Damn French...

[Rowan11088]

This is annoying...The French attack me the turn after they ally with me With no provocation, and after saying they hoped this would be a long-lasting alliance that would allow us to forgoe the costs of keeping up armies near eachother...what bastards...or rather, what cheese-eating surrender monkeys. So, what's the point of an alliance anyway? If they can just break it I mean. Does it decrease the likelihood they'll stab you in the back?

[Monk]

in MTW a allaince cant really be trusted. sometimes the Ai will honour the agreement, but unlikely. RTW promises to have a more indepth Diplomacy and hopfully an Ai that can comprehend the importance of a comrade in arms.

[Xicote]

Yeah, you can't trust an alliance with any faction, especially the French .

[Mr. Juice]

So far on my Italian campaign, The French attacked me the turn after allying with me as well. However, the Byzantines have held their word so far, and have been a good ally.

[malkuth]

Quote[/b] (Xicote @ Feb. 08 2003,23:54)]Yeah, you can't trust an alliance with any faction, especially the French .

To true. Tooo True.

[Bhruic]

You have to understand that when they say "allow us to forego the costs of keeping up armies near each other", what they really mean is "I hope you move a lot of your armies away from my border so that when I attack you next year I'll have a much easier time conquering".

Bh

[powdermonkey]

Darn Frenchies. As trustworthy as a snake, and as smelly as a garlic lavatory

[Mori Gabriel Syme]

I find that most, though obviously not all, alliances hold for a least a little while. Usually in my games, my allies will use my war with someone else a a pretext to cancel the alliance. In my current game for example, the Spanish, allied also with the Byzantines, cancelled our alliance when when the Byz. refused to allow passage for a crusade to Antioch. About five years later, they attacked my shipping.

Your right about the French, though. They can't be trusted at all. When I started this campaign as the English, I invaded Flanders on the first turn & had eliminated them within 20 years while avoiding excommunication.

[Beelzebub]

Basically for alliances, even if you make one, you can't just go and remove all your troops from your border. You need to match the AI's border forces or else they will still most likely attack if they see an opening and aren't at war with anyone else. I've found that if there's a huge stack, and you slowly remove troops after you ally, the AI will do the same, assuming he's a big nation with other uses for them. But you always need to keep a decent force matching his border forces.

Also in some cases, the AI is coded to REALLY hate the other faction and attack with any good oppurtunity even when allied. The french/english are a good example of this, they are coded to hate each other more than any other, so if you do manage to ally with them, expect them to break it first chance they get. Other examples would be spanish/almos, italians/hre, byzs/turks, etc.

[Foreign Devil]

Quote[/b] (Rowan11088 @ Feb. 08 2003,23:16)]cheese-eating surrender monkeys

I'll have to use this at my next cocktail party.

[Brutal DLX]

Thus far, I haven't noticed France being any less reliable than other factions you can ally with. A lot depends on your own strategies, the AI will react accordingly.
And as someone else here said, they will most likely attack if they see an opening, especially if they have a big army and don't make a lot of surplus money.
It is alos good not to ally with your direct neighbour, but with another faction that borders yoru neighbour on the opposite side, if that's possible. That way the situation becomes a whole lot more stable and predictable for you.

[maroule]

ahh, obviously this game is an anglo-saxon conspiracy, and was probably programmed by Rumsfeld

If it was a French game, I'm sure it would be the brits who would backstab the most often

I don't play it much anymore, but I'll probably buy the viking extention, if only out of gratitude for all the work put into this great system