[Discuss] Brainstorming: Limiting Large Alliances (Take 42)

[John P. Murphy]

On Oct 9, 2007, at 4:46 PM, Tom Vogt wrote:

> How about we simply time-limit all positive diplomatic stances? A
> cease-fire has a length of time. A peace treaty has a run-time.
>
> Of course, you can extend the times. But it can be more and more
> expensive, and it gives you plausible deniability if you want to go to
> war ("sorry, I forgot about the cease-fire, I didn't mean it to run  
> out,
> those troops were sent to aid you, it was all a big  
> misunderstanding...").
>
> More importantly, it might edge people towards actively re-thinking
> their alliances instead of simply accepting them as they are.  
> Especially
> new rulers might ask a tricky "why?" when the time to
> re-negotiate/extend comes up.
>
>
> Comments?

Notification is an issue.  Cease-fires ending silently allows for  
those nice little "misunderstandings", but alliances and federations  
probably ought to notify at least the realms involved.

It should not be easy or practically automatic to renew alliances.   
This could couple nicely with my suggestion that rulers should have  
to travel and meet in order to sign agreements: if it's just a matter  
of spending some gold and clicking a link, there won't be much soul- 
searching over a huge cross-continent alliance.  Making the rulers  
travel also can enforce an interesting dynamic: if one realm's king  
is forced to travel to the other realm's capital to sign an alliance  
to protect his kingdom, that really shows who's the junior partner,  
right?  In any case, it should cost something other than gold: more  
than eight hours of a ruler's time, for example, or that travel  
requirement.  A ruler ought to be able to come up with good plausible  
excuses not to renew.  War, on the other hand, should be easy to  
declare.

Also, what is the default state of affairs, neutral or war?  Would it  
be worth having a separate "cease-fire" category, which acts like  
peace, but reverts to war instead of to neutral?

John