Well, I went Non Aggression -> Criminal Extradition -> Embassy -> Full Alliance, because I read somewhere that it would be better to to make some small treaties before offering a full alliance, presumably because your ratings will in crease. Though they didn't for me, so I suppose I could have just as well just bribed them as much as I had and offered the full alliance straight away. Anyway, I didn't have any other treaties with them, I guess for optimization purposes I could/should have, next time. Either way, it worked and I won the vote by a comfortable margin!
Next scenario is the NA map, within a week the two other US regions had declared on me, since I'm a compulsive micromanager/perfectionist I was fantastically overwhelmed with the around 2,000+ units I inherited. I couldn't really be arsed and deployed the entire reserve and set mil initiative to 100, still worked good enough though. Obviously not my preferred method though, just wanted to see what would happen...
I restarted and allied with all my neighbours, thankfully I had high ratings with them from the start. Now I'm managing my economy and my military in peace, by selling my entire navy and about 90% of the army!
Ahh, a clean sheet...
