Political actions?

[doomtrader]

Can the player affect any country to be more willing to join his side?
I've already seen that attacking some countries might make other to be more eager to join enemy alliance.
However how to get more countries on your side?

[FOARP]

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any mechanism that allows this. Bulgaria is supposed to become more friendly to the Central Powers if they declare war on Romania, but since Romania will usually join the allies by themselves, and since Bulgaria automatically joins the Central Powers unless the CP have suffered major defeats, there's no point in doing this. You can influence countries to join the opposing side by e.g., sinking convoys and declaring war on neutrals however.

Ideally the game would award diplomatic influence points based on the number of friendly capitals held which you could spend to influence neutrals on to your side, or you could buy diplomats which you assign to influencing countries onto you side in the same way you buy labs to develop technologies. Obviously certain countries (Switzerland and maybe Sweden) should be immune to influence though. However this kind of feature has not been implemented in-game and may never be.

Personally, my favourite move after conquering France as the Central Power is to declare war on the USA, Spain, and Portugal. The battles you find yourself fighting in Spain against the assembled might of the allies are most epic.