Bug, Feature, or something else?

[Joram]

In my ongoing travails as the Swedish (now Empire!) I ran into something else I didn't expect. I moved on a British province of whom I was at war with in order to take it over. I didn't know this at the time because of the graphical bug where armies disappear but there also happened to be French, Spanish and Prussians all in this province as well. Anyway, I was only at war with the British, the French are my allies (since I forced them to be allied when I conquered them) who also were at war with the British. The Spanish were at war with the Prussians but in both cases no one else.

So the battle set us up as the British and Prussians on one side and Spanish, French and me (Swedes) on the other. I was fine I guess with this until I ran into the problem with the Prussians. The tactical battle would not let me fire on them at all but they could fire on me with impunity! I'm fine with not being able to fire on them as I wasn't really at war with them but it really ticked me off that that minor fact didn't stop them from firing on me! [:@]

Thankfully, I was able to beat back or otherwise occupy the much larger British force and maneuver my artillery pieces in front of the Prussians so whenever they fired, the artillery would respond. This was the only way I was able to defeat the Prussians as well. I must have lost several thousand troops just due to their fire and not properly being able to attack them. Thankfully they only had one weakened cavalry division and no artillery to support their 3 divisions of infantry otherwise it would have been worse. [8D]

Is this a bug, a "feature", or is there something I am missing? Thankfully the response of fire didn't mean I had declared war on Prussia (in which an enforced peace had recently ended).