Alliances ... How to keep them?

[Bethea]

Granted, this game is called "Total War" ... But is there anyway you can actually maintain an alliance for a long period of time with a neighboring country so you don't have to worry about them attacking? I've managed Alliance/Marriage with the Spanish, but who knows how long that will last. My longest alliance was with the Egyptians (me being England) for over 200 turns.

[Duke Bart]

Well, the best way to maintain a long alliance is to pick an ally that is far away from you so your paths never cross.

Of course then you are setting up an alliance just to have one.

The best way to set up an alliance that is maintainable and effective is to find someone in your region whos goals do not mix with yours completely but if everything goes perfect then you may end up sharing a border eventually.

For example, when i play as denmark i know that central and eastern europe are the best targets for me, with the added possibility of an invasion of england. So that means that the factions i will definately go to war with include poland, the HRE, hungary and russia. those are factions that i will definately want to completely envelop and conquer. Then there are the countries i might go to war with, such as england and scotland, the byzantines and some italian states. Those i would also almost completely envelop. Finally there are countries such as france, the turks and sicily that i might take a bite out of at the end to win.

So with those possibilities i can ally myself with a nation such as spain, who want their regions in western europe and africa, and will move into western france if everything is going well.

So in that situation, playing as denmark i would ally myself with spain because when they are at their best, they take the regions i just mentioned which do not directly conflict with my goals but they do help me by weakening france.

Its kind of a rough way to put it but hopefully you get my idea, basically i pick an ally that will benefit me even though we stay out of each others way.

other good combonations include poland-venice(or sicily, depending on weather or not you want to keep poland in the north or make them more of a square)

turks-moors,france,milan(unless you are morally aposed to allying those evil, greedy jerks)poland

egypt-HRE,France, poland

france-byz, turks, poland

there are plenty more to chose from but ideally you want their area of influence and yours to eventually overlap (area of influence meaning that if they are at war with france, then france is in their area of influence) but their borders to only touch yours very late in the game.

theres some insight into my system anyway

[ReiseReise]

[Duke Bart]

Ok uk what, forget EVERYTHING i said,


my new stance is that you do exactly as reisereise says.
U will never have diplomatic issues ever again since everyone knows exactly how you stand

[Ratwar]

Well, the most effective way to have an alliance is to pick someone who has the same enemies as you, and has plenty of possible enemies besides you. Oh, and give them sack loads of cash, plus many a marriage.

Like in my current English H/H campaign, Denmark and I have been buddy buddy since I married off my first Princess to their faction heir. First came the marriage, and then a united hatred of those French Bastards! Now we're both fighting those Dirty Milanese goat suckers (who took out the HRE), and I'm giving them a G-note every few turns. We're closing in on 100 turns of friendship.

[Ramses II CP]

I don't think I've ever had the AI break a marriage alliance in vanilla unless I declared war on a third faction to whom the AI was also allied.

Gifting large sums of money over long periods of time also seems to work unless you hold one of the provinces they need for their victory condition.