Speaking of Alliances/Diplomacy

In my current english campaign (h/vh) I'm 8 provinces away from meeting the long campaign victory conditions. I have eliminated the Scots and French, been at war with HRE and Egypt for about 100 turns. I been able to maintain long alliances with Spain, Danes, Russians, the Pontif, and Byzantines. The Timurids have just shown up an are attacking the Turks.

The Pontif is gone beserk in the campaign and has pretty much wipe out Milan leaving them the two island provinces next to the Italian pennsula. He has just excommicated HRE and are poise to attack the remaining providences I didn't bother to capture ( mostly all the providences that had fortresses ). Even though I am his ally know he represents the biggest threat to my empire.

Since my economy is in overdrive I have decided to start my candestine campaign against the pope and use the remaining faction of Milan to wage my war. Every turn I donate about fifty percent of my income (about 20K florins ) to Milan in an effort to build up their army so that they can recapture their lost territory and weaken the Pope. I have just set up an aggreement to pay 2k tribute for 5 years if they attack the Pope on top of the single payment gifts.

Has anyone else tried this before? Does this strategy work or will the AI just squander the money and do nothing?

In my experience gifting money to the AI is like throwing it down the toilet. The AI seems to be utterly incapable of managing its finances. I suspect that it simply blows all the money on spamming militia stacks, all-trebuchet stacks and the like, and thus any subsequent donations go on paying the upkeep on these white elephants.

I have tried the tactic you are using to get the Scottish to fight back a bit better against the English, or get the Moors to last a bit longer against the Spanish; suffice to say neither worked very well. In my experience the most effective way to prop up an ailing ally is direct military aid, i.e. send your troops to attack the faction that is attacking them (though I suppose this defeats the point of using the AI faction as a bulwark). The next best thing is to give them land. In particular a well-developed castle will actually help quite a lot, since if the AI has the facilities to train decent troops it will spam them instead of town militia, but it can never be bothered to build the infrastructure by itself.

However, do be prepared for the AI to backstab you as soon as you do this. More likely than not it will train a half-stack of decent troops from its new castle and send them to attack one of your cities.

Though here's a thought: Why not buy a few settlements off your "friend" the Pope, and immediately gift them to Milan? You can do this without even getting excommunicated.

Yeah, honestly i have given the AI advantages constantly (did add_money 40000 around 20 times to give france 800k) and all they ever do is build up huge armies, and become bankrupt.

The issue is that they do not attack, ever, even rebels. In the game i mentioned where i fed france money, they circled a rennes (rebel at the time) with five full stacks and an 8 star general probably scaring those rebels shitless but never attacking.

Your method may work when it comes to slowing down the pope but it will never stop him. Honestly though if you are 8 spots short then attacking the pope is a waste of time. Too much work to just win it.

That's disappointing, I really wanted to see if I could turn a faction with a losing situation around without surrendering territory. I will try to see if I can buy some providences from the pope and gift them to Milan. Sounds like it might do they trick. I mean I'm at the stage of the game where I'm the lone superpower and I thought it would be fun to manipulate the situations of the other factions.