Mid-Eastern Peace-maker

hehehe, at the beginning of the game had this lone diplomat travel all the way along northafrican coast into egypt and seleucid lands. along the way he allied both: with egyptians and seleucids. meanwhile, my other diplomats had secured aliances practically everywhere else on the map spare carthagians, greeks ang gauls (i was playing as julii). once i reached the parthian lands, parthians were at war with seleucids. i sold aliance + trade rights + a map to the parthians: boom! parthians and seleucids declare ceasefire. i moved the diplomat further into armenian lands who were at the time at war with parthians and sold the same "sweet package" to them: boom! armenia declares ceasefire with parthians... the same got repeated with the people of Pont... :)

Yes, you can build huge alliance networks pretty quickly, it's great fun. The tough part is keeping them together. I had a very nice little alliance quadrangle going between myself, Britannia, Germania and Dacia, with military access to Britannia and Germania, and trade rights and basic alliances with Scythia, Pontus, and the Spanish, which held solid for almost fifty years.

Then suddenly Germania declared war on Dacia, and so did Britannia. I sided with the Germans but as soon as I did, the Brits revoked their alliance with me. Now it's all gone to heck! Ah well, such is diplomacy. Now I'm working on rebuilding the alliances, except this time with Scythia and Pontus as military access partners, hopefully it holds against Egypt, those @*&$!.

Securing and keeping an alliance with Egypt is probably the best thing you can do, as they'll wipe out everyone on the Eastern map for you.