Why PERMANENT alliances??

[Enigma_Nova]

There's a problem with Permanent Alliances.
When you're haulin' butt for the space victory, and your permanent ally is doing the same, your ally can screw you over by building the SS Engine in a size 1 city in the middle of the desert.

[bonscott]

Permanent Alliances are more for senarios. Say a WWII senario you want to have Germany and Japan have permanent alliance as the Axis because you don't want the AI Germany to be able to declare war on Japan and stuff like that.

I think it's other big use is in multiplayer where two human players can really coordinate research and stuff better. In single player and regular games it's not really something you want to have.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
When you're haulin' butt for the space victory, and your permanent ally is doing the same, your ally can screw you over by building the SS Engine in a size 1 city in the middle of the desert.

Ah, but two can play the game.

[Enigma_Nova]

Note to self: No permanent alliances with Urban Ranger.

[johnmcd]

You might want to look at an arrived at permanent alliance as something like Scotland and England: a political treaty to join parliaments and heads of state but with the two members maintaining their own legal, education and, recently, separate tax systems. Or something like Texas and Vermont, very different outlooks, a degree of autonomy, but essentially inseparable.

UK and USA would be more of a defensive pact in game terms I think.

The permanent alliances come up very late in the game, when there are only a couple of hundred turns to run normally, and over that time frame there certainly have been examples of such things in the world.