Are France's Allies Completely Useless?

I'm playing the European campaign as France, and one year in I'm starting to wonder if my allies are ever going to pull their weight.

There are 3 full stacks of Prussians and 2 full stacks of Russians on my turf, and I've already fought off 2 full Austrian stacks while marching on Vienna, one full Saxon stack that attacked me at Prague and one almost-full British stack that invaded Bretagne, so clearly the coalition members are pulling their weight.

On the other hand, Wurttemburg, Batavia and Bavaria have about 1½ stacks each, just sitting in and around their capitals. Hell, even when the Prussians marched an army straight through Bavaria, within spitting distance of Munich, the Bavarians still didn't come out to play

Then I noticed that the Spanish are wasting their best ships of the line on a trade node (That's not even under threat thanks to my control of Gibraltar and the straits thereof). That's some serious firepower sat around doing nothing when it could (and should) be helping me hunt down Nelson (something which I can't really do alone as I have only 3 or 4 ships of the line, and a bunch of useless frigates). The Spanish also two full stacks sat around Navarra, and another one at Madrid.

So while I'm outnumbered and overstretched in the east, my allies are sitting around doing nothing . Batavia have attacked a couple of small Russian fleets that got a bit too close to their trade nodes, but that's all they've done.

Question: Do they always do this, or are they going to actually pull their collective finger out at some point and lend me a freaking hand?

Are your allies even at war with your enemies? Make sure you allow military access into your land, and if you have any money to spare, give it to your allies. Hopefully with some extra cash, they will spam armies and eventually sent some out towards enemy settlements.

But yes, your story has much similarities with when I play with many allies.

Occasionally, I've had allies help me out nicely, one time I liberated Brittany and after sending them some money, they spammed armies into Napoleon's Paris region while I marched to the city of Paris itself from Belgium. I had a nice fight alongside the Bretons at Orleans. However, usually I find myself having to get involving with whatever my ally wants to do, instead of them coming to my aid.

Originally Posted by Maleficus

I'm playing the European campaign as France, and one year in I'm starting to wonder if my allies are ever going to pull their weight.

There are 3 full stacks of Prussians and 2 full stacks of Russians on my turf, and I've already fought off 2 full Austrian stacks while marching on Vienna, one full Saxon stack that attacked me at Prague and one almost-full British stack that invaded Bretagne, so clearly the coalition members are pulling their weight.

On the other hand, Wurttemburg, Batavia and Bavaria have about 1½ stacks each, just sitting in and around their capitals. Hell, even when the Prussians marched an army straight through Bavaria, within spitting distance of Munich, the Bavarians still didn't come out to play

Then I noticed that the Spanish are wasting their best ships of the line on a trade node (That's not even under threat thanks to my control of Gibraltar and the straits thereof). That's some serious firepower sat around doing nothing when it could (and should) be helping me hunt down Nelson (something which I can't really do alone as I have only 3 or 4 ships of the line, and a bunch of useless frigates). The Spanish also two full stacks sat around Navarra, and another one at Madrid.

So while I'm outnumbered and overstretched in the east, my allies are sitting around doing nothing . Batavia have attacked a couple of small Russian fleets that got a bit too close to their trade nodes, but that's all they've done.

Question: Do they always do this, or are they going to actually pull their collective finger out at some point and lend me a freaking hand?

Grant them some territory (for example, Venice to Italy). I've seen Italians and Swiss rampage all over the place as my allies.

i just completed a grand campaign as france and did not receive much help from allies either. Towards the end of game the allied poland and romania attacked the eastern remnants of austria but that was it. The others just build stacks around their capitals, i guess they are afraid of france after all?

the british invasion must be scripted because after that they do nothing similar. I even managed to get peace and trade with the british (but they did capture amsterdam towards the end). The russians invaded the kingdom of italy though and captured milan, that was impressive.

In my games, the Italians are quick to seize Venice and sometimes even Croatia.

I played EiC mod as the French, and it was very refreshing, because Holland attacked Cleves for me when I was battling against the Prussians. Denmark who I allied with attacked Sweden, taking out that little stack they have in Meckleburg that would have been a problem when I pushed towards Berlin. Stuttgart and Switzerland both attacked Tyrol and took it, when the Austrians counterattacked and took it off me. Spain has destroyed a Sicilian fleet that was troubling my merchant fleet in the Med. EiC changes the aggressiveness of the european countries so they are more active. There also seems to be less of a penalty for territorial expansion so the confederation of the Rhine still like you when you have taken Prussia and Austria.

However, playing as the Prussians, Austria, wanted me to ally with them against the Ottomans - no problem I thought since they are a buffer against me anyhow. But it turns out, stacks of ottomans (who are beefed up in Eic) wander across Austria unchallenged to attack me.

So, try a mod, and be surprised.

Originally Posted by Slaists

Grant them some territory (for example, Venice to Italy). I've seen Italians and Swiss rampage all over the place as my allies.

Its funny, I did exactly this and 10+ turns later the Italians have a ton of little 1-unit stacks around trying to get to Venice, which continues to remain undefended. Its like they can't figure out how to unlock their doors or something.

Originally Posted by Maleficus

I'm playing the European campaign as France, and one year in I'm starting to wonder if my allies are ever going to pull their weight.

