England is the worse

[Ironside121]

To be fair, a player England is likely to sit on their island as well. It's safe and cosy there.

Not a smart one. You don't want to let someone get complete control of Europe, then you're screwed.

There's a reason in the last Dev Stream Johan was picking sides. If you let someone have dominance over Europe, you're getting invaded and you know it.

Naturally in SP you have nothing to worry about because every AI nation is just plain bad, but hey.

 

[Rashie]

Not a smart one. You don't want to let someone get complete control of Europe, then you're screwed.

There's a reason in the last Dev Stream Johan was picking sides. If you let someone have dominance over Europe, you're getting invaded and you know it.

Naturally in SP you have nothing to worry about because every AI nation is just plain bad, but hey.

England/GB did the same thing in real life with power balance. Trying to avoid a single continental hegemony with dominance of the continent forming was a long standing foreign policy goal of theirs that lasted more or less up until after WW2.

EU4 is just poor at portraying AI nations trying to balance powers in a region.

 

[Sunspawn]

BTW, worse than what?

 

[ShoGuL]

In one of my last games, France had their entire army sitting on 3 isles in the west indies.. some 35k on each island.

Colonizers are just play awful at shipping troops...

 

[Tarkilth]

I view all AI allies as paper tigers. Their purpose is to scare off other AIs from attackign me or forming coalitions and I am pleasantly surprised if they manage to distract my enemies a little while I pursue the war if they do end up participating.

All jokes aside though, if the AI has to cross a sea (any sea without strait) to get to you then they are beyong likely to be pretty much useless. As for Poland, sicne they rely on Lithuania to be half-competent, by allying them it's liek you're relying on poland relying on lithuania to make smart decisions. You get two uncertainties for the price of one! Sadly your best allies are large land based nation that personally hold a lot of power and share land borders with you and preferably the enemy you are going to fight too. Not too many of those around but we do what we can.

 

[Dakka]

Wait... the English are sitting on their island and letting their continental allies do all the fighting? That’s completely ahistorical

 

[Badesumofu]

They are pretty good for increasing your on-paper strength. They almost never get into the sorts of wars that would bring them into dishonor range and they won't call you in to fight the entire HRE so they can get a single province which they then hand back as unlawful territory anyway. I mean you shouldn't be getting unwanted CTAs from allies anyway, but still.

They will also provide you with naval supremacy when you do call them in. Just don't expect them to do anything useful with their armies.

 

[Sunspawn]

XA XA XA XA XA XA, naval supremacy you say... Wrong, they will, most of the time, have naval supremacy, you might benefit from it, but you won't have it. They'll gleefully let you get navally invaded, watch from a sea-tile away as your prized fleet is getting sunk and just overall act in a perfidious manner.

 

[MateuszNH]

And now it's even worse since once they start colonizing, they send half their army over there too, just to die from attrition.

England and Poland are the two worst AI's to ally, and should only be done when desperate for alliances and coalition blocking.

England because of the crappy Naval management of the AI, and Poland just seems to fail in every war consistently after the TO. You quite commonly hear of the Polish AI sucking when helping in a war.

Is it ? I've never noticed bad AI Poland

 

[Onoma94]

Is it ? I've never noticed bad AI Poland

For some reason it's really unhelpful when playing Byzantium (although maybe it's been fixed since), also for some reason it's really volatile with their rebels in latest patches, but otherwise it's all good. Absolutely priceless for me doing Pomerania->Prussia->Germany. ^^

 

[davej]

It's the naval AI in general that's a bit inept, when a war involves shipping their troops across water.

This

 

[Bas Agus Buaidh]

As has been previously said, that's exactly how I play when I have a late start as Britain. First order of business is to become the leader of the league war, let everyone destroy themselves whilst causing a little havoc in the Americas. Debilitate Spain's navy, and free Brandenburg from the Commonwealth vassalship. Then if you can get an alliance with Russia (they almost always rival Spain in a late start), start to pick away at their European holdings (especially the Portugal PU). From there it's a case of picking fights with Spain, France, and the Ottomans to prevent any major land grabs. At the same time you spread into India as IRL and build your power base.

Clearly a different game when playing multiplayer, but provided you play it fast and loose with your alliances, I can't see why the same strategy can't be effective, without ever really comitting your troops to heavy continental war.

 

[XYN]

And now it's even worse since once they start colonizing, they send half their army over there too, just to die from attrition.

England and Poland are the two worst AI's to ally, and should only be done when desperate for alliances and coalition blocking.

England because of the crappy Naval management of the AI, and Poland just seems to fail in every war consistently after the TO. You quite commonly hear of the Polish AI sucking when helping in a war.

AI naval management is extremely bananas occasionally.

In the same game, England has a 20k stack on the St. Martin island. The only colonised island in the Caribbeans.