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dmjordan

Join Date 06/2006

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Alliances V1.31

I haven't been able to form any alliances at all since 1.3 came out.

I'm trying to play through the Dread Lords campaign on "Tough" difficulty, and was on the mission "Hearts and Minds" where you have to either form an alliance with the Torians, or culturally assimilate them. To get to this mission you must fail the previous mission of rescuing the Torian leader from the Drengin.

Because of my failures at getting alliances in sandbox mode as of 1.3, I was determined to ally with the Torians in the campaign. I chose "good" ethical allignment and set up as many trade routes as possible with them littered with star bases. I had a trade income of over 600 BC a turn with the Torians.

I was also sure to keep my military might higher then theirs to earn the +military strength factor. Eventually I also had the + historic friendship factor. I reserached up through all of the diplomacy techs. I continuously gifted them money and techs, or made trades when they had something of any value. During all this time, I never had relations get any better then friendly.

Eventually, relationship status between us started to deteriorate. They built starbases close to my territory and I had the - close borders status. Also, my continued skirmishes with the drengin brought both mine and the drengin's fleets lower than the Torians. This caused a - military strength factor.

Frustrated at this point, I raced through the influence tech branch, built some maxed out influence bases, and converted all the Torian planets in under 25 turns. About 20 turns later I annhilated the Drengin.

My questions:

What more can I possibly do to get that alliance? My only thoughts are that by gifting them so many things I insulted them by thinking they needed my "humanitarian aid." Is the AI that complex in this game? Is there something I'm missing here? Has anyone else been able to get an alliance since 1.3 came out?

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Has anyone else been able to get an alliance since 1.3 came out?

Yes. It take time and trade. You can also try bribing an AI that is stronger than the person you want to ally with, but weaker than you, and then attack the person you bribed.

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for the past week there has been a thread about this every day. Please use the search feture.

And yes, people have been able to get the alliances. A bug was fixed where you were able to allie with someone who was friendly, instead of close. Also bribing will no longer get you to close, instead you need trade to get you that last leg of the way.

So yes, people have been able to get alliances.

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TheProgram. Before you blast someone else maybe you should play at a higher level than tough. On a suicidal game played with 1.31 I had all 12 trade routes with the altarians and bribed them quite a few times and could not get them to ally with me. I was playing as the torians in this game, so it has nothing to do with Good or evil. In another game I did absolutely no trading with the Bugs and they allied with me. I would very much like to hear you explain this, if you can. TBAY

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Military superiority also plays a role.

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On suicidal, it will almost always be the case that your military rating (as oppossed to your actual military rating) will be lower than the ai. Being inferior miliatrily will prevent you from reaching 'close'.

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I found that you can ally, especially with those race that feel it would be of benifit to ally with you. to do this though you have to be strong in many areas. In my last game I had three allys but all were far weaker than I while the races that were closer to me in power, distribution, trade, and military would only remain friendly.

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Thus making it harder to win an alliance victory especially in a weak position. In the past, this victory was a little on the easy side.

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A bug was fixed where you were able to allie with someone who was friendly, instead of close.

With this bug now fixed and the difficulty of getting alliances now raised considerably, isn't there an arguement that a alliance win in the metaverse should now score more points?

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I guess I'd like some more specific answers to my particular scenario. It seems most people are saying it takes a lot of trade and a strong military. I had a large trade system establilshed and did have a stonger military for a long time.

Specific to the dread lord mission I described above, what more could have or should have been done? I would also like to point out the relative ease of culturally assimilating their empire in comparison to getting the alliance.

Thank you to all who have replied so far.

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My feeling is that alliances are something that has been screwed up in this game since day 1. The recent update didn't do anything to solve the problem. I agreee it shouldn't be easy to form alliances and they should require a "close" relationship. OTOH, it should be possible, through something done on the player's part, to actually form a close relationship. For instance, when a friendly race says they're improving relations, they should do what they say and move relations to close. They don't do that. Relations get stuck on friendly until the game randomly decides to move them up. There's something wrong there. Personally, I feel alliances should have been fixed in 1.1. Here it is pushing a year since the game's release and they're just now trying to get it right.

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In my current game I have made 2 alliances so far.
How?

I don't really know. I have not given techs or money to anyone, I have set up 0 trade routes.

I did conquer the Drath a bit earlier, but they were probably the weakest of all the civs at the time.

Then every once in a while I would check the Treaties screen, notice that someone was Close, and ask for an alliance.

There did not seem to be any real reason for the Close relationship.

It would be nice to know the rules and formula's the devs set up for alliances.
They seem very random and vague with 1.31.

Would a dev care to enlighten us on the specifics?
It is a method used to win the game, it must have specific rules as to how it is achieved.

Mustn't it?

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I too would reeeeeeally like to know the concrete time-table or method to get an Alliance going, or what truly does/doesn't work. With cheat codes you can bribe them till they burst, and they still won't call you an ally. You can give them just a bit, or nothing, and still no ally.

Only way to have fun with having another race fightining alongside you is to start the game as TEAM, which isn't any fun if you want to change alleigances during the game or turn and fire on your buddy : P

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Wow, it has been 3 months since this was last responded to.

Alliances are still nearly impossible to achieve in 1.4.
There still seems to be no hard and fast rules to follow.

It would seem to me that if I am already at friendly and a civ comes to me for help because they are losing a war, and I give them the techs they need to combat their enemy and enough cash to replenish their military, and I see them saying that our relations have just improved - seems to me our relations at that point should be close. After all, I just pulled them out of the fire and turned the heat down in the frying pan.

I would like to know exactly what it takes to get relations to 'close'.

I guess I will ask for a response from the dev team, again.
Is there a reliable way to acheive an alliance victory?

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I think the development team has to to consider the following as the issue....

Alliances = Bugged!

Whatever number they used to tweak Alliances to becoming more difficult is obviously WAY TOO HIGH! I understand the issue is that if an Alliance Victory is too easy a way to score a victory in the Metaverse, then either ditch it as a victory option or make it like reduce your score by half or something.

I don't care about my Metaverse rating or whatever in the least....I just want to use one of the basic diplomatic tools used in such an RTS for the fun/realism...ALLIANCES! >: /

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