Alliances are useless.

[Lemony Lime]

I've noticed a consistent pattern in the way alliances go in this game. My allies ask me to join every war they are ever part of, but never are willing to join any of mine. What's worse, is that other NPC's allies always help them. So, essentially what seems to happen, is that I end up with a good 10 or so nearby allies (playing ck2+ shattered world mod btw) and invite every single one of them to join me, and they all refuse. My enemy who has an army of 63 total, brings in his one and only ally (who was also my ally who refused to help me btw.) with twice as many troops as me, and takes over my entire kingdom. (And no I didn't come post this immediately after that happened, that's just one of dozens of examples.) Is this due to the mod, or is the game itself like this? I've noticed similar things in the vanilla game, but considering I was just a count in france at first, I couldn't really make use of allies, and by the time I gained independence, I was strong enough that I didn't need them. The few times I actually did call them to help me though, they never would. Ever.

Ever.


(To make this post slightly more productive, are there any mods than increase the chance of allies joining you in war? Or could someone help me make that change myself?)

 

[Darkgamma]

Try vanilla and don't go at war with allies of allies, or at least maintain good relationship with said allies.

 

[unmerged(589171)]

Honestly, just chuck them a Send Gift if you can afford it. It usually works and is a small price to pay for their support.

 

[Darkgamma]

What's worse, if you refused a call to arms from them in the last (2 or 5, can't remember) years, they'll be very unwilling to join you.

 

[unmerged(608717)]

I am quite certain that there is no difference between them accepting their allies' calls to war if its an AI ally or player ally. Relations between the allies and the type of war they are being invited to affect a lot. They seem to be a lot more helpful if you are calling them to a defensive war, but really very rarely join you in a war where you are the attacker with a fabricated claim.

 

[yodaime]

It's probably because of the mod, playing latest version and it's extremely easy to get allies to help you. Only allies you need are HRE or ERE. HRE will be happy to fight non-catholics and ERE will beat catholics up for you. It's actually way too easy to use them, if you have enough daughters, you don't even have to rise you armies to go to war.

 

[unmerged(47028)]

In my current game Pope declared a Crusade on my poor King. For the sake of fun I have asked for help almost every single king in Europe (my relatives in law) but they refused I would have been a bit dissapointed if did so. However, I had some revolting scum wich they my allies were happy to deal with.


I just noticed in 1.08 that allies do not longer stick to my armies which is a bit frustrating. Is it just me or 1.08 has changes in respect of that?

 

[Lessing]

Allies... If they are too far away, even if they join, they're usually useless. In the case of the HRE, at least it tends to send a doomstack causing some hassle, but other allies... relying on them is hit and miss.

 

[Beagá]

I just noticed in 1.08 that allies do not longer stick to my armies which is a bit frustrating. Is it just me or 1.08 has changes in respect of that?

Seldom had problems with that. Might not be perfect but waaaaay better than when the game was released where coordination was zero.

As for alliances being useless, they saved my ass so many times I have to disagree. As always, pick enemies and friends carefully and you will have good results.

 

[Nyrael]

I just noticed in 1.08 that allies do not longer stick to my armies which is a bit frustrating. Is it just me or 1.08 has changes in respect of that?

Sounds great to me! I lost more men due to attrition acquired from their doomstacks than in battles -_-

 

[Mutineer]

Allies do join your wars, but in order to do that you need:
1) Better relationship with them then they have with your enemies.
2) they should not be involve in any other wars, which you are not par in. ( in order to avoide that you can offer to join there war, then they will join you when you ask, but will not send armies untill there war in resolve.)
3) they should not be involve in any war in witchcontradict your war. ( there allies in one war can not be enemies in other)
4) they are not allready in war with your enemy.

Edited 5) you did not refuse there request for help in last 5 years.

 

[Onedreamer]

I quote Mutineer, and the number 2 is the most frequent cause (for me at least) why they would not join my wars. In fact, I don't invite them at all if they are in a war. Also this works all the same between AI, you will notice that when this is the case, an AI has its allies in red... and you can and should exploit this situation.

 

[Battle bunny]

I haven't tried Shattered World, but in CK2+ itself, alliances work fine. You need to have good relations with your allies, but that's the biggest obstacle you generally need to overcome. I generally try to invite every ally to every war though, always (unless I expect they'll accept my call for arms only later, but this practically never happens, or if I expect to need their help with another war soon). If they decline, they still lose some prestige, and that serves them right for being treacherous asses.

 

[Divi]

I've been able to pull alliances properly in CK2 plus in most religious wars, in a bunch of family wars (I tend to do the Napoleon thing when I bother to conquer stuff), although it can get a bit hard to motivate them if someone in the family changes faith, and I've had only one marital alliance fail. But I haven't tried shattered world.

 

[Kingsims]

In my CK2 plus game of Scotland I always got ganged up on by Norway and England.

Eventually i took all of Scotland + Ireland (I still had less realm holdings than England). Made an alliance with the French by a marriage between my daughter and the heir to the French throne and asked pope for invasion. The French honoured their alliance and took Normandy. In return i gave them the duchy of Normandy by making it independent. They subjugated the duke and now we still have our alliance because we have no causes belle against each other.

Alliances do work when they hate the guts of the guy/girl your attacking. . They will always honour holy wars even during civil wars etc.

 

[lokomoko]

I've noticed a consistent pattern in the way alliances go in this game. My allies ask me to join every war they are ever part of, but never are willing to join any of mine. What's worse, is that other NPC's allies always help them. So, essentially what seems to happen, is that I end up with a good 10 or so nearby allies (playing ck2+ shattered world mod btw) and invite every single one of them to join me, and they all refuse. My enemy who has an army of 63 total, brings in his one and only ally (who was also my ally who refused to help me btw.) with twice as many troops as me, and takes over my entire kingdom. (And no I didn't come post this immediately after that happened, that's just one of dozens of examples.) Is this due to the mod, or is the game itself like this? I've noticed similar things in the vanilla game, but considering I was just a count in france at first, I couldn't really make use of allies, and by the time I gained independence, I was strong enough that I didn't need them. The few times I actually did call them to help me though, they never would. Ever.

Ever.


(To make this post slightly more productive, are there any mods than increase the chance of allies joining you in war? Or could someone help me make that change myself?)

Quite the contrary; I managed to conquer the entire Iberian peninsula by the year 1110 because I had a strong alliance with the HRE. The trick is doing everything you can to increase the allies relationship with you. Simple things like sending gifts, letting them educate unimportant children of yours and others are useful. Another thing is to always check their opinion of the person you're calling them to war against before you actually call them, otherwise they tend to refuse. Also, I know that they pretty much always answer the call to holy wars but I have proof that they will still honor the alliance even against Christian's, in the same game after I had Iberia, I managed to conquer France simply because I had an alliance with the HRE and they liked me, (Just FYI, they also had an alliance with France and still honored my call because they preferred me.)

 

[yezhanquan]

As mentioned, your ally needs to like you more than your enemy. At the Diplomacy screen, see how many + and - there are when you mouse over the "Maybe" tab.

 

[Zireael]

The player who has the ERE and HRE as his allies is veeery lucky...

 

[Lemony Lime]

I'm talking some of these guys have 100 relation with me. One of which was my wife. Though, I suppose it could be that they're in wars of their own and stuff. In this mod, every county starts independent, so everyone's basically at war 100% of the time. I had HRE as an ally for quite awhile as aquitaine, and rather than him joining me when I asked for it, he actually declared war on me to take one of my counties. Although, he invited me to his constant civil wars every 5 years, which never ended so it wasn't worth joining them, which I guess may be why.

Another thing that I really don't like, (at least in this particular mod) is the 5 years between asking allies for help, and 10 year truces. It really slows the game down, and is very annoying. What file are these numbers in? I'm thinking I'll change them both to 2, at least in the beginning of the game, while everyone is independent and trying to conquer land as fast as possible.

 

[Mauer]

If you're using some whacky mod that basically has everyone fighting each other, should you really be discrediting as useless the mechanics of alliances and truces made for the vanilla game? maybe you should post this stuff in said mod's thread or forum.

In the vanilla game they work wonderfully, if you take into account what everyone else said about relations, religions and claims. And if you don't want to wait so long to blob you can break truces fairly easily, just don't expect to get a free ride to world conquest.