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unmerged(247980)

Corporal
3 Badges
Jan 8, 2011
37
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  • Europa Universalis III
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • Victoria 2: A House Divided
Currently playing as Sweden. Down to almost 0 infamy but still can't make any new alliances. Tried Uk, Germany, Austria, France.... No one wants to be allied with me! (Im not a GP)

Questions are:
1. How good relationship do you need to ally yourself?
2. Which factors stop you from making alliances?
 
If you look back there have been discussions on this point. Player countries always seem to have trouble getting alliances and, if you get them, they are rarely honoured - certainly not if the player country is a great power, and certainly not if you are the attacker, unless the ally is sphered. May be different for secondary powers. In any case, unless you have territory which another country thinks should belong to it, or you're in the way of certain colonial ambitions, then you may not need an alliance for defensive purposes (don't recall anyone declaring war on Sweden when I've been playing). If you declare war on someone else then you're on your own, anyway..

All that said playing as Germany, Russia suddenly offered me an alliance latish in the game, when my infamy got low enough.. that is, before I took another large slice out of China.. hey, I may even honour it, if its convenient..
 
Now that I think of it perhaps they could have a lonely ally meeting page in the game? 'Sweden seeking ally for long term commitment'. or 'Sardina Piedmont looking for relationship with near neighbour, great power status preferred'. Alliances still wouldn't be honoured but it might be fun..
 
Now that I think of it perhaps they could have a lonely ally meeting page in the game? 'Sweden seeking ally for long term commitment'. or 'Sardina Piedmont looking for relationship with near neighbour, great power status preferred'. Alliances still wouldn't be honoured but it might be fun..

Highly solvent Haitian, has own plane factory and private dreadnought, willing to travel.
 
Player countries always seem to have trouble getting alliances and, if you get them, they are rarely honoured
Well seems like Im not the only one who has experienced this... Guess I'm not doing things wrong then... Paradox mechanics ruins my chances of alliances instead... Bummer. So the next question would be: how do you cope with this?

As a 2ndary power (Sweden) which occationally rises to GP (only to be beaten by Bavaria and then Ottoman empire), I have waged a series of wars against France. Really hard to beat them without allies especially since they have allies. After a few years they simply wear me out. How do you fight with GPs as a 2nd power without allies? Any advice? Or should I simply stay of the GPs??
 
Now that I think of it perhaps they could have a lonely ally meeting page in the game? 'Sweden seeking ally for long term commitment'. or 'Sardina Piedmont looking for relationship with near neighbour, great power status preferred'. Alliances still wouldn't be honoured but it might be fun..

HAHAHAHA you made my day
 
Dunkelstum - yet to play Sweden but plan to get to it. However, my suggestion would be to ignore Europe, if you can, until late in the game.. with the important exceptions of whatever you have to do to form Scandavia and beating up the Netherlands.. at some point the Netherlands will probably attack Belgium, maybe after you're allied with that country. The Beligium govt will ask for help and great powers don't intervene.. hiopefully you'll then become the lead power and as compensation demand Java at a cost of 8 infamy.. this colony will supply more trooops than you ever really want, if you can afford them.. If you can't become allied maybe you can attack Holland anyway, while its busy with Belgium (not sure if this triggers intervention by allies, if you're still a secondary power),

also a good idea is to grab the two-three central provinces in Egypt early on to get access to the Red Sea .. you need an army of about 30k and transports.. and couple of frigates for escorts.. gives you a handy link to your colonial empire.. get the medicine advance which gives you the invention for protection against malaria then take southern two provinces in Vietnam (Da Nai or some such in the game).. they are also a handy source of troops.. for that matter, if you can't get Java then grab some of Siam while you're in the neigbourhood. (make sure GB is not friendly with it at that stage, otherwise it intervenes).. You can also hassle spain when its allies are distracted and grab its colonies.. there's a handy thread somewher about the best colonies to get.. one of the South American countries is also pretty good, I'm told..

Anyway, after building up a goodish supply of biddable colonial troops by one means or another and transporting them to the mother country, you can take on the european powers .. I suppose. France remains a problem as you still have to leave enough troops in your sprawling empire to take on that annoying stack of French troops that lands in, say, Indochina just as you have a French army on its last legs in Sedan.. GB also does this.. moving troops around after war is declared is also a problem as you run into those huge stacks of ships and.. well..

Anyway, those are my thoughts.. go colonial..
 
Thanx for your advice markslawson! A lot there I haven't done yet! Completely ignored colonies (since Sweden didn't have any in this wolrds history I figured I wouldn't in game either). That solves the problem with building an army. Economy is quite strong and I've managed to get quite rich... My problem was spending the money. I now see that using colonies, I can build larger armies with the colonized population!

This requires a test!
Thanx again!
 
