Matrix Games Forums

In PBEM games:

a country that has fought a war and been forced to surrender has a minimum of 18 months peace between itself and its opponents. It has been discovered that if a longer peace is imposed on the defeated country (ie. through peace treaty terms), that the losing country can still break this treaty after the 18 month period is complete, removing the enforced peace terms and allowing it to declare war.

In most of the games I play in, we have taken this as a programming error and force the country under the enforced peace to follow through with the terms. However, I have recently been pondering this response......

Was it INTENTIONAL that a country would always be able to declare war on another after the 18 month minimum peace? In effect, did the designers intend that a country could repudate a treaty after 18 months? I simply ask because in several games now we have had long 4-5 year enforced peace terms forced upon countries and that seems like an awfully long time to be out of exciting game play. Plus, I don't think there was ever such a long peace imposed upon a country during this period.

The fact is that if a country reputated a treaty, it would seem like the response for the victor would be another war against that party.

Of course, for the Update, I would advise (as I believe is now under consideration) a hefty Glory point cost for any treaty breakers. Perhaps even larger for breaking surrender treaties (perhaps a glory hit equal to the original surrender?)

Thus, getting back to my original point: should a country be able to declare war on a former enemy after the 18 month period is over irrespective of any enforced peace terms? This would mean, of course, the formerly defeated party would have to break the surrender treaty first.

I think that the victory conditions should be completely reworked in terms of pbem ability.

Removal of generals - too cheap, I took out all of Austria's generals in one peace treaty
Demanding cash - too expensive in relation to the other abilities??
remove walls - too cheap
scuttle ships - not sure
claim colonies - a little too cheap imo
demand province - far too cheap
feudal levy - should not be allowed at all (too devastating)
issue a DoW - no real effect, player simply DoWs and do nothing
enforced peace - FAR too cheap

Terje

My comments on Terje:
 
Removal of generals - Absolutely agree it is too cheap.  Should be related to number of stars (ie. a 4 star "head of the nation" should take a HUGE number of points.  That being said, I think that for a glory penalty a country should be able to return removed generals (Napoleon anyone?), after, say, 12 months?

Demanding cash - Agree here.  It seems that removing cash may be a BIT to expensive

remove walls - Agreed.
 
scuttle ships - seems a BIT to expensive but I wouldn't make it too much cheaper

claim colonies - this one may be a bit too cheap but not by much

demand province - I don't know about this.  True, you can demand a number of provinces if you totally crush the other guy but I think that was how things went.  I would also think that if you fixed liberation of countries (ie. allowing them to be liberated even if not adjecent) you would see less provinces being taken.  Also, the number of provinces taken is already limited by "adjecent provinces only"

feudal levy - having thought about this, I DO think you should be able to do this but 1) it should cost a lot and 2) you can only force someone's level to move closer to your own (ie. France can make people lower their level (ie. spread the freedom of the revolution) not raise it, etc.).  Also, you should NOT be able to delay implimentation of this term (usually until right before the 18 months are up).  It must be done immediately.

issue a DoW - fine by me.  This does have SOME effect as it prevents supply from being used.  That being said I think a "break/no alliance" should also be included in terms.  A "break/no alliance" would cause the party to break any existing alliance with the named country, as well as preventing making a new alliance until the term was over.

enforced peace - See below
 
Of course, the last one bring me back to my point.  Was it INTENDED that ANY surrender treaty could be broken after 18 months?  If so (and the more I think about it, the more I think that it WAS intended that surrender treaties could be broken after 18 months), then enforced peace terms don't matter.  You could impose a peace with a country through surrender for 10 years.  At the end of 18 months, the loser simply cancels the treaty, takes the glory hit, and can then go to war again.
 
Essentially, I guess a designer needs to answer this question so we know if we have screwed up our house rules in this case.

I believe surrender treaties can be broken only in certain circumstances after a period of time. I don't believe they can be deliberately abandoned by the surrendering party, however.  I haven't looked at this in some years now.

In PBEM, surrender treaties can be broken after 18 months, with the breaking country taking a Glory penalty for breaking a treaty.
 
I am beginning to think this is intentional, unless it is the programmers intent that a defeated country can be prevented from declaring war on a victorious country for 5, 7 or even 10 years with no recourse for the defeated country?   I simply can't imagine that is correct.  What practical, realistic thing would prevent a country from reputating a treaty after a certain period of time?  I can never think of a period (during the Napoleonic period or otherwise) when this happened.