Alliances and consequences

Hello,

I noticed that your allies are much more likely to betray and attack you than neutral bordering factions for some reason. In fact, allies will always attack you eventually, against all odds, as if it were forced via script, and usually with their king leading the attack. Is there something I can do to remove this particualr annoyance?

Regarding faction marriages, I always seem to wonder what my princesses are really useful for. If I marry them to another faction, I get an alliance (which may be betrayed) and they get my lands should my king die with no heirs (well, game over unless your are HRE....). I end up marrying them off to some of my generals usually for "good service" as you could call it.

Princesses of other factions are obviously welcome to marry into my line, since this gives me access to their lands eventually, but some factions seem keen to marry every single one of their princesses off to my heirs without prompting, while others outright refuse to marry at all. This is all with a 9 authority king and both factions bordering my nation and heirs available. Oddly enough though, even when such a faction dies, I usually don't end up with their lands. Does the princess need to be of the current line for this to work or the heir to which she was married need to be king for this to work? Also, this only seems to work if you are still allied, and not neutral or at war?

Thanks for your time.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

I noticed that your allies are much more likely to betray and attack you than neutral bordering factions for some reason. In fact, allies will always attack you eventually, against all odds, as if it were forced via script, and usually with their king leading the attack. Is there something I can do to remove this particualr annoyance?.

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Unfortunately, the diplomacy is the disappointing part of MTW. Basically, the AI will attack you (irrespective of whether or not it's allied with you) if it thinks that it has a good chance of taking one of your province and if it has nowhere else to expand for a lesser cost (rebel land mainly)

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Regarding faction marriages, I always seem to wonder what my princesses are really useful for. If I marry them to another faction, I get an alliance (which may be betrayed) and they get my lands should my king die with no heirs (well, game over unless your are HRE....). I end up marrying them off to some of my generals usually for "good service" as you could call it.

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Mazrrying your princess to your own generals is pretty much the best you can do (increases loyalty by two shields). Better off seeking alliances with your emmissaries or bishop, they are there for the long term (at least until they get assassinated) while you princess disappear once they get +/-32.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Princesses of other factions are obviously welcome to marry into my line, since this gives me access to their lands eventually.

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Do not rely too much on that one, it happens once every three hundred campaign (happened to me once and I got the game in 2002). The best bit about marrying AI princess is that it enable your princes to produce heirs immediately.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

but some factions seem keen to marry every single one of their princesses off to my heirs without prompting, while others outright refuse to marry at all.

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Usually only the factions to which you are not allied already will accept to marry their princess to your princes. It seems to me that it is due to the fact that the AI regards a such proposal a bit like an alliance offer (indeed when the AI offer to marry one of your princes it always implies an alliance). Interestingly, that rule is not 100% correct since even when your are allied with all the princess-producing faction, there is almost always one faction that, even though it's allied to you, will constantly accept your offers. Once you get too big for the AI liking, all your marriage proposal will be turned down.

I think the inheriting lands thing works only 1) when your current queen is from that faction, 2) you have really good happiness across your kingdom. Not sure on whether allied/neutral makes a difference, but I'm sure being at war prevents it.

Allies can't be trusted (except, funnily enough, the Vikings in VI - once you get them onside they tend to honour the alliance through to the bitter end - ie when you attack them :laugh4: ) A number of times I've had the situation where an AI faction has sent me a princess one year, and an invasion the next! The lesson is don't drop your guard just because you have an alliance. It's not as pronounced an effect as it is in STW though, where you can be pretty much sure that if an enemy offers peace and you accept, they WILL attack again the next year. It seems like accepting a peace offer is seen as a sign of weakness. This effect is still there in MTW but watered down a lot and modified by other things, I'm sure.

Likewise, I tend to use princesses for keeping generals a bit more loyal, that is their main value to me, to be honest. (I even dropped one on a prince last night to head off a civil war, and of course he died the next year, and his "successor" general still had the "secret incest" vice, even though he was no longer married.... at least the loyalty boost carried across to him ~D)

So there is no way to modify this by editing some of the files?

