Certain countries won't ally with me

[Yagami Kira]

I'm doing a campaign as Denmark right now, and I'm trying to get Ireland and Friesland to join my alliance. They refuse every time I ask. I grease them with gifts to get high relations, they still refuse. My only current allies are Norway and Sweden so I'm not at the alliance size limit yet; I should be able to bring two more countries in. I have royal marriages with both Ireland and Friesland. Our relations are very high, well over +100; with Ireland it's almost +200. My badboy rating is low, only 3.5 with "respectable" reputation. And this is pre-Reformation, so we still have the same religion (and my Catholic tolerance is at the max), if that matters.

Odd thing is, I had no trouble allying Norway. And we'd just finished a long ugly war; as soon as it ended (or rather, as soon as Sweden stabbed me in the back by ending it for a 32-ducat indemnity when I had occupied almost every Norwegian province, causing me to swear eternal vengeance upon Sweden), I invited Norway into my alliance and they joined immediately. Our relations were only +80 or so and we had no royal marriage due to having been at war.

Why is it harder to ally some countries than others? Even small and weak countries like Ireland and Friesland.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Different culture and distance/different region might be reasons
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/diplomacy-faq-v1-08.172908/

 

[Yagami Kira]

Could be. Friesland was only like three provinces/two sea zones away from me though. After I posted this, I realized that my monarch's low diplomatic rating may have been the culprit. It seems like my early monarchs have been generally mediocre. Still, it was frustrating that I would keep bringing Ireland up to +200 relations and they still wouldn't join my alliance after probably 20 requests. You'd think they'd be glad to, considering how vulnerable they are, sitting there next to England with almost no fortresses. They ultimately joined an alliance with Prussia and the Teutonic Order.

I finally gave up on allying with those two, and instead started asking to join the France-led alliance after my own expired. It took several tries and a lot of gifts (and with Denmark's early economy, gifts to France are quite expensive), but finally they let me in. This alliance has been enormously fruitful for me; me and France have largely carved England up between us in a series of wars, and I now rule about half of the island of Britain (most of England and part of Scotland). I also conquered most of Sweden after they turned against me, and Norway voluntarily annexed itself to me. So now it's 1497 and Denmark has already become a major Northern European power.