If you have friends like this, you don't need enemies...(where's the point in friendship?!)

[Lynad]

I started a dynasty with a focus on diplomacy and befriended a lot of neighbors. Also, I established relatively high earnings early by building and developing my region. This was my goal. So all went well in the first 20 years. Then my allies and friends started wars all around, I joined to prevent further prestige and other negative consequences by declining calls to arms, only to find myself losing money, troops and being invaded and destroyed.
And then I found out that it was actually my friends beating me down!?! Feels odd if there is no choice whatsoever to influence or so, being destroyed by friends with like 100 positive opinion in conflicts with befriended allies. I was not even attacking but being invaded as a part of the opposite army.

Any tips? Is it generally better to refuse joining wars with allies in principle in my position? Military is not my strength with this character but decent enough at least. Actually, my strategy was building wealth and influence in freedom in a friendly way. But as it turns out, having many allies and friends bites back hard, at least if it is not your own wars. There, I have the option at least to have allies joining me. But opposite, If I help, I become the target myself and even my friends don't hesitate to fight and destroy me. And if I have inferior troops I cannot even call for help unless I pay for mercenaries. Where is friendship and were are allies in this scenario?! Feels weird. Where is the point of friendship in this game? Is it just to make other activities easier? Seems like a liability that does not achieve anything on it's own?!

[Narrowmind]

I don't think it's possible for friends to directly attack you, but if you're got friends on opposite sides, yes, you're expected to pick. You have to be more discerning than that. I use friendship to secure loyalty from my vassals. They can't scheme against you.

[Twelvefield]

As above, primarily friendship is to prevent schemes. As far as loyalties are concerned, I believe there are some hidden dice rolls for that in your game. The AI will weigh its loyalty against what it thinks it may be able to achieve regarding its own agenda.

For example, let's say you usurp a crown and take your former liege's wife as your own. Not only that, you romance her so that she falls deeply in love with you. Even after all that, if she still feels loyal to her original family and titles, she may scheme against you. Or, likely enough, give you an heir that schemes against you using connections with the family of your former liege.

That's the kind of decision making that goes into alliances and loyalty. That, and the AI counts troops. Maybe they love you and your 1,000 man army, but they probably won't commit to fighting your enemy's 500,000 man army.

Friendship in specific terms prevents your friend from scheming against you. It's not as powerful with foreign players as it is within your own court. The other side of the coin is to imprison the people you want to prevent from scheming, but that can easily have tyranny consequences.

[Lynad]

@Ratlegion: thanks! That's a good approach. If you befriend externally, it's likely better to not make friends all around your state, but being picky, because it it highly likely to be caught inbetween conflicts amongst fiends and allies at some point. Dealing with internal rivals with friendship instead primarily is a better use.

[Lynad]

@Twelvefield: Thanks too. This is it.

[Narrowmind]

Happy conquests, my friend.

[shakenidentity]

I like all of the above responses and agree with them.

Most 'friends' are just strategic for me to keep my courtiers and high-level vassals from killing me. At least before the Iberian update, if a vassal was your friend, he couldn't join a faction against you.

Also, as someone who tends to play as a female ruler whenever possible, I'll usually look to foreign ruler's wives to make a couple friends just for the stress relief that friends bring you in the game. But I'll make sure that they are wives of men that are far enough away that I don't intend to conquer during my character's lifetime. There's a (diplomacy?) lifestyle perk that brings extra stress relief to these same events.

I've also experimented in a recent game with making friends with male rulers when I know that eventually, I'll try to marry a child of mine into their family. I did that in my last game that went bye-bye without warning, so I'll have to try again in my new game to see if being friends with the father of the intended marrying family before attempting to marry in helps or not. It does seem that they factor in their opinion of YOU when deciding whether to let their child marry yours or not. I thought it might be worth mentioning for someone else to try, though, too.

[UnnamedKiller]

the moment i have 30k levy i dont need any ally. when i receive an declare of war it s always show this message. U ARE WEAK THEREFORE THERE NO BETTER THAN THIS TO GO WAR WITH U!.

therefore u should find ally until ur military str reach higher than enemy ally military str.

[Lynad]

@shakenidentity: Thanks!

Indeed I don't worry so much about or experiment with the gender of friends and tried myself to make friends with rulers in the first place, no matter what (for the sake of bonding with power). However, stress relief, as you describe, is another useful side of friendships. In order to achieve this though, its likely superior reaching out farther away and not being caught up in conflicts between neigbours.

@unnamedKiller: I'm too far away from this kind of power. But yes, Allies ar better for protection just as I should better shy away from joining wars if you I'm inferior with military.

My learnings:
1) Most important to make internal friends, protecting from schemes within the court/state
2) If for the sake of stress relief, rather seek friends that are farther away and be picky
3) Seek Allies for external protection, not friends and be defensive if you are not prepared.
Better losing some prestige then half your land from conflicts you only joined.

Cheers!

[Targaryen22]

I usually just find one or two ally's near enough to influence any potential wars I may need assistance with and then eye the rest as future conquests (I enjoy restarting Rome after startting in Scotland in the 1088 start) So what I normally do is ally myself with Norway or the Swedes, France if I can swing it, take Ireland, the Isle of Mann etc, and then wait til England is stuck in a war that's got them gettin' their asses kicked then I start bitin' into Englands territory til I've taken the island. Then I'll look towards Iceland, then Norway/the Swedes or Danes as my next conquest. Brittany too if I want to poke the french. I'm very picky about who I ally with because you WILL be called into their wars, and If you decide to join but not fight you run the risk of their enemies comin' to YOUR territory. One or two allies, and friendships inside my realm/heavy inner realm alliances so my vassal's can't ♥♥♥♥ with my conquest of the known world