Breaking someone elses alliance?

[Kepheren]

Not sure if there is a way or not but I would love to know if there is. As Milan I've gobbled up Genoa, Venice, Savoy and all the small northern Italian minors....along with a healthy chunk of Switzerland. While I was doing that Tuscany ate up Siena, Urbino, Rome and the bulk of Naples. We've been staring at each other for almost 150 years now but are both allied to Austria. If only I could pry them out of the protection of the Hapsburgs I could finally form one Italian nation. They have been holding on to Austrian for dear life though and I can't build a coalition strong enough to take them out if I break my own alliance. Something to do with the negative modifiers from eating my neighbors I guess......but does anyone have any ideas how to break their alliance?

 

[AJ123]

What I usually do in situations like this is declare a war against someone else, call Austria in, then declare on Tuscany. Austria wont fight you wih Tuscany, because they are allied to you in a separate war. Cancel Tuscany's alliance with Austria after you beat them down. They have no chance of allying Austria until your truce is up.

Just make sure you end the war with Tuscany before ending the first war you stsrted, as the 60 day call in rule no longer applies.

 

[slv]

You can't declare war on a member of empire if you're allied with an emperor at war. so this trick does not work.

Try to attack Tuscany ally instead, alliance between austria and Tuscany will be broken that way.

 

[atwix]

does tuscany have any allies outside hre? If so, attack them. If austria joins in, you can make tuscany full participant. Austria will join on offensive side, and by the time tuscany calls allies, austria will be in your war already.

 

[Pornek]

If the other mentioned ways wont work. I would just declare on them you sound reasonably strong to take on both.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

If the other mentioned ways wont work. I would just declare on them you sound reasonably strong to take on both.

Just northern Italy vs. most of the rest of Italy + Austria and their most likely giant alliance network? Are you crazy? That sounds like a difficult war to win at best.

I'll second the idea to declare on another ally of Tuscany that isn't allied to Austria. Another option is to wait until Austria simply won't honor a defensive alliance, due to being in debt or being involved in other wars or something.

Abusing enforce peace also might be an option, depending on your relations with nations Tuscany has their eye on. There's no defensive call to arms from that.

 

[zenisar]

As Atwix wrote, look what other allies Tuscany has. Attack one of those that are not allied to Austria. Tuscany will side with their ally while Austria will side with you. Thus Austria and Tuscany will get in war against each other and their alliance will break. Still, former allies tend to have friendly relationships even after the war ends and frequently seek to renew their alliance.

 

[Kepheren]

Actually that is sort of how it worked out. Played another few hours after I posted that last night. First Austria cancelled our alliance because they suddenly got the claims on Northern Italy mission. *doh* It looked kind of grim for a minute but they were involved in another war at the moment so I went into over drive to get some new allies. Fortunately Spain, Poland and a couple of breakaway French countries in the south liked me a LOT more once I wasn't allied to Austria anymore.

While my portion of Italy isn't blessed with loads of man power we are rich. I pumped everything I could into as big an army as I could get (almost equal to Austria's) and settled in to wait. If they wanted to attack I would meet them in the mountains and hope to hold them off till my Austrian hating allies could get into the war. As it would happen though that didn't come to pass....at least not yet.

After Austria got a white peace from the Ottomans they got pulled into a war with most of Europe due to some entangling alliances. I didn't get called in by anyone, probably because I had allies on both sides? Not too sure about that. With a few minutes to breathe though I noticed that what was left of Switzerland was now only allied with Tuscany. If I declared on Switzerland they could only call Tuscany in and they in turn couldn't call anyone.

Long story short by the time Austria got out of that war, somewhat battered and with depleted manpower, I had the time for two quick wars against Switzerland and Tuscany. At the end of those the two remaining provinces of Switzerland are my vassal state, I have taken Siena, Rome and Urbino from Tuscany and the later is now reduced to just their home province and two bits of Naples (Abruzzi and Bari I think.)

Then I realized it was four in the morning and went to bed. *doh*