Play as good guys work with bad guys

[Chris]

For fun can you ally a faction like the empire with the vampires or any other example?

[Goose]

If you play as Helman (vampire) cathay will offer to be your ally. I did it once, it was pretty fun. push north & west, help secure cathays borders & they will be friends with you

[Goose]

Also you can do the same exact thing as ogre kingdoms

[A.Pot]

Its doable depending on who. Vampire Counts can easily buddy up with any of the human civilizations if you spend your Blood Kissess on the Lahmian Lords

[abyssalfury]

Kind of. In theory, absolutely and quite easy in the short term - region trading is the easy way, the AI massively value settlements and you can often turn 'ready to declare war' into NAP/Trade/Access or even alliances.

However, in practice, it can be hard to maintain long term.

The main issue is that negative actions seem to be weighted *significantly* higher than positive actions, particularly with the evil factions. And while you can control your positive interactions with the faction you're trying to ally with, you generally have a limited ability to control interactions with other factions that cause you to take negative penalties.

So, for example, you decide to play Evil Tyrion and want to ally with the Dark Elves. Literally genociding all of the other High Elves on the island will probably make the Dark Elves like you....a bit. Oh, but you trespassed against that minor Dark Elf faction they don't even like to do it, cancel all of those relations. Oh, the Dark Elf faction declared war on you? Hah, now the other Dark Elves hate you. Oh, you're buddies with another good faction half a world away? Well I don't know why the Dark Elves even care, but I guess it's war forever now.

Azazel is the perfect example for this. He gets a huge +relations boost with human factions, which is meant to (mostly) offset the relations penalty you get for being a WoC faction. BUUUUT he's forced to have Norsca vassals, that all those human factions will hate, so basically the whole thing is a wash without putting in a ridiculous amount of effort.

If you want to do it, the main things are a) plan it out, and b) commit to it. So say, if you want to ally Vlad with the Empire, no offensive action/trespass against anyone who the Empire might like (Kislev, Dwarfs, even Drycha is a toss up). No treaties with any potential enemies. Someone like the Dwarfs will still probably still declare war on you and cost you a ton of relations, so you've got to manage them as well....

Some factions get +diplomacy buffs which can definitely make it easier. Some are also just in good positions to do it, particularly if you can isolate them from other 'rival' factions. One of my most successful attempts doing this was allying Miao Ying with Chaos Dwarfs (Zhatan). You kill Villitch and sell the (red) territories to Zhatan for treaties. Then focus on killing the evil faction and securing the north half of Cathay. Because the Great Bastion is such a solid divider, he likely won't feel the next to come into Cathay and start ♥♥♥♥ with Zhao Ming, instead he'll go west through the Chaos Wastes, which you have no interest in going through anyway, and only encounter factions you both hate. You might still need to do some management (read: bribes) late game to keep them happy, but I was generally able to keep them on board for the whole campaign.