How to form a good alliance

[MerlinaWizzard]

As it stands, I just resigned from my last Holland game. I had a great start too. Got the claims on our rivals mission early on, so the Netherlands was formed before 1415 or so. Soon after, France attacked Burgundy, so I declared war on Burgundy myself and kept on fighting them even after France made Peace. I got Antwerp, Breda and Limburg from Burgundy around 1418. Due to me warring Burgundy into two bankrupcy's, the got rebellions all over their provinces when I sued for peace, and as a result, Flanders (with Flanders, Ghent and Brabant) and Liege managed to free themselves from Burgundy. I immediately scooped in and Vassalized Flanders. But then, unfortunately, France got the Reconquer Flanders mission, before I became emperor. And no matter how much money I tried to invest in getting an alliance of some sort, nobody wanted to help me...
Anyway, my Dutch army still managed to wipe out about 3 times as many regiments of french origine in total, but then, around 40 regiments combined and sort of crushed me a little bit.

Perhaps that was a bad move.

I bribed all the chancellors for the HRE, they were loving me to pieces and will uniformly make me emperor when the current one dies. Of course, not a single one of em was willing to help me out, despite accepting all of my hard earned cash. Bastards.

So what did I do wrong? Should I start bribing all over the place as soon as I am the Netherlands, so I can get an alliance? Can I even get an alliance with a country like Austria or England at this point? I keep butting against: 'Impossible'.

Should I just have left Flanders alone? I didn't really want Flanders itself, nor Ghent, because both had expiring French cores, but Brabant would have been a nice addition...

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Rule 1 : You never have usefull allies.
Rule 2 : AI allies are cannon fodder, player allies are costfull.
Rule 3 : AI allies will ussualy take x province you want to take.
Rule 4 : This is why only vassals and PU are usefull allies(to some extent)
Rule 5 : AI fighting ability is very low. This is why you should conquer some mountain province, and wait france to come there(IE freiburg from switzerland)
Rule 6 : If your enemy got more troops, use Military drill.

 

[n0thin]

AI allies can be really useful, if you are not strong enough to defend against powers like France or Austria. However, you have to get them before the war starts, if you are at war with France they won't ally you. Only countries with ~the same size as you will ally you and you will have a pretty hard time trying to get more than 2-3 allies (vassals and unions not included). If the country you want to ally sees you as a rival, it will get a bit harder, too.

 

[Slym]

Keep your number of allies low, keep relations with countries you want as allies high. Every time I end up with a really good ally, like Spain or Austria as a country much smaller than them, they offered the alliance to me.

 

[unmerged(70580)]

Plus, an AI nation won't ally with more than a certain number of other nations (3?) ... so if you're trying to ally with a nation with 3 allies already, it won't accept.