What makes the AI (dis)honor an alliance?

[Nerva]

Has anyone noticed a pattern with regards to how the AI chooses whether to honor or dishonor an alliance? Does it base it on the attacker/defender military strengths (i.e. they'll fight only if they think their side will win), or relations with the ally vs. the enemy, or what?

UK and Netherlands tend to ally at the start of the game. As USA, I want to fight both of them on their own in separate wars, so odds are, I will need one of them to dishonor the call of the other -- which of them should I attack first (i.e. which choice is more likely to result in the second country dishonoring an alliance call from the one attacked)?

 

[Kovax]

Relative Military strength clearly has a lot to do with it, but both Relations and Reputation also seem to come into play, the former far less so, and it only seems to depend on whether or not you're over some threshold level. The UK is also notorious for dishonoring calls, so if it's choice between them, and your military score is decent, I'd go after Netherlands and hope that the UK leaves them hanging in the breeze.

 

[Nerva]

Is it fair to speculate that weaker allies will honor calls from stronger allies because they can't afford to lose them as an ally, while stronger powers have lots of smaller allies but don't want to get sucked into all of their wars? Do you think they programmed that into the AI somehow?

 

[Suzaku]

Relative Military strength clearly has a lot to do with it, but both Relations and Reputation also seem to come into play, the former far less so, and it only seems to depend on whether or not you're over some threshold level. The UK is also notorious for dishonoring calls, so if it's choice between them, and your military score is decent, I'd go after Netherlands and hope that the UK leaves them hanging in the breeze.

For me UK always accepts, but problem is there is a toss up between splendid isolation, token force or actually getting involved.

 

[Kovax]

Oddly, I've seen games where the UK dishonors almost every call to arms, and other games where they jump into nearly every fight. As said, even if they do join, they may or may not actually participate, but if they do, it's sometimes a token force and sometimes a massive commitment....and you can't be sure of which will happen. The more I play, the more I realize just how huge a part the Random Number Generator plays, and it's often annoying when some country repeatedly does completely absurd stuff just because the RNG rolled an extreme value.

 

[Suzaku]

Oddly, I've seen games where the UK dishonors almost every call to arms, and other games where they jump into nearly every fight. As said, even if they do join, they may or may not actually participate, but if they do, it's sometimes a token force and sometimes a massive commitment....and you can't be sure of which will happen. The more I play, the more I realize just how huge a part the Random Number Generator plays, and it's often annoying when some country repeatedly does completely absurd stuff just because the RNG rolled an extreme value.

For me right now it has swung to the point where UK always sending troops either to aid me as an ally or thwart me as an enemy. A few months ago they were sending token forces or splendid isolation...

 

[Aotrs Commander]

I'd like to know this as well. I tried declaring on Prussia last night as France (first game ever, like two or three years in, following the suggestions on the wiki), using the decision for the Cassu Belli - and every single one of my about six allies (two or three of which where sphered) thumbed their noses at me, while all Prussia's joined in. I gave up and reloaded after a short while, when it became obvious i was going to get nowhere.

 

[Nerva]

How did you compare in terms of military strength to Prussia? As people have speculated, it may be a function of your strength (alone) vs. Prussia's (alone), or perhaps something more complicated, such as your ally's strength (alone) vs. Prussia (alone), or your alliance (combined) vs. Prussia's alliance (combined).

 

[Aotrs Commander]

Hmm. I don't think I checked. I was at my own army cap at the time.

I have since, now the pennies are rolling in, been building naval bases pretty much everywhere (partly for the naval cap boosy, partly for future colonisation), though at the moment, I'm still burning the new cap as fast I get it building transport ships - I've left Prussia alone while I tackle a load of the uncivilised world...!