How to get alliances or unite?

[War Criminal Wizard]

It's not super well explained, but how do you even begin to get towards an alliance? I have crazy high opinion with a neighboring state with the same demographics and we're more or less the same size but I'm slightly larger by a city or two.

There doesn't seem to be any way to overcome a value over several millions and I'd like to annex them in a way other than just razing their cities lol. Has anyone been able to use the new unite option or even just alliance with another state?

[annie]

need a bigger army for more threat to give more value to your treaties, or just wardec and use the value of the peace to force an alliance

in general the unite option is only useful for single region polities, otherwise the value is insurmountable. you're better off buying individual land parcels for 10~ mil a piece until a formal union becomes affordable

[AccelToWinYT]

Money.