Alliances

Creating Alliances (HoI 2 v1.2)

There are four key values that influence the chance of a nation accepting an alliance:

Shared border - +50%?
Neutrality - this is a little misleading as it may lead you to think it has something to do with the peacefulness of a nation. There is a separate variable ("war") to adjust how "war mongering" a nation may be. At 150 there ceases to be any chance of gaining an alliance.
Interventionalism - this is the government slider between Isolationism (1) and Interventionism (10) and thus is adjustible by players. Values below 6 adjust the chance by 12% per step, values above 6 have no further impact on the chance of forming an alliance (this is the value of your desired target not your own Interventionalism!).
Relationship - relationships between nations are set at the start of the game and can be improved by using diplomatic influence (also note that other diplomatic actions such as ongoing trade can also improve relationships). Assumedly if your opponent influences a nation then that will lower it's relationship with your nation.
Differential of Political Left/Right must be within 3 points.

HoG (Head of Government) "Flamboyant Tough Guy" has a +50% Alliance chance with close ideologies.

HoS (Head of State) "Barking Buffoon" has +30% alliance chance with democracies.

HoS (Head of State) "Power-hungry demagogue" has +50% alliance chance with dictatorship.

AI file "special resistance" makes no reduction in chance of alliance.

The reason that stock Paradox versions have Nationalist Spain joining the Axis so easily is that they forgot to enter values for relationship and neutrality. Thus with a neutrality of zero it's extremely easy to get Spain to form an alliance.

Money is needed to conduct diplomacy. England starts with a lot of money, the other nations tend to start with very little.

Money can be made via trade or by increasing production of consumer goods. At initial minimal consumer goods levels only Russia produces more money per day than their average tech teams will cost them. This is because Russia starts with very high dissent (hence needing a LOT of consumer goods initially).

Thus as I see it a nation's chance to diplomatically influence the world is directly related to their willingness to divert production to consumer goods or to trade away resources (or supplies).

Trading resources for money get's some wildly different ratios. Anywhere from like 4 to 20 Energy for one money!

Each point of neutrality is worth about 0.75% until neutrality = 150 then there is no longer any chance for an alliance.
Each level of interventionism is worth about 12%
Every ten points of relations is worth about 6%

Government Type:

Left - Right
Democratic	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	Democratic
10	SD	SL	SL	SL	SL	ML	ML	ML	ML	SC	10
9	SD	SD	SL	SL	SL	ML	ML	ML	SC	SC	9
8	SD	SD	SD	SL	SL	ML	ML	SC	SC	SC	8
7	LWR	SD	SD	SD	SL	ML	SC	SC	SC	PA	7
6	LWR	LWR	SD	SD	SD	SC	SC	SC	PA	PA	6
5	LE	LWR	LWR	SD	SD	SC	SC	PA	PA	FA	5
4	LE	LE	LWR	LWR	SD	SC	PA	PA	FA	FA	4
3	ST	LE	LE	LWR	LWR	PA	PA	FA	FA	NS	3
2	ST	ST	LE	LE	LWR	PA	FA	FA	NS	NS	2
1	ST	ST	ST	LE	LE	FA	FA	NS	NS	NS	1

FA = Fascist
LE = Leninist
LWR= Left-Wing Radical
ML = Market Liberal
PA = Paternal Autocrat
SC = Social Conservative
SD = Social Democratic
SL = Social Liberal
ST = Stalinist
NS = National Socialist

Guidelines (for Starfire Historical Mod):

Neutrality should rarely be below 100