Kudos for trying to introduce some kind of sanity via mods to diplomacy, as opposed to the broken system presented in vanilla RTW (and in virtually every game CA has done starting with STW).

I don't completely ignore having allies, (I was actually stunned in one of my Armenian campaigns to have Macedon stick to the alliance from beginning to end), and have never liked protectorates because they always seemed to get me into conflicts I didn't want, or wasn't ready for....