Adjudication on a NAP -edited please comment again

[thejeff]

Sounds more like, no attack within the next 10 turns without at least 3 turns of warning.
If you want to continue it, you have to negotiate again.

Standard 3 turns of warning, but no deal after the 10 months are up

[Ironhawk]

Yeah thats right thejeff. Its just a regular 3-turn NAP, but it expires on the 10th turn. So if you still want to go to war with someone you can still give notice. But unless its something hugely pressing, its normally easier to just wait until the NAP expires.

[Valandil]

My position has always been "never attack anyone until they hve gobbled up eighteen nations and can eat you for breakfast," so maybe I'm not the most qualified judge here, but it seems to me that Zenphos should probably have either sought confirmation of the NAP or explicitly confirmed that no NAP existed.
If Zenphos is correct and he was deliberately seeking a war, using deliberately ambiguous wording and messaging strikes me as, though not oathbreaking per se, at least dishonest and deserving of a volley of seeking arrows.

How would the OP feel if his NAP proposal met with the response "maybe"?

That being said, ambiguous wording is not criminal, and better communication from the other party would have resolved this much more easily. I therefore reluctantly side with the OP, but suggest, without intention of giving offence, a less equivocal diplomatic methodology in the future.

[zenphos]

Hmmmm,
I seem to be saying that a lot.
If I had received a maybe to my NAP response I would have assumed he was stalling for time while bringing up a massive army to invade me and as such I would have either attacked him before he was ready, or if not in a position to do so would have hurriedly fortified my borders and would have started moving armies back in an attempt to repel his invasion.
I have NAP's and trade agreements with other players in other games and with all of them have been very cautious until the other side has sent a response saying yes the terms you suggested are agreeable to me and I consider the agreement signed.
In fact this exact same situation happened to me in another game, but in reverse, where I requested a NAP2 and got a response asking for a NAP4 instead. The next turn I sent back a response saying that I agreed to a NAP4 and it was only then that our armies moved away from each others respective borders, but I still kept a scout down there just in case.
This is dominions after all and at some point you will either be invaded or someone will invade you, from what I have seen normally with the aid of another player. So I figure it is always best to be on the alert. And if you receive ambiguous or no answers to your messages I would always assume it to mean there is something not right and best to prepare yourself.