Odd peace treaty bug?

[Manfred Belheim]

Right then. So I signed a peace treaty with Kublai Khan in order to give myself a little regrouping and healing time (and to extort some money) with the full intention of invading him again the moment the treaty is up. Not having worked out exactly what turn that would be on I kept my eye on the "Active" tab on the foreign advisor screen, hovering over the peace treaty and seeing "this can be cancelled in X turns". Anyway, it gets down to 1 turn and I think "great, I can invade next turn". But then when the next turn comes I can't force my stack to enter his lands, and if I hover over his name on the score list it says "cannot declare war!" BUT if I go back to the "Active" tab on the foreign advisor screen, I CAN cancel the peace treaty from there, and then I was able to send my stack into his land on the same turn.

So... does this mean the "treaty timer" is one turn out of sync if you look at it on the foreign advisor screen? Does this mean all those other games when I've been just waiting for a treaty to end, I could have got things going one turn earlier by doing it this way? If this IS a bug (and it seems it must be) then how come I've never heard it mentioned before and how has it managed to survive all the way to BTS 3.19?

 

[Turquoiside]

I'm pretty sure this has everything to do with the fact that the civ you signed the treaty with takes his turn after the player. The deal ends when it has been 10 turns for the AI, but that's almost always after the 10-turn mark for you. Any agreement can only be cancelled after 10 turns have passed for any party involved.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yes.... but my point was that I ended the agreement through the Active tab on the foreign advisor and could then declare war, whereas I couldn't just declare war by moving troops into his lands or though alt-clicking on the score list or contacting him.

 

[Turquoiside]

The treaty was still in effect. Attempting to declare war while under a peace treaty and declaring war after cancelling a peace treaty are two different things.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yes but.... surely the point of the peace treaty is that you can't cancel it, but then when the time has elapsed it cancels automatically. However you want to look at it you can't deny that it's a bit iffy if one aspect of the UI tells you that you cannot declare war due to a treaty (unless you wait an extra turn), but by going through some menus you CAN declare war. Either the treaty period has elapsed or it hasn't, it shouldn't depend which screen you're looking at at the time.

 

[2metraninja]

Sometimes the game needs some time to understand that something is possible or not. With you clicking here and there it came to the game, that it is in fact possible and it allowed you to declare.

 

[Sisiutil]

I've noticed this as well. The AI is not consistent with it. Sometimes the peace treaty completely expires as it should and I can declare war using the scoreboard, sometimes I can't and have to go to the diplomacy screen, as the OP described, and cancel the peace treaty before I can declare war.

Either this is a bug, as the OP asserts, or the AI is renewing the peace treaty on its own (though the human player can still cancel it). The latter doesn't make sense, however, unless the AI is cheating (which is not unprecedented), since unless the human player is ending a conflict, you have to ask for and get either a gift or tribute in order to get a 10-turn unbreakable peace treaty during peacetime.

 

[JujuLautre]

No problem here. It's like open borders. You get the treaty, then cannot cancel it for 10 turns. But after these 10 turns, it does not end up automatically, if you want to end it up you have to do it via diplomacy.

It's just that some AIs cancel it after 10 turns while others don't.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Maybe I'm being a bit mad but I do find it very odd to see people saying this makes sense to them. Either the peace treaty has elapsed or it hasn't. If it hasn't then I can't declare war, if it has then I can declare war. What the other party thinks at this point is irrelevant because a peace treaty just means neither of us can attack the other for 10 turns. Once those 10 turns are over then there IS no treaty anymore, although this doesn't mean we have to declare war of course. However, if I want to declare war I should be able to and it shouldn't matter which bit of the interface I choose to do it with. I can only see it as a bug or oversight, the only thing I was wondering was if this was a one-off thing for me, or if it's always the case. Sisiutil seems to confirm it's a regular "feature" though, so I'll just have to keep my eye on this next time I'm desperate for a war.

 

[Sisiutil]

Actually, JujuLautre's post makes sense in that the game developers may have used the same code to establish the logic for peace treaties that they used for resource deals and OB. You can't cancel those types of deals from the scoreboard either. But they may not have foreseen that effect for declaring war from the scoreboard.

I don't find it to be that big a deal because I play with the BUG Mod. So I can use the reminders (Alt+M) to have a popup tell me after 10 turns that I can declare war. I know now that if I still see the peace icon beside my target's name in the scoreboard that I have to go to the diplomacy screen to cancel the treaty.