Alliances: What's the Point?

[Miserable Old Git]

I struggle to see the point of having any alliances. The benefits from them are nugatory, and they come with a massive drawback, namely: they drag you into wars you may not wish to fight. Your AI "allies" never actively participate in your own wars (and au contraire will attack your own city state suzerains). The visibility advantage of a level 2 military alliance is handy, but it means making the alliance fairly early in the game to get level 2 at a decent time (with early drawback as above), and I prefer to just build a spaceport and earth satellite. The financial advantage of an economic alliance is overwhelmed by using Hunza + Triangular Trade. The scientific advantage of a research alliance is overwhelmed by use of spies to steal tech.

The only time, in fact, that I make an alliance at all is if I'm trying to build cities very near a "friend", which becomes feasible with a cultural alliance. However, even then I drop the alliance once my cities loyalties are secure.

Have I got something wrong?

 

[Benevolent Dictator]

1. Boosting the Inspiration on the Culture Tree
2. Use of the Wisselbanken Diplomacy Card, stacking with the Tier III Democracy Government
3. +5 CS with the Military Alliance completely negates the +4 Deity bonus if you find an Ally to Joint War with you
4. In Domination games, locking in the lone civ(s) that are friendly with you prevents them from forever denouncing you to have some allies to trade luxuries & strategic resources with, send trade routes to
5. Having automatic Open Borders & ability to heal/upgrade units in an ally's territory can really help in far away foreign wars

 

[Quintillus]

6. Deterring other civs from attacking civs whom you want to keep around, for balance-of-power-Metternich-system reasons, or just because they're good trade partners.
7. If you have Vilnuis as a city-state ally, you get +50% Theater Square adjacency per maximum alliance level, which can really amp up the culture production in the right situation.

 

[Disgustipated]

I mainly do it to keep attitude level high. With just a regular declaration of friendship civs can turn on you if you've been a naughty boy (or girl). With alliances you are pretty much guaranteed they won't be a problem until perhaps the very end of the game when you are close to victory. It's just less headache and you don't have to worry about defending any particular area. The only headache is remembering to renew them every time it comes up.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I struggle to see the point of having any alliances. The benefits from them are nugatory, and they come with a massive drawback, namely: they drag you into wars you may not wish to fight. Your AI "allies" never actively participate in your own wars (and au contraire will attack your own city state suzerains). The visibility advantage of a level 2 military alliance is handy, but it means making the alliance fairly early in the game to get level 2 at a decent time (with early drawback as above), and I prefer to just build a spaceport and earth satellite. The financial advantage of an economic alliance is overwhelmed by using Hunza + Triangular Trade. The scientific advantage of a research alliance is overwhelmed by use of spies to steal tech.

The only time, in fact, that I make an alliance at all is if I'm trying to build cities very near a "friend", which becomes feasible with a cultural alliance. However, even then I drop the alliance once my cities loyalties are secure.

Have I got something wrong?

Wisselbaken is OP for international trade routes.

Otherwise the AI is brain dead and way too easy to please. More dynamic and involved diplomacy is on my list of requests for Civ 7.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

It used to be good for having a trading partner, and (very occasionally) cheesing for a military alliance combat boost or preventing loyalty pressure.
But ever since they changed suzerained city states to count as allies for trading purposes (wisselbanken and democracy), the value has fallen off quite significantly.
They would be good if you could reliably reach the level 3 alliances in due time, but even when I play together with a friend of mine (and we slot wisselbanken/democracy and trade early to specifically boost the alliance progress bar), the game just tends to be over before we get to level 3 (or we get very little time to benefit from it).
Again, this is one of the big problems that civ 6 has with the late game pacing (and which I really hope they fix in civ 7!).
Essentially, the better you get at the game, the more irrelevant almost all the features after the industrial era are (as you win well before you get to use them properly).

 

[vorlon_mi]

I just recently had a cautionary incident with alliances that I didn't expect. One of my neighbors was a declared friend, so I eventually promoted that to an alliance. More turns pass, so the friendship expires. This neighbor is starting to build into lands that I want, so I denounce him. After 10 turns or so, I declare a formal war.
I have alliances with other non-neighbors who are also good trading partners.

Here comes a special session of the World Congress -- for a Betrayal Emergency. Since I had alliances with 4 of the others I assumed I was fine. NOPE! The emergency vote succeeds. All 4 of my former allies have now declared war.

Be careful in making an alliance with a civ that you might someday -- even dozens of turns later -- want to invade. I like them, for the most part, but sometimes the cost is too high.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Here comes a special session of the World Congress -- for a Betrayal Emergency. Since I had alliances with 4 of the others I assumed I was fine. NOPE! The emergency vote succeeds. All 4 of my former allies have now declared war.

