alliance woes (+game crashing bug)

1st off i'll start by listing a game crashing bug
if you're in an alliance and you try to send an alliance message, it works fine, however, i've found if you then try to select the "perform intelligence against empire" button/option the game immediately crashes. this is repeatable too. (playing with FQM, BM and latest patch/version of SEV and both mods)

next off, i find the AI empires outside the alliance continues to try and get me to sign treaties - even though i cannot independently accept them.
which brings me to my next woe: you cannot seem to get an alliance to form treaties with others (including declaring war), even with a majority win in a vote.

one final woe i have is that when you form an alliance, all other treaties you have are cancelled (including war), and i'm not sure that really even makes sense. why would 2 blood enemies stop fighting just cos one allied to another race, and similarly why would trade get disrupted?
seems to me that other than abusing smaller AI empires (using no.planets or pop size for voting, to force favourable alliance elements into place), there is no real benefit to alliances over treaties beyond asthetics and RP value. (and really, even with RP value they seem to me to be more trouble than they are worth with all the non-funcationality).

so i guess i'm complaining in the hope that something can be done regarding these.
(i also have problems with unmothballing, but that's a known issue)