There are 3 full stacks of Prussians and 2 full stacks of Russians on my turf, and I've already fought off 2 full Austrian stacks while marching on Vienna, one full Saxon stack that attacked me at Prague and one almost-full British stack that invaded Bretagne, so clearly the coalition members are pulling their weight.

On the other hand, Wurttemburg, Batavia and Bavaria have about 1½ stacks each, just sitting in and around their capitals. Hell, even when the Prussians marched an army straight through Bavaria, within spitting distance of Munich, the Bavarians still didn't come out to play

Then I noticed that the Spanish are wasting their best ships of the line on a trade node (That's not even under threat thanks to my control of Gibraltar and the straits thereof). That's some serious firepower sat around doing nothing when it could (and should) be helping me hunt down Nelson (something which I can't really do alone as I have only 3 or 4 ships of the line, and a bunch of useless frigates). The Spanish also two full stacks sat around Navarra, and another one at Madrid.

So while I'm outnumbered and overstretched in the east, my allies are sitting around doing nothing . Batavia have attacked a couple of small Russian fleets that got a bit too close to their trade nodes, but that's all they've done.

Question: Do they always do this, or are they going to actually pull their collective finger out at some point and lend me a freaking hand?

It works the other way also. Playing my first Russian campaign since the patch I was surprised to see a couple full stacks of Spaniards show up near Konigsberg, and then proceed into Russian territory. They had to traverse Austrian and Prussian regions for many turns to get to me, and were not attacked. The only thing that saved me is that they travelled during the winter, so by the time I engaged them they were under 1/2 strength.

In my recent European campaign as France, they actually did nothing rather than moving their armies around their cities for no reason... I don't think they even had a battle in about 90 turns I was playing the campaign... The only occasion I remember is when an Italian Army was near an Austrian one, so I engaged the Austrian army before any of those two could move away from each other at the next turn and thus desperate Italians had to help me as my reinforcements.

Well I'm playing as the British in my peninsular campaign and tbh, the Portuguese are doing all.

Although their are occasionally exceptions, all allies in TW are rather useless. The exception is when they have a city (especially a capitol) on the front line.

In my Great Britain campaign I had quite some enjoyable times utilizing my powerhouse economy to manipulate my allies to destroy my enemies. I had found that rushing for Paris only led to my defeat since I generally did not have a powerful economy yet due to a minimal amount of regions under my control. I spent maybe six months to a year dominating every facet of the ocean. I blockaded every port of Spain and France, in addition to having control of a majority of nodes.

After this, I launched my own invasion of Normandy with several thousand men landing in Normandy and assaulting Paris soon after. Apparently Spain is a useful ally only when France is under direct assault. After I took Paris, Spain sent two stacks immediately at the city. After I destroyed them, I sent two or three stacks into Spain to liberate the region for my own purposes.

I'm assuming France's allies are useless only when you're playing as France. As even the Swiss sent a little over half a stack into France twice when I took it.

This would be the aftermath.

Prussia, Ottoman Empire, Spain and France were all eliminated from my campaign. I then used my finances to force break off all trade that nations had with Russia and to force most of them to war with Russia.

This always happens with me
I play, I make allies they dont help me with shiz

I play against the enemy, they make Allies, They all work together to take me down... :\ or their opposing country.. How gay is that

Your allies are worse when you play as the coalition. At least your minor nation allies have no guts to declare war. I found that the Bavarians can provide great help when fighting the Austrians at first, you just march to Vienna, fight a battle, and retreat back to resupply your troops. However I often wait until the Austrians destroy Bavaria and take it back and liberate them. Try to destroy and liberate Saxony when you are at war with Prussia. The Saxons have a supply depot.
However, Wurttemberg, Switzerland, Batavian Republic,and especially Spain are useless.... The Spanish will ally with Portugal and fight against you if you invade Portugal.
Kingdom of Italy helps also against the Austrians, but don't expect your allies to attack your enemies.

If you're an aggressive player, it's probably not worth waiting on your allies. They like to build a single stack of troops and sit there, as their AIs seem very timid and won't launch an invasion unless the opposition is undefended. As client states, they probably should behave that way -- if they're aggressive, they'll drag you into multiple wars on many fronts, and that would be far more annoying.

Major nations are usually much more active. Unfortunately for Spain, it doesn't border any of your major enemies, so it also usually just sits there. They're likely to take out Gibraltar and stop. I don't think I've seen the Spanish navy ever leave the coast of Spain, and certainly not its main navy with its Santissima Trinidad flagship. So if you were hoping for a Franco-Spanish battle against Nelson, that's probably not going to happen. If you manipulated your way into a tight alliance with Prussia (by not taking Vienna) and force it to declare against Russia and Austria, you would see the Prussian armies move against Austria.

As the French, I've always treated the allies as buffers instead of help. They block more aggressive powers from expanding into France, so I don't have to pay for defense forces on non-expansion fronts. On the front that I'm expanding, I never keep allies -- I usually betray Bavaria and Italy to the Austrians (offer to declare war against them for Austrian money or tech) to grab their universities (Bavaria has a very good 2nd level university on Turn 1) on my march eastward.