Mechanics

Diplomacy and truces

The game has two diplomatic actions. A truce is bought with gold, lasts 10 turns and expires on its own. A common-enemy pact is free, lasts 12 turns and binds two sides in non-aggression against a third player who is the score leader at the moment of the offer. There is no treaty tree, no declaration of war, no open border, no trade route and no defensive alliance — the table holds two questions: do I spend this gold on peace, or on an army? and who do I slow down the leader with?

The AI also has a memory: the AI opponent a side attacked does not accept that first attacker's truce or pact offer for a while (see "Memory" below). What closes is only the attacker asking for peace; the attacked side can offer peace itself.

What non-aggression does

A truce and a pact give the same non-aggression. Two sides under a truce, or two members of the same pact:

• cannot attack each other — the command is rejected, whether the target is a unit or a city;
• cannot enter each other's cities — not even a city whose hit points have been driven to zero. If a third player brings the city of your truce partner (or pact partner) down, they are the one who can walk in; you cannot.

Non-aggression binds only that pair: none arises between a pact's target and its members (see "Common-enemy pact" below).

Non-aggression is a rule, not a wall. What it deliberately leaves open:

• Movement is free. You may cross your truce partner's (or pact partner's) territory, and they may cross yours.
• Zones of control still apply. A unit that steps next to a truced or pact unit still ends its movement there (Combat). Control comes from the board, not from diplomacy: walking past an army standing beside you is not free just because peace was promised. An exemption would turn the truce from non-aggression into a right of passage, opening a free corridor to the third player behind it.
• A siege still counts. If a truced or pact unit stands on one of your city's neighbours, that city is under siege and does not repair at the start of the turn (Cities and population). The test is adjacency, not attack; a truce closes the attack, not the blockade. Gold repair still works (Gold). Peace does not send the army at your gate home — it only freezes the front.
• Vision and fog are unchanged. Neither a truce nor a pact is an intelligence sharing agreement; you still know only as much of their army as you can see (Fog of war).
• The score race does not pause. A truce buys time, not the lead; a pact is built against the leader and does not lower its score (Territory and score).

The price of a truce: weaker means dearer

A pact is free; this section is for the truce only. The price of a truce comes out of three factors, and the number on the panel is the exact number the engine charges:

• The rate per turn is 3 gold. For two evenly matched sides, 10 turns of peace cost 30 gold.
• Turns bought can never exceed the turns left: late in the match the truce gets shorter and the price shrinks with it. On the final turn the longest peace available is one turn — still enough to shut down one rival's attack for that turn, and priced accordingly.
• The balance of power is their strength divided by yours. Above 1 means "I am the weaker one" and raises the price; the ratio is clamped between 0.5 and 3. The floor stops an overwhelming leader from freezing a rival for free; the cap stops a side on the brink of elimination from pricing peace out of reach.

Strength is the sum of two terms: each unit's (attack + defense) × hp ratio, plus the city base defense (3) for every city. A half-dead army counts as half a threat — the same measure combat itself uses (Combat). Score is not used: the question at the table is "can they crush me", not "how many points do they have".

The price does not listen to the fog. The balance of power is computed from both sides' real strength, not from what you can see — so the figure on the panel counts the army your rival is hiding under the fog. Two reasons: a price is a total, not a position (the score bar is open all match long), and the number the panel prints can never diverge from the number the engine charges. It has a useful side effect: a truce that costs more than you expected is news about an army you have not seen.

Payment is all or nothing: if the gold is short the command is rejected, and the panel keeps the button disabled anyway.

Two directions, one decision

You offer. Pick an opponent in the diplomacy panel and offer a truce; the answer comes back immediately. If it is accepted, the gold is spent and the truce starts that turn. If it is declined, you pay nothing — you have simply learned where they stand.

They offer. The AI also offers you truces on its own turn, and then it pays: the side that wants peace is the side that buys it. The offer box is not a blocker — you can play your turn without answering it; the offer waits until you answer, with its price and length frozen when it was made. Answering closes the box. Any truce that is signed — yours included — clears the pending offer.

Only one offer waits at a time, and a truce and a pact share the same slot, so three opponents cannot bury you in offers in a single turn. The silence period is shared by both kinds too.

Declining buys silence. Turn an offer down (truce or pact) and the record is not deleted: it stays in the state marked "declined" and stops opponents from making a new offer for 5 turns — the box does not reopen next turn. When the time is up the record drops and offers can come again. That is deliberate: were the record deleted, the same offer would return every turn and the box would become noise. Your right to offer is untouched; the silence only quiets the incoming side.

