICE!

So true. When I was playing as the Seleucid empire and they only had Sparta left I saved them from the Romans, and Macendonians and even gave them Corinth back and what did they do?!!! Whilst i was busy dealing with the Romans in Italy they attacked Athens, and Tryed to take Crete!! I beat them but was shocked at there betrayal!! I got them though. I took Corinth from them then besieged Sparta. They tryed to make peace but I simply asssassinated there Diplomat!! Then when I captured Sparta despite the population being happy with my occupation I Exterminated the populace!!! Never even attempted alliances with them since!!!

[Brandy Blue]

Is it true that an ally is less likely to bretray you if you try to match foreign policies - be allies with their allies and enemies of their enemies?

[ReluctantSamurai]

Not that I've ever noticed......

The only surefire way to stay allied with someone (excepting the Greek Cities or the Romans) is to not have a common border. Personally, I don't waste my time anymore making formal alliances. If I want to see a faction get a heads up on another, or create problems for a common enemy, I just feed them money at intervals...but no formal agreement.

[Brandy Blue]

Well, surefire is nice, but I think a lot of players would settle for reasonably reliable. Can you share a common boundary and get reasonably reliable?

[ReluctantSamurai]

Can you share a common boundary and get reasonably reliable?

Back when I still made formal alliances, I had exactly one alliance that worked like one would expect an alliance to work, and it lasted to the end. IIRC, I was playing as Macedon, and my ally was Pontus. It was rather shocking really, as we shared a very long border in Anatolia. Most of the time the AI is just really stupid in breaking an alliance....even to the point of self destruction. Case-in-point:

As Armenia, I had an alliance with Scythia during one game. I held all the ports along the southern edge of the Black Sea and held all of Anatolia, being well into my campaign to eliminate the Big E. They had all the northern ports including Chersonesos. In looking at the trade screen, a very large portion of Scythian income came from sea trade with me. We had only one common border between Tribus Alanni and Colchis provinces, and it's a verrrrry long way between Campus Alanni and Kotais, the capitals of each respective province.

In my campaign against Egypt, I had moved all of my Black Sea fleets to the Eastern Med to gain naval superiority, leaving the Black Sea area with one small transportation fleet. Somehow the AI took this as a sign that I was ripe for the picking, or some such nonsense....it sent a single bireme to blockade Sinope, breaking the alliance and starting a war. Now considering that the in-game graph for faction strengths had me rated #1, and Scythia was involved in a distant war with Germania, this made no sense whatsoever.

The reason I remember this game is because of the rapid collapse of my former ally after their backstab. I could do without their trade, but they could not do without mine, and the loss of income led to riots in their high population cities, and they were unable to replace their losses against Germania.

The pre-Empire TW version of the "Black Knight"??

[Brandy Blue]

I wondered because I too had a very long alliance (not to the end, but it was quite useful for a long time) and I made some real efforts to keep it going - matching my foreign policy to my ally's, forgoing easy rebel conquests to leave my ally somewhere to expand that wasn't me, maybe occaisional small gifts. So it looked like I was doing something that worked, but maybe I was just plain lucky. It hasn't happened again, but then I haven't bothered trying.

Maybe alliances work better for short campaigns than for the full campaign, if only because your ally has less time to decide to do something silly?

[Myth]

But why would you even want allies? Their cities are put to better use when governed by you!

[ReluctantSamurai]

:whip::whip:

:laugh4: