Breaking Alliances...

[VasantK]

This is annoying. NPCs will continue to break alliances even if you have 100+ attitude with them. Hell, even if you have cordial relations, they still think it's a great idea to break the alliance and make you their rival. Paradox... please no more random alliance breaking. At least make them break the royal marriage too. It's annoying when your enemies (especially if they are stronger and bigger) don't help you or hinder your development. I'm playing as Manchu and Ming, the only border confucian country near my vicinity, broke my alliance. Now, I have rivals with Japan, Ming, and (they have Mongol Khanate as a vassal) Oriat Horde. Please Paradox please... for the Manchurian children.

 

[Laurwin]

Here's my take on it as Russia/Muscovy. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer (It's actually a stupid quote, because if this was real life, you would want to keep enemy AWAY, and friends close... for the Manchurian children but it's a famous saying anyway)

Build alliances specifically with the purpose of killing the allies (allies are targets, vassals are your true allies) later (what you need to do is to "entangle the allies" into your web of diplomacy, so that they won't consider anything else for ally)

Worked for me really well, with Crimea for example always allying with the annoyingly powerful Ottomans. Instead, keep Crimea close to your warm and totally honest Russian heart, and ally with them yourself. This keeps Ottomans away from the region (except they are bullying poor little Georgia)

When the time comes, you get your claims into the region, and just go for the landgrab. If they ally ottos during the war, simply demand alliance treaty broken with peace deal with Crimea. Rinse and repeat.

For the Manchurian children... now you now, what must be done...

 

[Marchosias]

This is annoying. NPCs will continue to break alliances even if you have 100+ attitude with them. Hell, even if you have cordial relations, they still think it's a great idea to break the alliance and make you their rival. Paradox... please no more random alliance breaking. At least make them break the royal marriage too. It's annoying when your enemies (especially if they are stronger and bigger) don't help you or hinder your development. I'm playing as Manchu and Ming, the only border confucian country near my vicinity, broke my alliance. Now, I have rivals with Japan, Ming, and (they have Mongol Khanate as a vassal) Oriat Horde. Please Paradox please... for the Manchurian children.

Paradox has seemingly already fixed a lot of the random alliance breaking in the game. Your issue is that you allied somebody who borders you. People who border you will constantly get missions to insult you, conquer your provinces, etc. Along with border friction and the A.I. desire to conquer weaker targets, Ming was never going to keep you as an ally.

Hell, one of Ming's first missions is usually a mission to conquer a Manchu province.

 

[VasantK]

Paradox has seemingly already fixed a lot of the random alliance breaking in the game. Your issue is that you allied somebody who borders you. People who border you will constantly get missions to insult you, conquer your provinces, etc. Along with border friction and the A.I. desire to conquer weaker targets, Ming was never going to keep you as an ally.

Hell, one of Ming's first missions is usually a mission to conquer a Manchu province.

Doesn't mean they have to break the alliance and go from cordial to rival . The only powerful, same religion border state is Ming (and Korea but they can die easily). It's really difficult with Manchu if the Ming automatically break the alliance with no warning whatsoever (at least institute a border friction penalty that increases as time and claims go on).

 

[VasantK]

Here's my take on it as Russia/Muscovy. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer (It's actually a stupid quote, because if this was real life, you would want to keep enemy AWAY, and friends close... for the Manchurian children but it's a famous saying anyway)

Build alliances specifically with the purpose of killing the allies (allies are targets, vassals are your true allies) later (what you need to do is to "entangle the allies" into your web of diplomacy, so that they won't consider anything else for ally)

Worked for me really well, with Crimea for example always allying with the annoyingly powerful Ottomans. Instead, keep Crimea close to your warm and totally honest Russian heart, and ally with them yourself. This keeps Ottomans away from the region (except they are bullying poor little Georgia)

When the time comes, you get your claims into the region, and just go for the landgrab. If they ally ottos during the war, simply demand alliance treaty broken with peace deal with Crimea. Rinse and repeat.

For the Manchurian children... now you now, what must be done...

No Manchu is a friend of Mings... Damn them! As for the People's Republic of Manchuria, FOR THE CHILDREN!, BY THE CHILDREN!, OF THE CHILDREN!

 

[CleverClothe]

Since alliance are actually very stable in the game and any time they do fail it is for very strait forward reasons, all I have to add is suck it up.

Stop treating the AI as a lapdog and you will do much better.

 

[Noctus]

When playing a colonizer, my best Castille or England (depending on where i want to colonize) containment strategy has been allying my greatest opponent in the colonial game.

This way they wont ally with your other enemies, and you have the fleets of Great Britain / Spain on your side, instead of against you, so you dont get cut off from your overseas possessions easily. Also this way i drag them into my own wars, so they dont have as much time and resorces to colonise, instead spendig them on fighting my enemies.

They dont contribute much, usually, to win a war, but they are a pita tohave against you.

 

[Marchosias]

Doesn't mean they have to break the alliance and go from cordial to rival . The only powerful, same religion border state is Ming (and Korea but they can die easily). It's really difficult with Manchu if the Ming automatically break the alliance with no warning whatsoever (at least institute a border friction penalty that increases as time and claims go on).

It usually means they'll rival you. When the A.I. by mission or design wants to conquer a province, they'll almost always try to set you as a rival in order to garner the bonuses associated with rivalry.

This is why you can only really border an ally if the border is so small that they'll unlikely need to expand into your territory, or the border is huge and both of your large sizes deters them from wanting to declare war.