No breaking it

Neither a truce nor a pact can be broken early. It lifts as the first thing that happens on the turn it expires, so your first attack that turn is already possible. There is no "betray" command: with one, every agreement would become a bluffing calculation, and diplomacy would grow exactly the kind of hidden layer this game avoids.

If either side is eliminated (its last city falls), the truce falls with it. The fall of a capital alone does not break a truce: the truce falls when the seat is eliminated. A pact's elimination rule is a little wider (see below).

Memory: the first attacker's offer is not accepted

The AI does not accept a truce or pact offer from a side that attacked it recently. "Recently" includes the 8 turns after the attack. This gate comes before both reasons for acceptance: you do not make peace with the side marching on you, not even to close another front (see "An opponent on several fronts accepts peace" below).

The rule counts only the first attacker:

• A reply is not aggression. If the attacked side answers its attacker, that is not written to memory; a side at war can ask for peace. For it to count as a reply, the attacker's record must still be within the period: an attack after the period has run out is a new first attack.
• Continuing the attack is not absolved. If the attacker strikes again after being answered, its record is refreshed; calling the answer a "reply" does not stop one from being the aggressor.
• Taking a city by movement is aggression too. Walking into a city whose hit points are at zero and taking it makes you an attacker against that city's former owner, even if you never attacked. A conquest made as a reply is not recorded.
• If two sides attack each other in the same turn, the one who struck first is the aggressor.
• A neutral actor is not recorded. Attacking bandits or a neutral village, conquering them, or being attacked by them is not written to memory; there is no diplomacy with them anyway (Bandit camp, Neutral village).

Memory changes the AI's answer, not your right to attack. Being the first attacker closes no command to you; it only gets you rejected if you ask for peace while the record is within the period. Passing the gate does not mean acceptance either: the remaining gates (appetite, balance of power, front count, and the conditions below for a pact) are still checked.

What closes is only the attacker asking for peace. When the AI picks whom to offer its own truce to, memory is not consulted: an AI that has been attacked and has weakened can offer the truce itself to the side that attacked it first (if its balance of power and purse allow). In a pact offer, on the other hand, the AI does not count as a partner candidate a side that attacked it recently or that it attacked recently.

Common-enemy pact

A pact is a 12-turn non-aggression that two players form against the score leader at the moment of the offer. The leader is the seat with the highest score; the tiebreakers are the same as at the turn limit (Territory and score). The score strip is laid out in seat order, not by score; you read the leader from the scores, not from the order on the strip, and the diplomacy panel writes its name too. Scores are public, so you need to see nothing to know who the leader is.

Three conditions are the engine's only place of rejection:

• The target must be the leader. No pact is formed against someone who is not.
• The offering side cannot be the leader.
• The accepting side cannot be the leader. You cannot form a pact while leading, but you can become the target of one.

To these are added: the target cannot be a member of the pact; eliminated players and bandits cannot join; a second pact is not formed with someone you already have one with. A pact formed in the final turn of the match lasts one turn. You can hold two separate pacts with two different people at once.

You offer. The side you offer to must be an AI. The answer comes immediately: if accepted, the pact starts that turn; if declined, you pay nothing and nothing is written to the pending-offer slot either. The length counts the turn it is formed in and shortens at the end of the match, like the length of a truce.

An opponent offers. The AI can offer a pact on its own turn; the offer waits in the same slot as a truce, stays until you answer, and you can play your turn without answering. Its length freezes at the time of the offer. An offer you decline starts the silence above. If the pending offer becomes invalid before it is answered — the leader changed, the target is no longer the leader, or the accepting side became the leader — it drops by itself at the start of the turn. The conditions are asked once more the moment you accept: if the lead changed in the meantime the box closes and no pact is formed. A pact that is formed closes the pending offer only if it belongs to the same pair; it does not touch a third opponent's pending truce offer.