Yeah that system is complete bullfeathers.
I would have understood such an international emergency if you could declare surprise wars on friends like in civ 5, but having a friendship expire (and even taking the detour through a denunciation and a formal declaration rather than surprise war) is just completely wrong.
That and alliance partners breaking the alliance due to said bullfeathers emergency.
I would usually hope that civ 7 fixes said system, but it seems that civ 7 unfortunately has bigger problems going for it right now.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

Yeah that system is complete bullfeathers.
I would have understood such an international emergency if you could declare surprise wars on friends like in civ 5, but having a friendship expire (and even taking the detour through a denunciation and a formal declaration rather than surprise war) is just completely wrong.
That and alliance partners breaking the alliance due to said bullfeathers emergency.
I would usually hope that civ 7 fixes said system, but it seems that civ 7 unfortunately has bigger problems going for it right now.

Generally you can make peace with them easily after 10 turns. And since most of the time they did not have real military presence near you, they don't have time to be actually harmfull.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Generally you can make peace with them easily after 10 turns. And since most of the time they did not have real military presence near you, they don't have time to be actually harmfull.

I don't have problems with AIs declaring war on me in that they kill me (its very easy to defeat them either way), but from a realism standpoint.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Generally you can make peace with them easily after 10 turns. And since most of the time they did not have real military presence near you, they don't have time to be actually harmfull.

Not in this case; I tried that. As long as the betrayal emergency was ongoing, they wouldn't make peace for any sort of payment.
While I agree that fighting a "fake war" with distant AI tribes is not a threat to my land/cities/troops, the disruption to the overall landscape is annoying.
My traders (to the non-belligerents) are vulnerable to plunder. I can't trade with all of the tribes (formerly allies!) who are now at war with me.
I can't buy luxuries or sell them my luxuries. Hunkering down for 30+ turns until the emergency expires is just not fun.

 

[JNR13]

I once had a level 3 cultural alliance with the worst culture civ in the match so that they would generate more tourists for me to attract.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Postcript to my story above: I found the prospect of fighting the betrayal emergency for 30+ turns to be un-fun, so I went back to an earlier save file (I regularly save every 10 turns). I reloaded and did not declare on my one-time ally (Kongo). Kept playing gearing up to take Kupe's last few cities since he perpetually denounces me, while preparing for a diplo victory by building Statue of Liberty. I was playing a lot of culture, but Kongo had built Broadway and had a TON of great writings. I wanted to win by culture, but they were making it hard.

Around turn 310, Kongo declares a surprise war on me. WTF !?!?
First, the AI rarely declare in the late game (Modern Era). Second, according to the scores across the top of the screen, my military totally outclassed his. Third, yes, this was my former ally, risking me declaring a Betrayal Emergency against HIM.

SMH.

By the way, the only reason I hadn't finished off Kupe before was a lack of oil. All 3 of the sources within my borders were offshore. I had to wait until Plastics to upgrade my troops or build a single airplane.

 

[reddishrecue]

I usually don't form any alliances with anyone and take trade with anyone unless I need to land a scientist on their campus or something for open borders but other than that I never make any form of trade with anyone at all. Other exceptions include declaration of friendships online and establishing embassies with the AI.

 

[crocivfanatic]

On deity science victory alliances are quite important in order to get boost.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I usually don't form any alliances with anyone and take trade with anyone unless I need to land a scientist on their campus or something for open borders but other than that I never make any form of trade with anyone at all. Other exceptions include declaration of friendships online and establishing embassies with the AI.

I ended up making several alliances in the game I described above. As I reflect, I think that I won't do that going forward. The cost (a potential betrayal emergency) is too high, if I need to declare war later.

Even if I don't intend to take out an AI civ, I might need to:

• declare a war so that I can squish their religious units (denounce heretic)
• pillage a trade route or two

as well as the goal of adding their land / resources / cities to my own.

 

[Miserable Old Git]

No need for reseqarch alliances... use spies to get your tech boosts.

 

[reddishrecue]

I ended up making several alliances in the game I described above. As I reflect, I think that I won't do that going forward. The cost (a potential betrayal emergency) is too high, if I need to declare war later.

Even if I don't intend to take out an AI civ, I might need to:

• declare a war so that I can squish their religious units (denounce heretic)
• pillage a trade route or two

as well as the goal of adding their land / resources / cities to my own.

Yeah, it depends on what type of victory you're going for too. Or you simply need to wipe someone out for their land and expand yours to further the type of victory you're pursuing.