User Guide

79
send diplomats first to advise the nation of
your intentions.
If one or more allies become involved in
a war, each side will have an alliance leader
which is treated as the principal leader of the
alliance. The alliance leader is determined by
comparing the size, wealth, and military power
of each country involved on that side of the
conflict, with the strongest being appointed as
the leader. The leader will not necessarily be
the country that initially declared war, or was
the target of the declaration of war; nor does
the alliance leader necessarily have to be allied
with all other countries on the same side of the
war.
As we mentioned earlier, there are two ex-
ceptions to the rules that determine who is
treated as the alliance leader. In the special case
of a succession war, the two countries involved
in the struggle to contest the crown will always
be the leaders of their respective alliances. Also,
a player who declares war on another country
or has war declared upon him will always be
the alliance leader of his side, even if a more
powerful AI-controlled
ally joins the war on his
side. The exception to this
rule can occur in a mul-
tiplayer game if the most
powerful country on a side
is also human-controlled.
In this instance, the nor-
mal alliance leader rules
would apply.
The alliance leader
does not control the forc-
es or actions of any other
country on that side of the
conflict. Each country is
free to act as it desires, and
may even choose to remain
inactive if it prefers. The
only purpose of an alli-
ance leader is to act as the
principal decision-maker
when negotiating a subse-
quent peace. An alliance leader is able to agree
to peace terms that are binding on all members
of the alliance. A country that is not the alli-
ance leader may still negotiate a peace; but the
peace only affects the countries involved in the
negotiations, and not the entire side of the al-
liance. We will talk about this in detail in the
next section on peace.
Peace Negotiations
Once a war has been declared between nations,
the only way to bring it to a close is to negotiate
a peace settlement. This process begins when
you select a province that is owned by an en-
emy and select the “sue for peace” action from
the diplomacy interface. You will see a prelimi-
nary menu of peace options displayed on the
screen, allowing you to choose between several
types of peace offers, and at the top of the in-
terface you will see a “war score” value. At the
bottom of the interface is a button that allows
you to cancel the action and go back to the di-
plomacy menu. Before we discuss the meaning
of the “war score” and the options on the inter-
face, we must first make a
very important distinction
about which countries are
involved in negotiating
the peace.
Negotiating
Peace with
Alliances
In the previous section, we
indicated that when allies
become involved in a war,
each side of the conflict
will have an alliance lead-
er. The alliance leader is
the most powerful country
involved on that side, and
only the alliance leader has
the authority to negotiate
a peace that will affect all
of the participants on that
side. This is a crucial dis-