If you look back there have been discussions on this point. Player countries always seem to have trouble getting alliances and, if you get them, they are rarely honoured - certainly not if the player country is a great power, and certainly not if you are the attacker, unless the ally is sphered. May be different for secondary powers. In any case, unless you have territory which another country thinks should belong to it, or you're in the way of certain colonial ambitions, then you may not need an alliance for defensive purposes (don't recall anyone declaring war on Sweden when I've been playing). If you declare war on someone else then you're on your own, anyway..

All that said playing as Germany, Russia suddenly offered me an alliance latish in the game, when my infamy got low enough.. that is, before I took another large slice out of China.. hey, I may even honour it, if its convenient..

Has it ever been addresed WHY that happens? Seems like a pretty big problem. Its obvious that the AI unfairly targets the player in-game, but to do it so openly and blatantly just takes away from the game.
 
Has it ever been addresed WHY that happens? Seems like a pretty big problem. Its obvious that the AI unfairly targets the player in-game, but to do it so openly and blatantly just takes away from the game.

Well, your problem here is that your premise is incorrect. The AI does not unfairly target the player (aside from putting more troops on the border of a player-run country), "openly" or otherwise. The reason some players find it hard to get alliances is that they don't act like the AI would (notably, keeping low infamy). It is very possible to both get GP allies and have them honour your alliances in most circumstances, and how to do this has been explained in several other recent threads on the subject.
 
Well, your problem here is that your premise is incorrect. The AI does not unfairly target the player (aside from putting more troops on the border of a player-run country), "openly" or otherwise. The reason some players find it hard to get alliances is that they don't act like the AI would (notably, keeping low infamy). It is very possible to both get GP allies and have them honour your alliances in most circumstances, and how to do this has been explained in several other recent threads on the subject.

From the games I have played, I see the major powers attacking all kinds of small countries (thus accumulating infamy) and having no trouble making allies. Also, I see major powers attacking me with no justification and having no trouble drawing allies, afterwards. I see often the Netherlands, the UK and France attacking small countries in Africa with no justification; and they seem to have no difficulty afterwards in making allies. Infamy seems to have a much greater impact on the player.
 
It doesn't. Plain and simple. The AI will lose alliances at high infamy just like you will, they just tend to not be at high infamy very often. And you can still make alliances even at high infamy, but it's much harder and they're much more likely to desert you as soon as a better option comes along.
 
It doesn't. Plain and simple. The AI will lose alliances at high infamy just like you will, they just tend to not be at high infamy very often. And you can still make alliances even at high infamy, but it's much harder and they're much more likely to desert you as soon as a better option comes along.

That just doesn't work out statistically. I can't read computer code, and I don't have numbers to back it up, but it happens in EVERY game.
 
That just doesn't work out statistically. I can't read computer code, and I don't have numbers to back it up, but it happens in EVERY game.

And in every single game that I don't stay above 15 infamy for most of the game (hi, Greece/Byzantium!), I have multiple GP allies. I'm not calling you a liar, but you're doing something wrong. It is possible, and in fact fairly easy once you know what to do.

If you want GP allies, keep your infamy as low as possible (for a test run if nothing else), bribe up as many GPs as possible to 200 relations, and set your messages to pop up telling you whenever an AI country breaks an alliance (look out for alliances broken due to war, too). Check at those times, and maybe not the first or second time, but sooner or later you will get "maybes" and "likelys" for alliance offers. As long as you are at least a secondary power yourself, you will get allies, I absolutely guarantee it (it will be easier to get them if you're in Europe yourself, but it's not impossible no matter where you are). In fact, you don't even need to check if you're a reasonably potent ally, as GPs with an open alliance slot and 200 relations will reasonably frequently send you alliance offers.
 
Well, how do you explain that when I have 0 infamy, none of the great powers ally with me? When I hover over the Alliance Button, it says impossible.

There was a time when I thought it was due to my alliances, but when I've never attacked anyone, I found this strange.
 
The AI has a hard limit on how many GPs it will ally with - it will always be "impossible" beyond that. That's why it's a good idea to set your messages to alert you when the AI breaks an alliance.

There can be other reasons too, of course. The AI won't ally if you have their cores (most of the time), and they also won't ally if they're hoping for a chance to attack you (France and Prussia usually can't keep alliances for long for that reason).
 
You can get GP allies. You just have to have good relations and non-conflicting geopolitical goals. In my USA where I annexed most of Canada, no one would ally me until my infamy was all burned, and even then only Prussia and Japan would because the UK and Russia are shared enemies between all of us.
 
Alliances really perplex me in Vicky2. The last game I played was as a very powerful Ottoman Empire and had everyone around me (that wasn't a GP) in my SoI. For some reason, Persia and Egypt constantly refused to ally with me, despite me saving them from aggressors on several occassions (Portuguese, Spanish, Sicilians, Dutch, etc). I understand that I have some of Egypt's cores, but are they really so vain as to deny my protection? At several points they were fighting 4 concession wars at once and I had to save them! I should have just annexed them, but the infamy hit is pretty nasty.

An alliance request basically says 'I'm not going to invade you for now'. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.