New Treaty: Cease-fire

[Stone Mill]

Here's my proposal for an idea that will add a little more value and playability to SEIV:

Ceasefire Treaty

This treaty option will have the functionality of a peace treaty, but it has a definite time period attached, such as:
3 turns
5 turns
7 turns
10 turns

The treaty can be offered to the AI or other players, usually with a gift of some sort in return for a temporary end to hostilties.

Breaking the treaty will have serious repercussions, severly lowering your political rating with the other empires. For multi-player games (with humans) a message could display in all known player log flies: " Empire X has broken a ceasefire treaty with Empire Z."

At the end of the treaty period, the treaty status is set to "none."

I don't know how difficult this would be to code, but I'd like to throw it out there.

But here's the trouble with this concept.... I'll poke the first hole in it myself:
1. What treaty status would be in effect during the ceasefire?
It seems peace could be really exploited, allowing free passage deeper into an enemy's system so you could bypass their minefields and park cruisers over their planets. Would non-aggression or non-interaction produce a desirable result? Any way to enable a setting to restrict a player from entering specified systems for the length of the treaty?

Any thoughts or ideas on this?

[dogscoff]

That's a very good idea. until the Ai is (much) more advanced, I only think it would be suitable for vsHuman games, but it would be cool.

[Gryphin]

I like it.
Between humans it would have to be the Honor system. If your opponent is Role Playing a less than honrable race it could get sticky.
I think the terms might include:
Withdraw X ships from specified systems

I would hope the AI could be modded as to how they would react.
Probablilty to Abuse := XY
Abuse Cease Fire := Sending in More Ships
Abuse Cease Fire := Deploying Mines
Abuse Cease Fire := ....

[Q]

You propose to things that would generally be excellent additions to SE IV apart from the new treaty "cease fire":
1.) That actions between two players have an effect on all the other players attitude/mood against these players. Other examples where this might be very interesting is the use of certain weapons (star and planet destroyer, plague bombs) as has been proposed before.
2.) That the AI would be willing to end war against a certain gift/tribute.

I believe the "cease fire" could be equivalent to the already existing "non intercourse" if the latter was really meaningful (I never understood what was the real difference between no treaty and no intercourse treaty). If you have this treaty no ships will attack even if accidently (warp point) in the same sector, but ships can't enter the sector where the other empire is already present.

[Stone Mill]

Thanks fellas...

I agree, this may take more effort to get it to work with the AI. I admit, this really has a better shot of being used correctly with humans.

2.) That the AI would be willing to end war against a certain gift/tribute.

Yes I do recall reading about the original the frustration of the AI never accepting a peace treaty once war is engaged.

I was sort of hoping this may be a work-around to that problem.

If you have this treaty no ships will attack even if accidently (warp point) in the same sector, but ships can't enter the sector where the other empire is already present.

That is pretty darn close to what I am looking for. But is it enforceable with human players?

Between humans it would have to be the Honor system.

I rather that it would not have to be...

I wish there was a trigger that detected actions during the active treaty of cease-fire:
a. entering a sector where the other empire is already present (current "shared" systems would be a DMZ)
b. attacking the other empire's ships
If you did either of these, you would receive a pop-up warning. If you went through with it, you would break the treaty.

[Phoenix-D]

"(I never understood what was the real difference between no treaty and no intercourse treaty)."

You can't 'break' a war to get no treaty, and sometimes non-agression is just too friendly but you don't want open war..

Phoenix-D

[Q]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"(I never understood what was the real difference between no treaty and no intercourse treaty)."

You can't 'break' a war to get no treaty, and sometimes non-agression is just too friendly but you don't want open war..

Phoenix-D

Yes that I understand as the reason for the no intercourse treaty and that's why I said it might be equivalent to the proposed "cease fire". My question is why there is no difference between the no intercourse treaty and no treaty in the behaviour of your ships.

[geoschmo]

There is a difference between no treaty and a NI treaty in regards to an empires mood towards you and population happiness.

[ October 15, 2002, 19:21: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Jmenschenfresser]

Perhaps if the Cease Fire carried a mandatory ceasing of hostilities. Two ways to do this.

If made for 3 turns, you have a non-aggression for three turns and are unable to break it during that time. After three turns the status returns to none or war. But as someone pointed out, it could be used to get inside a person's empire.

Or you could make it so that the two empires couldn't even interact. Meaning they can't move into the same sector. Then all you have to do is park a ship over the WP and the enemy can't get into your empire.

[Arkcon]

Maybe the goal of the ceasefire treaty is to get the AI to stop targeting your planets and ships? Minefields and warp point sattelites would still target incoming ships. And you wouldn't be allowed to target planets or ships. But what happens if you cross paths?

If the duration is short, say 3 turns, you couldn't exploit the AI too much -- your ships couldn't get far. But you could build up some small ships and weapon platforms. Is that too exploitative? I dunno. One destroyer or light cruiser at each planet?

Against a human, if they suspect you're going to abuse it, they'd just refuse. Unless they were real trusting and wanted a cease fire. Or planned to abuse it worse than you...and leave you to wonder which one is going to happen.