Nothing you can do, alas, it's firmly within the "hard-coded" end of things. About all you can do is add or remove princesses for different factions in the unit_prod. But they'll still behave like princesses (or not, if you remove them ~D)

The best thing to remember about this game is no one is your friend. Use the beginning to build trade and upgrade to the best troops. All it take is one faction to declare war and all will probably break their alliance with you.

Make ships from day one until you have 5+ in each sea lane. get 500,000 in your bank and alliance won't matter.

Noticed florins are harder to come by on default rather than small unit sizes, so my empire is barely getting by as opposed to floating in florins for bribery.
Can't afford all those ships and bolster my land borders. Got a ship in most non occupied sea lanes though.

My influence 8 king didn't seem to help much when France and then HRE declared war on me (from being allies). Everyone else cancelled their alliance with me even though I was considered the largest military power and my king had more influence than theirs. Maybe that's part of the higher difficulty level?

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My influence 8 king didn't seem to help much when France and then HRE declared war on me (from being allies). Everyone else cancelled their alliance with me even though I was considered the largest military power and my king had more influence than theirs. Maybe that's part of the higher difficulty level?

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Part of the "bloat effect" - when you're the largest, everyone else will need to stick together to protect themselves from you (and don't try pretending you won't be crushing them all in the next century or so ~D)

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Noticed florins are harder to come by on default rather than small unit sizes, so my empire is barely getting by as opposed to floating in florins for bribery.
Can't afford all those ships and bolster my land borders. Got a ship in most non occupied sea lanes though.

My influence 8 king didn't seem to help much when France and then HRE declared war on me (from being allies). Everyone else cancelled their alliance with me even though I was considered the largest military power and my king had more influence than theirs. Maybe that's part of the higher difficulty level?

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This happens on every difficulty level. I have played countless games on Hard level default setting and 90% of the time I will have at least 500,000 in florin no matter what faction I play. If catholic, you have free rain to take over all the Muslim land. ANTIOCH, TRIPOLI, Egypt will net 2000- 3000 with trade. Thats 6000- 9000 per year.

From day one send your emissary to bribe Sweden+ Norway and spam out ships till your empire connect. By 1205 you should have enough money in the bank to not be effected by alliances and war. Taking over muslim land is my key to getting rich with any faction.

Alliances don't mean too much in this game.

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Originally Posted by blackboard

Alliances don't mean too much in this game.

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^^ In the long term I absolutely agree. But in my experience they can be useful; I sometimes use new alliances to cancel previous ones, paving the way for war without loss of influence.

Also your allies can come to your aid relieving sieges and joining in with raids on other provinces. Usually it's for their gain though rather than any altruistic intentions.

The most fickle faction for breaking alliances IMHO, is the Papacy, who also have the threat of excommunication and their constant re-emerging with stacks of troops. That's AI for you!

While I agree that alliances doesn't matter much, there's atleast a reason behind why they don't ally with you midgame.

They're allied with your enemies and they never seem to break that alliance by allying with you. Killing/making peace (this is mid-game remember? Still possible sometimes at this point) with those faction will make more factions willing to ally with you.

Being allied with a faction may increase the differential in combat strength that has to exist before it will attack you.

alliances are most important at the earlier t=stages of th game when your empire is most fragile, or when you are prosecuting a war. No matter what you do though, if you start to get too strong you can count on nations banding together against you when you attack soemone.

It's actually a really good part of the game balance. France has been a major force in every XL game I've played. Routinely conquering most of europe, however, in the process they make a number of smaller enemies that can band together like a wolf pack always threatening to bring them down if they get the chance. That's your job - giving them that chance by attacking the dominant faction where it is weakest forcing them to face your new and significant threat.

With luck, the smaller wolves will gather and start nipping at the flanks while you and the main opower go head to head. Rapid expansion can leave you dangerously over streched, particularly if you've made a number of enemies to do so.