Permanent Alliance?

PLTORR

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 30, 2006
Messages
48
I've played the game for months now and still haven't made a permanent alliance with another civ. How do you make one?
 
PLTORR said:
I've played the game for months now and still haven't made a permanent alliance with another civ. How do you make one?

SK138 is right. You have to start a custom game and check the box for "Permanent Alliances" to enable them. This doesn't automatically start you allied with anyone. It only allows you to eventually join with another nation. Note that this is not the same as the "Team Play" option.

To form a permanent alliance (PA), you'll have to be on "Friendly" terms with your PA target and 1) have had a Defensive Pact (DP) for a number of years, or 2) have shared a number of years at war against the same opponent, or 3) a combination of the two. If you haven't shared a common opponent for a significant part of the game, you'll have to sign a DP and wait a long time until they are willing to sign a PA with you. If you have shared a common opponent, the DP waiting time will be reduced or even completely eliminated.

Military Tradition allows Defensive Pacts. Communism allows Permanent Alliances. Fascism also allows PA's, but going for Communism allows you to run State Property.

Once you have signed a PA with another country, you become a hybrid nation, technically two separate nations but in many ways acting as one. You immediately begin sharing all technology knowledge. This means that instead of trading tech for tech with your PA target, you can simply give them techs to make them like you. Those techs aren't wasted. Once they sign a PA with you, you'll get access to the techs you could have traded for anyway. If you are behind on tech, signing a PA can help you catch up. Each nation controls its own production choices, civics and units. Each has its own money pool, although you can give/request money from each other when needed. If either nation declares war then the other is automatically drawn into the war.

You can view your PA's cities just as you would your own. Double click the city and it will open the city screen, allowing you to see the buildings, units, production/science/culture, etc.

Starting the turn after you sign a PA, the info box in the bottom right of the screen will show what your PA is researching, along with what you are researching. You can ask your PA to change what they are researching (diplomacy screen, "Let's discuss something else"). Usually you'll want your PA to research the same thing you are, as your research points get added together and you can research even faster. Occasionally you'll want to ask your PA to switch to research something different, for instance if the tech you are about to discover gives a free GP. The AI is notoriously bad about using GP -- very inefficient. Have your PA change research so you get the free GP, then you can use the GP in one of your cities, or even in one of your PA's cities, whereever it will do the most good.

In war, you can ask your PA to attack a certain city -- very helpful as sometimes you have to guide your PA to get effective military use from them. Also, the AI loves to pillage, even when it is clear it is about to take a city. It doesn't seem to realize it is hurting itself by doing this. Thus, if you have a city you think you can take on your own, ask your PA to attack a distant city so most of his forces will be drawn away from your target city.

Once you've signed a PA with an AI, they will gladly give you ALL their resources that they have available for trade. All you have to do is ask. Place all their resources on the bargaining table and say "This sure would come in handy." They'll give them to you without asking anything in return. Note that you can use the same feature to ask for money. You can even ask for large amounts of gold per turn, but that isn't free money. Your PA has to lower their research rate to be able to provide you with that gpt, and since this is a trade, it can't be cancelled until after ten turns. If you use that feature to get gold per turn, you are hurting your collective research for at least ten turns every time you do it.

Finally, you can only have one Permanent Alliance. If you sign a PA with someone, you can't sign another with someone else.

EDIT: WastinTime has created a Permanent Alliance Guide in the Strategy Articles forum that has additional information. His article assumes you know the basics of Permanent Alliances already (basically, what I've gone over in this post). I had been linking to his article in my sig and in response to questions in other threads, but I noticed that people were still asking basic questions, which meant they hadn't seen my link in that thread that points here. I've decided to link to this post in my sig so that people get the basics before I send them to that article. WastinTime's article has some good information that I've not touched on here.
 
Is there any way of allowing PA's in an ordinary game? Like a edit of the XML WB-file??
 
Well doing a custom game is a normal game, you just have to enable the option. Not really that different.
 
Yzman said:
Well doing a custom game is a normal game, you just have to enable the option. Not really that different.

But when playing on premade maps?
 
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