Dutch Campaign abandoned in disgust

[anweRU]

That said, I can't remember if I've ever had an ally DoW on me in patch3 ETW yet(although I have had protectorates doing it, but I count that as a kind of rebellion) ,

Never had it pre-patch. Post-patch, I was pretty darn surprised when UP declared war on my GB on turn 7! Just because I captured French Guyana and Flanders, from France and Spain respectively. Mind you, they were still "friendly" when they declared war.

I don't like the "lets go back to METW2 style war-with-everybody diplomacy" that we got with patch 1.2. I am otherwise happy with it.

[al Roumi]

I was pretty darn surprised when UP declared war on my GB on turn 7! Just because I captured French Guyana and Flanders, from France and Spain respectively. Mind you, they were still "friendly" when they declared war.

I don't like the "lets go back to METW2 style war-with-everybody diplomacy" that we got with patch 1.2. I am otherwise happy with it.

I'm not sure one should be surprised that the UP go to war with factions holding these provinces. I assume the AI for the major factions plays to the same list of conquests that a human player would (is that a huge over-estimation of the game though?). So, as the UP are required to capture both of these territories they, as the player would, inevitably are forced to sacrifice the alliance in order to satisfy their imposed victory conditions.

I do have a huge nagging doubt that I'm giving the AI and game design too much credit in that assumption though.

[anweRU]

The problem with the assumption is that the Dutch AI did not want to buy the territories when I offered to sell/ trade them. It didn't even request them via diplomacy as it did pre-patch.

In my pre-patch game, I had managed to sell Flanders to UP for 6K. This time the Dutch AI wouldn't give a single cent for Flanders when I offered it...

[al Roumi]

ah, ok then.

But maybe they didn't have the money? It takes turns as the player to save enough to buy a province for nothing but cash. When you have a standing army, its often simpler to conquer the province and just to move your defensive position into the captured territory as it becomes the new border?

What you have described would annoy me though, especially as your expeditionary force would have cost money and could have captured you something more usefull and profitable to your empire than something you end up gifting a retarded Ally. I guess the one benefit of gifting them the territory would be their gratitude -their disposition to you should go up immesurably if the territory means that much to them.

[anweRU]

Unfortunately, gifting a territory doesn't seem to do much for the diplomatic rating. The 2500 state gift gives a 100 points. Gifting territory not that much - IIRC, before I absorbed the 13 colonies, I was getting only a 1 point boost per region. I'll need to load an older save and double-check.