Alliance Shattered

So early on in the games i send out diplomats and queens and make alliances with most of my neighbors and establish trade routes and trade maps, and on occasion seal the deal with a princess. But it seems like the AI don't take these alliances seriously cause a few turn later i find myself being attacked from all sides by all my so called allies. I don't know what i am doing wrong, maybe they sense some kind of weakness or something, but i need to know if there is some way to make alliances more permanant?

Any comments or suggestions welcome...

If you share a border with any AI government, eventually they will backstab you. Not to worry, as they take a large hit to their reputation and other factions will not enter aggreements with them as easily. I try to ally myself with every faction out there except any that will be potential crusade/jihad targets. Then I wait for them to backstab me as they all do.

The only faction that has never backstabbed me is the Pope. He is the only ally worth having as a Catholic faction.

If you play like barbarian and kill everyone, attack first, always sack and kill prisoners so the world will see you as treat thats need to be dealt with. And its not true that your neighbours will always attack you, you just need to play as good knight.

Gifting them some money, even 100ƒ or so a turn, doesn't hurt either. But icek made the most important point. In my last full campaign, which was as the Hungarians, I behaved myself and released prisoners, answered every Crusade call and all that. The Poles and the Pope stayed allied to me for well over 100 turns.

When the Holy Roman Empire took a Polish province, I took it back and gifted it to the Poles. That probably helped too.

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Alliances in Kingdoms are easier to maintain, also.

Most importantly, you want to have 1.2 installed to somewhat maintain alliances.

In Kingdoms, they'll only last till you have a certain number of regions according to the posted script file, then they'll all gang up on you. Otherwise, they behave exactly like in vanilla.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

In Kingdoms, they'll only last till you have a certain number of regions according to the posted script file, then they'll all gang up on you. Otherwise, they behave exactly like in vanilla.

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True, FactionHeir, but by the time that kicks in you're strongly established. Less backstabbing in the early stages is an important change.

Considering that in Kingdoms you start with an established kingdom (I think), its more likely the AI doesn't go backstabbing as quickly, as all the backstabbing mechanics are determined via balance of forces at neighboring regions and generally free forces in addition to your production/economy output.
With a kingdom and high recruiting capabilities as well as sizable armies, its more difficult to get backstabbed in the code due to ratios being smaller instead of higher.

Also, with clustered maps with only one, maybe 2 fronts at most, your borders tend to be a lot better defended than on the grand campaign map where you have more than 4 fronts/bordering factions at times who may even be allied with each other (in preparation to go against you).

a good and effective way that i use most of the time is to ally to the factions which r just beyond my neighbours. Ex; playing with the turks you can ally with the hungarians and generally your alliance will hold until a crusade and sometimes they can even help u buy attacking your neighbour from the back. Thoug this tactic was much better in the original medieval, it still works ok with medieval2.

@FactionHeir.

I see -- that does make sense.

There is a difference between alliance and alliance. Marriage alliances are the strongest ones, and alliences with distant factions are the "safest ones" (though you might wonder about the benefits of such an alliance).
So if you want long lasting allies then:
- ally with a far away faction that has no shared border with you and will not have in the near future (like allying with russia as spain, etc); benefits are questionable though
- arrange a marriage alliance; IMO that is the best way to keep a neighbouring faction away from your lands. In my experience you are safe as long as the marriage lasts. Be careful though as soon as it is over, as the AI has no "memory" as far as I can tell, i.e. it will not remember to the fact that once you had a marriage allince with it.
- show strenght at the shared border. You can ignore this only if you have a marriage alliance. In all other cases you have to match the AI armies on your border (ofc this helps on all borders not just on the shared border with allies). So if your "trusted ally" marshalling a full stack near your border you have to show at least a full stack (or preferably more). If your ally spamming fleets near your ports then you have to have the same number of ships. Also, garison your border cities more than the free upkeep militias with at least a half stack. If you do not show strenght your ally (the military AI) will consider you as a weakling and thus a legitimate target to attack.

Gifting IMO does not help. True it will improve relationship, but I had many long standing allies with whom I had very good relationship backstabbing me by "attacking" a fort or blockading a port with a ship. I think that the core of the probelm, as it was revealed in the Empire interview, is that the diplomatic and military AI do not communicate with each other. So while you can improve diplomatic relationships by gifting etc, it does not matter as the military AI is completely ignorant about this. As far as I can tell the only thing that matters for the military AI is the relative strenght at the border! Not global strenght or global economic power. I think only this can explain why the AI so eager to blockade your faraway port with one ship, or to beseige your faraway fort with 2 militia spearmen (despite of long term alliance, very good relations, and supreme military/economic power). It sees only local advantages and ignores both thew global picture and the diplomatic picture.

In other words, you either need a marriage alliance or you have to persuade the military AI that you are not a good target. The diplomatic AI is important to get alliances on the first place, but it is irrelevant when it comes to maintaining alliances.

I maintain alliances by:

1. ALWAYS being stronger than them
2. Being at war with their enemies. Common sense here really, but this is probably the bigggest factor in maintaining a long relationship
3. Doing a marriage alliance if possible
4. Bribing them every few turns to keep relationship level high