If you're somewhere inbetween, and especially if you're weaker than them, only use a border alliance as a last ditch effort to avoid war.

Also, the A.I. isn't usually too fond of declaring war on someone they have a royal marriage with. It incurs a stability penalty.

 

[gaius valerius]

This is annoying. NPCs will continue to break alliances even if you have 100+ attitude with them. Hell, even if you have cordial relations, they still think it's a great idea to break the alliance and make you their rival. Paradox... please no more random alliance breaking. At least make them break the royal marriage too. It's annoying when your enemies (especially if they are stronger and bigger) don't help you or hinder your development. I'm playing as Manchu and Ming, the only border confucian country near my vicinity, broke my alliance. Now, I have rivals with Japan, Ming, and (they have Mongol Khanate as a vassal) Oriat Horde. Please Paradox please... for the Manchurian children.

This I don't really understand the bolded part it reads "don't make this game difficult", so where does the challenge to then? Your situation is working as intended, as enemies are intended to hinder you! The Manchurian children will have to learn to fend for their own. You share to much border with these guys

When playing a colonizer, my best Castille or England (depending on where i want to colonize) containment strategy has been allying my greatest opponent in the colonial game.

This way they wont ally with your other enemies, and you have the fleets of Great Britain / Spain on your side, instead of against you, so you dont get cut off from your overseas possessions easily. Also this way i drag them into my own wars, so they dont have as much time and resorces to colonise, instead spendig them on fighting my enemies.

They dont contribute much, usually, to win a war, but they are a pita tohave against you.

Was Castile/Spain, world outside of Europe was divided between Spain, Portugal & G-Britain. Main enemy for Europe was France, Britain had gotten Navarre and this helped tie us together -> Got the Portugal heritance event -> Got PU out of nowhere with Britain the 18th century suddenly became the era of kicking French butt as British, Spanish and Portuguese stacks marched on Paris time and time again. I never go for WC, just play with a certain self-imposed goal in mind, but that sessions when it ended in 1820... never gotten so close to accidental WC before.

 

[Elshar]

Here's my take on it as Russia/Muscovy. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer (It's actually a stupid quote, because if this was real life, you would want to keep enemy AWAY, and friends close... for the Manchurian children but it's a famous saying anyway)

This is how I've been playing it. My last Portugal game, I did EVERYTHING to keep France + GB + Aragon alllied. Every 5 years as soon as the truce timer popped I wardec'd Castille, and used France as a bulldog to pillage Castille's armies, GB to sink all their ships, and Aragon as a buffer. I ended up being able to be the sole colonizer of North + South America (Including the Caribbean), and the vast majority of Africa and the Pacific. Starting in the 1600's I would take 1-2 provs each war. Enough to whittle them down, but not enough AE to make any of my allies angry. I vassalized Navarra to keep a border between France and myself.

Moral of the story: Buffers between yourself and powerful allies. Make sure the buffers are vassals so they don't get gobbled by your "allies". Allies are not your friends, they are tools. If they are not useful, get rid of them.

My only regret in that game is not figuring out how to manage to throw Austria into the juggle. They nearly single-handedly stalemate many wars for me, yet we still mange a >100 relationship despite all the wars.

 

[KiLaNova]

The ai is wierd sometimes, Bohemia broke an alliance with me for no apparant reason then asked for alliance the next month. Then again Bohemia like to do crazy sh*t in many of my games lol.

 

[timujin]

This is annoying. NPCs will continue to break alliances even if you have 100+ attitude with them. Hell, even if you have cordial relations, they still think it's a great idea to break the alliance and make you their rival. Paradox... please no more random alliance breaking. At least make them break the royal marriage too. It's annoying when your enemies (especially if they are stronger and bigger) don't help you or hinder your development. I'm playing as Manchu and Ming, the only border confucian country near my vicinity, broke my alliance. Now, I have rivals with Japan, Ming, and (they have Mongol Khanate as a vassal) Oriat Horde. Please Paradox please... for the Manchurian children.

you picked a very difficult country to play, ming will not be your ally for long time only for first decades.
if you insist playing as manchu, i advise you to:
1) ally ming
2) if Oirat Horde is not allied with ming, plan a war on Mongol Khanate and Oirat Horde, after forging claims / getting the mission. if you lose, start the game again.
3) As a horde you can't be at peace, so every time the last truce expires attack Mongol Khanate or Oirat Horde or Korea as long as the target not allied with ming. don't forget to forge claims.
4) chose exploration as your first idea group and start colonizing Siberia, at some point you might get lucky and get some gold colonies.
5) when you become big enough to have more units then ming, attack ming. before that colonize everything you can.
6) choose administrative as your second idea group, you will need it to: westernize, create cores, hire mercenaries, reform government.
6) after meeting russia somewhere around the caspian sea DON'T attack it before westernizing.

 

[Calbrenar]

Since alliance are actually very stable in the game and any time they do fail it is for very strait forward reasons, all I have to add is suck it up.

Stop treating the AI as a lapdog and you will do much better.

This is a pretty ignorant statement. Alliances are not that stable. They may be somewhat better than they were but definitely not stable. When you have allies with 200 relations break the alliance to set you to hostile (when you are their sole ally and have +40 trust and have saved them numerous times) then turn around 1 year later and ask for an alliance there is no way that the alliance system is "good", "stable", or working.

This happens repeatedly with all allies whether they are near you or not. Paradox has seemingly made it slightly better about them directly rivaling you immediately but there is nothing to stop them from rivaling you a bit after they break the alliance.