France

[easytarget]

When playing as France is there any way you can maintain an alliance with England or is it a waste of time? Or I should say simply a temporary solution at the outset of the campaign used to prep for invading the island?

I want to know if I have a diplomatic option of ally with them and HRE and focus south on Spain and Portugal or whether I do in fact have to remove England (and Scotland for that matter) from the picture because no matter what one does they are going to break treaties and attack you regardless.

[druzhina]

When playing as France is there any way you can maintain an alliance with England or is it a waste of time? Or I should say simply a temporary solution at the outset of the campaign used to prep for invading the island?

I want to know if I have a diplomatic option of ally with them and HRE and focus south on Spain and Portugal or whether I do in fact have to remove England (and Scotland for that matter) from the picture because no matter what one does they are going to break treaties and attack you regardless.

Yes, you have that option. Try it and see.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

[Gregoshi]

In my HRE campaign, France left me alone for a long time. It was only in the latter stages of the campaign that they became aggressive towards me. I'd imagine it might be possible for the reverse to be true as well.

[easytarget]

Well, I decided there was no way England was going to leave me alone given they are stuck in Caen at the beginning of the campaign, so I didn't really give much thought to truly forming an alliance with them. I've not yet gone to war with them either.

Which brings me to something I do have a bit of an issue with, the HRE at turn 25 have just put one of my castles under siege. This is the same HRE I formed an alliance with by marriage, something I was sort of under the impression was supposed to last for a bit, but apparently all this talk about how these are stronger alliances is all talk. In one turn, and with me checking diplomacy relations every turn for the specific purposes of seeing whether my allies are going to turn on me, I went from good relations and alliances with HRE and Milan to HRE basically blowing off an alliance by marriage and Milan breaking our alliance because of HRE doing so.

This has led me to conclude that diplomacy in MTW2 is as much bullshit as it is in every TW w/ the exception ironically enough of S2. I formed alliances in S2 I maintained through to a Long Campaign victory, yes, post RD all the way to the end. Here, I can't get 25 turns into a campaign and I'm at war with what should be a blood alliance, I mean I've still got a general showing up in my family tree from the freaking HRE.

I find this in short, beyond stupid.

[Gregoshi]

Are you playing vanilla, Stainless Steel or another mod?

[easytarget]

This is plain ole vanilla. And I'm not expecting such an alliance to last forever mind you, just a short to medium term so I have enough time to execute a strategy based off it.

When I send the Princess I start the game with to a Nation to form an alliance I'm making a decision the game should respect otherwise it makes the entire mechanic pointless and draws into question whether I should bother with diplomacy at all.

I find this disappointing. And it's the whole reason I started this thread. If no one in the immediate vicinity of France is going to abide by treaties I won't bother assuming they are worth the trouble to initiate and I'll ignore this part of the game.