A Little Politics

[SirGrotius]

I was wondering what role do alliances play in the game? While reading through the strategy guide, I noticed that they suggested making an alliance with a certain faction to help hold another faction at bay. But is there any deleterious effect for breaking an alliance? I don't remember reading about this in the manual, but the strategy guide hinted that the faction leader who breaks an alliance loses some influence as a result. Is this true (I hope so, for the sake of Diplomacy.)

[econ21]

Yes, break an alliance and you will find it hard to make new ones. When allies fight and you have to choose one, I think you can make an honorable exit. The painless other way to break the alliance is when you are stabbed in the back

I like alliances, as fighting total war with everyone is too exhausting. They do seem to keep the wolf outside for a while (eg England can buy off France for some time). The hungriest wolves won't even make an alliance (eg at the beginning on early HRE can't ally with France). But sooner or later, I suspect a neighbouring faction will turn on you, ally or not, if they are stronger.

Note that it is very easy to lose all your allies if you are in a couple of wars and factions choose to keep their alliance with your enemies rather than you. For that reason, I would recommend wiping out an enemy faction so that you can court their friends again. Otherwise, you may have to play most of the game with no diplomacy at all.

[Brutal DLX]

Hi,

I never noticed that in my campaigns nor do I care, honestly. I try to ally with everyone intially and then choose sides when they go to war. I rarely break my alliances, the #1 way they break is when the AI decides to attack my ships.
As a side note, when I played HRE, I could ally with France and vice versa. But doing so allows to French AI to dedicate all its forces on the English and thus France will conquer all of Britain really quickly and you end up realising you just shot yourself in your own foot by allying with them.

[econ21]

Um, interesting observation, Brutal_DLX. Now I think about it, there was a time when I could ally with France and France usually ate up England Don't know what has been happening lately, but as HRE I used to send my emissary to the French asap but stopped when he kept being refused.

The piracy leading to war thing really annoyed me till I read a post saying to double up ships in contested trade routes. Having sufficient stacked naval forces in a sea zone seems to deterr those piratical Italians, Scilians and, well, any Tom, Dick or Harriet with one miserable dinghy boat, actually.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Declaring war on an ally lowers the influence rating of your King. Which makes it more difficult for your faction to make alliances later on. If you want to be agressive, choose your alliances carefully. Attacking a neutral faction doesn't lower the King's influence, so it is better to remain neutral with a neighbor that you have designs on invading.

[rory_20_uk]

Interesting. I was a bit of a thug on the diplomacy screen, basically doing it for trade and nothing else - if I wanted to attack I would with no real thought to anything else; if I wanted to ally again I would keep attacking them until they had had enough of me - although thinking about it they were less than thrilled about an alliance, just a ceasefire.

[whiskeyjack]

hi
the piracy thing used really get on my nerves till i heard that if you place two ships together in that area, you won't get attacked and it hasn't happened since.
i thought the whole alliance thing in M:TW wasn't that important at first but in recent campaigns i've noticed it can be pretty helpful when an ally sends a couple of hundred troops to help you out. i almost feel guilty when i turn around and stab him in the back http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif