Questions about treaty(-breaking)

[calchas]

When can I declare war against a Civ after agreeing to peace? I think I've got myself backed into a weird situation in my current game.

Byzan. landed forces on my continent; I convinced her to declare war on my neighbor and current enemy Otto. Byz goes ahead and declares war on me the next turn, anyway. Turn after that, I make peace with Otto, and here's where I think I screwed up: my treaty with the ottomans was an agreement for (1) peace (2) alliance vs Byzantines (3) some gold/turn and tech for me.

Shortly before the 20 turns of this treaty were up, I finished crushing all the Byzantine forces and cities on my land mass. I made a peace treaty with Byzantine and was surprised to realize this instantly put me at war with Ottos. Not wanting to spoil my so-far perfect reputation (and being a newb) I reloaded from the auto save. I kept playing for a few more terms, ignoring peace proposals from the Byzantines, until the 20 turns of my treaty with the Ottoman empire were up. But -- when I look on the F4 screen and look at my treaties, all of the agreements we had are still active, minus the tribute. (It says alliance, peace, but with no numbers afterwards). I also have a separate normal trade treaty with Otto with 7 turns to expire.

Why are these treaties still in force? If I make peace with Byzantine, will this effect my reputation? Is the second trade treaty with Otto prolonging the alliance? And (general question), how bad a shot to reputation is it if you break a peace&alliance treaty-- a little bad, or really bad? Would really like to make peace with Byzantine ASAP and arrange a 'legal' war with Otto shortly after..

Thanks for anyone who has time to help, and sorry for such a long questions. I'd really be grateful for any help understanding treaties in general, the FAQ/War Academy was very helpful but didn't get down to this level of specificity. My first game on Emperor that isn't Huge and smaller maps are definitely harder!

calchas

 

[Padma]

Sounds to me like you made the Alliance against Byz as part of yout Peace Agreement with Otto. You should be able to make peace with the Byzantines after the 20-turn alliance expires. What you *should* have done, was make peace with Otto, THEN asked for an alliance against the Byzantines. Two separate deals, so breaking one won't break the other.

Note: I haven't tried this, so you *might* have to re-negotiate the peace treaty with Otto, first - minus the alliance aspect. Then make peace with Byz.

 

[Joey_Ramone]

I kept playing for a few more terms, ignoring peace proposals from the Byzantines, until the 20 turns of my treaty with the Ottoman empire were up. But -- when I look on the F4 screen and look at my treaties, all of the agreements we had are still active, minus the tribute. (It says alliance, peace, but with no numbers afterwards). I also have a separate normal trade treaty with Otto with 7 turns to expire.

Why are these treaties still in force?

The treaties are still in force because you do not have "always renegotiate deals" checked, you can change this in the preferences menu (I always have this checked). But even without doing that you can void the agreement by simple clicking on it in the "active treaties" screen which will put it up for renegotiation (you wouldn't have been able to click it before the 20 turns were up).

 

[Falcon02]

Padma and Joey are right, you need to go into the Diplomatic screen with Otto, click on active, and then click on the Alliance agreement. It will then come up for renegotiation, and you can remove the Alliance, and Otto shouldn't demand anything for you to maintain peace, however it depends. I believe you will take no reputation hit for this since the Deals have already gone though the 20 turn period.

Also, the reason Otto declared war on you was probobly because you grouped the Alliance with the Peace in one agreement, and when one went both went. Other then that, if you break an alliance like that before 20 turns your former ally tends to just get angry at you, more likely to declare war on ya later, but not automatically attacking ya.

 

[Sparrow3]

The Ottomans must see some advantage to letting the treaty continue.

Treaties and deals often continue beyond the 20 turn time limit if you don't have "always renegotiate deals" on. Do as Joey_Ramone says go to the Ottoman trade screen click on active (bottom of the screen), then click on "alliance vs Byzantines". This will bring the alliance up for renegotiation. Click again to cancel. The interesting thing is it should bring the peace treaty up for renegotiation as well. I am not sure what will happen if you cancel the peace treaty as well. Maybe nothing. It might be interesting to find out.

 

[Falcon02]

Canceling the Peace Treaty is an automatic declaration of war, the Foreign Affairs advisor will warn you saying "Canceling the Peace Treaty will declare war with the Ottomans are you sure you want to do this?"

well, not an exact qoute, don't have it infront of me to qoute directly, but it basically just asks for verification to make sure you didn't just click the wrong button or something.

 

[Sparrow3]

Falcon02:
Yes, that is pretty much what I thought. It occurs to me that if you click on NEW right after you click on "alliance vs Byzantines" to cancel it that you will retain the peace treaty as is. The only alternative is to renegotiate the peace treaty for another 20 turns and calchas doesn't want that, I am sure.

 

[calchas]

hey, thanks for the help! I'm still not sure I exactly understood what happened but I have a better idea now of how alliances work in general ..

I am 99% sure I did have "Always renegotiate" checked.. I think it was just that other deal that was the problem. Maybe because we had a trade deal, and ending the peace would have ended the trade deal, so it didn't ask me for renegotiation until after the trade agreement was up.

What I've learned from the whole thing that I newbishly did not know before :

-making peace with someone you have an alliance against counts as breaking the alliance treaty.. I guess that should be obvious but I thought all I had to do was go to war, not STAY at war, much less for 20 turns!
-apparently if you break just one lil treaty, no one trusts you at all again, ever. Or, at least, no one will ever accept ANYTHING on a gold/turn basis, or a luxury basis, except where they were providing per-turn basis payment in gold or luxuries.. That way I guess if dishonest me breaks the treaty, they haven't given away any sort of a 'down payment' like a tech or lump sum. Hmph. Isn't that a little extreme for just one tiny little broach of ethics?