WON-Guide to Working With Allies (Exped Forces, Ally Tab Guidelines etc.)

[Sir Garnet]

A guide would be useful (been doing it wrong at first) so I'll make one. Post corrections/knowledge/tips/wild speculation and I'll fold it into a manual format.


EXPEDITIONARY FORCES ("EF")
These are units lent by one country to another which supplies and can use or abuse them. 1.01 patch notes promise satellites and vassals will be very generous in handing over their forces and fleets as EF.

Mechanics of Accepting a Request for Exped Forces (EF):

1. Ally requests EF by diplomatic message.
2. Organize or select the EF stack(s) you want to provide (don't know how many EFs at one time)
3. Click to accept the request.
==> (Note: This is a current hypothesis since accepting the request first and then selecting the exped force seemed to do nothing that turn or the next, so it must be that the forces are tagged first and then the request should be accepted when ready).

Mechanics of Asking for EF: {Info needed-I think some minimum monarch skills may be needed}

Returning EF: Pocus said "Cancel the treaty" (EF treaty or alliance)


USING TAB TO SET GUIDELINES FOR ALLIES[/size][/font]

This is a very useful not-yet really documented feature. Pressing TAB brings up small windows showing your allies (including satellites/vassals) (if any).
- [color="#00FF00"]Green buttons[/color] let you left-click "paint" territory "of interest" ranging from single regions to whole areas at a time for that ally, while right click correspondingly removes the guideline paint.
- The white buttons let you save in a buffer, and then reload, the current guidelines for that ally, and then retrieve them. {don't know yet if the buffer is stored in the save game, or ideally a separate file that could be copied over and used in another game}

Except for the buffer saves,
- The first [color="#FF0000"]red button[/color] conveniently cancels all guidelines for the selected ally.
- The second [color="#FF0000"]red button[/color] wipes out all your guidelines for all your allies.

Next the big question is what do guidelines do? Orso's theory from a different thread:

"Technically I think it just raises the target faction's interest in the area. The AI has areas which are inherently 'interesting' for that faction, their capitol, objective cities, strategic cities, etc. These control where the AI will send troops to fight for these areas. Painting other areas on the map I believe makes them much more interesting for that faction. So if their capitol isn't in danger and there are no other imminent threats to other areas of interest, the AI will plot that faction to take control of the painted area."

That makes sense to me. My earlier guess was that in Spain it tells the French what Spain wants to capture. Spain wanted Gibraltar so I painted it blue. A couple of French corps under Davout strolled on down down and helped capture the place after a lot of Spanish effort including costly decisions went into thoroughly breaching the place- hoorah - then it became French territory - boo hoo. Not sure what determines who captures the region - Spain started the siege, was the victor in the final battle and had taken a lot of losses there, but France had many more men accumulated at Gibraltar and more MC thanks to generals who are usually active. I don't know if changing the guidelines would have mattered.

So having this to guide allies to take places is great, unless you wanted them.

More Info Please

Murphy gets you with what you know that isn't so.