What a pact does and does not do

• Non-aggression holds between members. They cannot attack each other or enter each other's cities; movement and zones of control are as under a truce (see "What non-aggression does" above).
• No price, no early break. When the time is up it lifts as the first thing in the turn.
• Attacking the target is free, not required. A pact is not a defensive alliance or an obligation to attack; none of the members has to attack the target. The target can fight the members too: it can attack them and enter their cities. Offering a truce between the members and the target stays open as well.
• A pact pair cannot get a truce. They are already under non-aggression; gold does not buy anything.
• A pact is public. Its forming and its expiry are heard through the fog, like a truce, and the turn report names the members and the target together; a pact that rivals form with each other is included. If a pact is formed against you, you see it; since you are the target, you are not asked separately. A pact that falls silently because of an elimination has no separate end line; the news is the elimination itself. An offer that has not yet been accepted is not public, though: the offer line goes only to the report of the player the offer was made to, and a third party does not see an offer between rivals. The declining of an offer is not announced separately; if you made the offer and it was declined, the screen says why.
• A pact survives a change of lead. Even if the target stops being the leader during the pact, the agreement is fixed. Only if one of the members or the target is eliminated does the pact fall silently.
• AI members turn on the target. While a pact lasts, a member of it weights the value of the target's cities by the 1.6 multiplier when choosing a campaign target. The multiplier raises the value, it does not guarantee the choice: the winnability and distance calculations still apply (The AI opponent). Outside a pact there is no separate multiplier for the leader — leading alone does not make you a target.

When the AI sits down to a pact

The gates for accepting an incoming offer, in order:

1. The personality's pact appetite must be above zero.
2. The three conditions above must be satisfied by the engine.
3. Memory: the offering side must not have attacked the AI recently.
4. It must know the target: the AI must have actually seen the leader or know one of its cities. The score is public, but it forms no partnership against a player it has never met (Fog of war).
5. The desire must pass a threshold. Desire is the personality's appetite times the ratio of the leader's score to its own: the further ahead the leader is and the further behind the AI has fallen, the more it wants it.

The criterion it uses when it offers a pact by itself is a separate threshold from the one it uses to accept: "I would accept" and "I would call for it myself" are two different decisions. If it is the leader itself it never offers. When picking a partner candidate it takes the one with the highest score among those the engine allows; it does not count a side that attacked it recently or that it attacked recently as a candidate. It never proposes a truce and a pact in the same turn: if no truce offer comes up, a pact is considered.

The rival's attitude and the badge

The rival card writes the rival's attitude toward you and its reason; the attitude is a summary, not the answer to peace: only the reason "you attacked it recently" is the memory gate itself, and while that reason stands the rival does not accept your offer. The reasons "it attacked you recently" and "a party to a pact formed against you" do not close peace on their own; your truce offer can still be accepted, and the rival can even offer you a truce itself. "Neutral" does not guarantee acceptance either (appetite, balance of power and front count are checked separately).

The card writes one reason, and the order of priority is: a pact with you, a truce with you, being a party to a pact formed against you, you having attacked it recently, it having attacked you recently; if none, neutral. The order creates an override: if one of the first three reasons is written, the card does not show that you attacked it recently, even if you did; the memory record still stands and still gets your truce offer rejected. So the absence of "you attacked it" on the card does not show that the memory is closed. The first two are written friendly, the next three hostile. Only pairs that include you are asked; how two rivals feel about each other is not shown (Fog of war). For a rival you have a pact with, the card's information line writes the turns left in the pact instead of the truce, and the score strip shows a pact badge with the turns left next to that rival. The badge shows only a pact formed with you; pacts rivals form among themselves are in the report, and no badge is drawn for them.

Which opponent comes to the table

The decision comes from a personality weight (truceAppetite) multiplied by the visible balance of power — so the AI only seeks peace from a side it sees as stronger, and never from an opponent it has not met (The AI opponent).

The appetite needed to make an offer is higher than the one needed to accept one, and that is deliberate: the offering side pays. "I would accept" and "I would pay for it" are two different decisions.

The truce appetite is the gate for a truce; the pact appetite is in the separate table above. A personality can use one and never the other.

An opponent on several fronts accepts peace

There is a second reason an incoming truce offer gets accepted, and it ignores the balance of power entirely (once the memory gate has been passed; see "Memory" above): if the AI is in contact with 2 or more separate opponents at once, it accepts even when it sees itself as the stronger side. A front is an opponent with at least one unit visible right now — an army behind the fog is not a front, and neither is one that has scattered out of sight.

Bandits do not count as a front (Bandit camp). The count walks the seats only, and the reason is the rule itself: this clause answers "would I take peace to close one front", and no truce can be signed with a bandit — there is no front to close. Were they counted, a single gang that never strays two steps from its camp could flip an opponent's whole truce decision.

What that means on the board: an opponent fighting more than one rival at once may take your offer even while it is ahead of you. If it is in contact with you, one of the fronts it closes is yours — so buying peace is also a way of pointing it at the other rival.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.