The Upside of Alliance

[Magnus]

When you have an alliance with another civ, and their units appear on your city squares, they do not disable production (like units who are only in peace) - they appear as invisible on the city production screen. Once the alliance is broken, all of their units are immediately whisked away to their homeland, thus they can't interfere immediately should the alliance be cancelled. Allied leaders never ask you to leave their lands when you are within 2 spaces of a city square. Also, allied units exert no zone of control, so its easier to maneuver around them. If you 'attack' an allied city with a damaged unit, it is healed to full instantly. Generally speaking, you can always get gifts from enthusiastic allies.

I find, it great to secure a border with an ally, so I can go off on conquest in another direction and not have to worry about my back. Just give the ally a few techs when they demand them, and you will have no problems maintaining it. However, get the alliance done as early as possible in the game (I do so with the first civ I encounter); while it is easy to make an alliance when everyone is weak, it is virtually impossible to do so once you hit #1 on the powergraph. Old alliances tend to remain in place even when you are dominant, as long as you treat the ally nicely.

The only drawback is that occaisionally the allied civ will ask you to declare war on their enemy, I just look at that as a nice excuse to go on conquest.

[This message has been edited by Magnus (edited April 23, 2001).]

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Frankly I can't recall ever having an alliance, but I thought people have posted around here that the AI tended to "forget" about its alliances and could sneak-attack without withdrawing its troops.


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[Magnus]

I have been sneak-attacked by civ's with whom I had peaceful relations (many, many times), but never by an ally, and I have an alliance in almost every game I play.

 

[goodbye_mr_bond]

I like alliances too. It's not a bad way to keep up in tech when I'm concentrating my resources on war.

 

[Archbob]

I hate alliances, you can't break them at any time, the other dude's troops can walk on your territory, and sometimes they steal stuff from me.

I never make them.

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[thealien_83]

I would like to be able to keep alliances more often, seeing as how nations actually DO manage to form and keep alliances from time to time in the real world, but in Civ I have rarely seen an alliance last for more than a few short rounds, sadly...

 

[Az]

I like alliances!

When my territory is ful of their units I sipply cancel the "worthless alliance".

Then, all their units go back in two or three small frontier cities which are immediatly bribed by my diplos. This way I get more than 15 units with 500 gold.

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[Micah]

I avoid alliances. Often I find that's just an easy way for them to send in an engineer and build cities in my territory. Also you have to give your ally tech to maintain the alliance and there's nothing to stop them from giving that tech to an enemy, or eventually becoming an enemy as well.

 

[HIEROPHANT]

In mutiplayer games it i can use the computer as pawns for my plans without alliance.

 

[SunTzu]

Alliances suck in SP in MGE cause the AI is so Hostile.
Now in MP games Alliances can rock

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