Make allies break alliances

[uberschveinen]

Is there a somewhat-reliable way to make your allies break their military alliances?

I'm in the mid-game of a Belegar ME campaign, and it's... somewhat boring. Because I used extreme diplomacy to cover my back when I raced for Eight Peaks, and because the Dwarf factions all performed bafflingly well, there is now an entire continent without enemies. That makes it very hard to expand sensibly, because there are few wars to start, and even harder to Confederate because nobody feels remotely threatened. I don't mind starting a lot of wars to fix that, but every single Dwarf target I could war with has a military alliance with The Dwarfs or Karak Kadrin, and I really want to confederate them for the Legendary Lords.

So far I haven't convinced a single ally to break any defensive or military alliance. Anywhere up to joining all their wars, or 10-20000 gold, nothing does it. Is there a trick I'm missing?

[wwolf69]

There is a trick to attack someone without triggering his friends: just find someone they are fighting and use "Join war against". It still affect your reliability (if you doesn't end all treaties with you target and wait 10 turns after), and eventually their allies CAN join them, but if they like you and you are reliable they may not.

[Don Cool]

I actually got myself into a situation with exactly Belegar where I couldn´t win and couldn´t lose either but that was long ago, all the Dawi were fat bastards sitting happily in their thrones with nothing to do.

All you can do is travel a bit with 2 armies, take 8 Peaks and call it a day. If the orcs are gone you punch the TK in the face as an alternative.

[Powercow]

One way around this is to find someone that they're at war with, and that you are not, and asking to "Join War Against." This allows you to indirectly declare war and avoid defensive/military alliancess.

EX: You wanna declare was on Barak Varr, but they're allied with Dwarves and Karak Hirn and you don't wanna fight all of them. If Barak Varr is at war with the Border Princes, ask the Border Princes if you can join the war against Barak Varr. You will then be at war with Varr, but not Dwarves or Hirn.

It'll still piss off their allies something fierce, and you may be an oathbreaker if you had a treaty with the faction you're joining war against, but it works.

[uberschveinen]

I tried that a bit, but powergaming early diplomacy was too damned good. The entire Dwarven and Human factions are all allied or at war with me already, across the board. I can try long-term to shake things up but honestly that only ever seems to work for High Elves. I may end up either restarting, or waiting for Archaon.