treacherous gameplay

[taintedcat]

anyone else plans to betray his allies, almost from the first month after forming an alliance?

i kinda feel bad but i pick my allies if they are useful or too strong, then have them fight in my wars, adding more cobelligerents, making them waste wealth/manpower, while growing in power. sooner or later they always desire my lands so they betray me and i unleash vengeance upon them. or they take too much lands thinking i would keep them safe from a coalition, and i ditch the Alliance right after a coalition forms, and after everyone ripped him to shreds i vassalize and reconquer everything. If my allies war participation is high i only take Warrep, Land and Trade and only enough money so he can pay his loans and join my next war.
i never trust AI to stay allied with me so if he calls me to war i do nothing or just send my vassals and declare war on a different enemy. i don't want AI to give me lands as usually those are high AE provinces that would impair my early conquests.

In short i think i'm worse than an enemy nation to my allies, ofc once i outscale them all, i simply ditch everyone and rule through vassal nations. i wish i could keep my alliance and prosper together but chance is my ally gets a militaristic Ruler and then breaks the alliance anyway, so why bother helping him before that...

or is there a way to stop them from desiring your lands even with Militaristic Ruler?

[Marquoz]

My approach to EU4 always, 100% of the time goes like this:

1) Make useful allies
2) Call them into war after war and give them nothing
3) Ruin their economy and run their debt through the roof fighting for me
4) Break the alliances
5) Eat my former allies

So yes, I plan to betray my allies. But not "almost from the first month." I plan to betray them before I ever form the alliance in the first place.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

I rarely ally a country I'll destroy. I don't see any fun in that considering how easy the game is already.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Originally posted by taintedcat:

or is there a way to stop them from desiring your lands even with Militaristic Ruler?

Don't border them. Ideally, have even a whole region's worth of space between you and them.

[Rooter]

Originally posted by Jean-Maurice Nya:

I rarely ally a country I'll destroy. I don't see any fun in that considering how easy the game is already.

Same, I rarely even have allies unless Im small,

[grognardgary]

Note if you are going to paint the map there is no ally you can make that you will not have to betray at some point.

[Omniconda]

i keep little allies around in land i dont plan to take or to be future vassals the most consistant being The Palatinate when near the HRE its nice to have an elector in your pocket who will join any war and you where not planning on killing anyway.

Il go ally hunting when ive build a huge coalition against against myself. Lithuania Uzbek timmrids etc who have lots of returnable cores or releaseable tags. Then you just have to trigger the war and hold your own border till they get seiged and you give away all their land instead

[Octopuses]

Sometimes allies are forever and sometimes I will weaken them and betray them. It depends on what achievement I'm doing.

[bucketofsquid]

This is a game, not reality. Anything is OK as long as it gets you to where you want to be.

[dbond1]

I do both. In some runs, I will respect the sovereignty of a game-long ally who I could rely on. Like in an Aragon>Spain run I have allowed Portugal to live, when the obvious play would be to conquer or subjugate them.

In my Baltic Crusader run, Riga was this ugly dot in the middle of my paint, but i let them live because they were plucky allies who never let me down.

I rarely boil this game down to the point where there is only one course of action and it is whatever is optimal.

[grognardgary]

All in all remember it is a game. Do whatever floats your boat and have fun.

[Rooter]

Morals are a self enforcement.
Everyone has different moral standards.
Observing others' morals will usually allow us to judge their general character.
A relevant observation in regards to morals is when others enforce them but dont observe them personally.
This is defined by the word hypocrite.
Unfortunately those who are quick to judge others usually dont accept judgement on them selves.
Commonly this is due to their own self esteem.
Morals are similar to something like forum moderation, they require consistency between all parties to actually have any meaningful purpose.

The AI generally lacks any moral judgement.

The closest modifier I can recognise in the game that may influence AI morals is the Historical Friend modifier

[bri]

There are only a few reasons to ally anyone in EU IV and several of those generally lead to later disposal when the reason is no longer valid...

1) to vassalize them or set up a PU / BI
2) to use them as hammer against common foes
3) to reduce the ae you get with them
4) to use them as a deterrent against enemies / possible coalitions

Pragmatism determines when an ally is no longer useful for any listed purpose and should be discarded and replaced with a better option...