Treaties

The concept outlined below has been implemented as of Freeciv 2.1
The following was discussed on the mailing list:
* The 'neutral' treaty is removed, and 'war' becomes the default. This is more natural (neutral is not a treaty), and will lead to fewer newbie problems.
* Ceasefire works as before, but ends up back in 'war'. You can only suggest ceasefire when in war. The AI will always suggest and accept ceasefire when you first meet.
* New treaty 'armistice', which disallows you from entering new units into an enemy's borders, but leaves existing units alone. Like ceasefire, it has a countdown of 20 turns, and ends up in a 'peace' treaty when run time runs out. (The AI will always insist on some turns of ceasefire, then armistice, never go directly to peace, and will use the armistice to move its units out of the other player's territory.) Breaking an armistice drops you to war.
* There no longer is a 'Peace treaty' option. The only way to get a peace treaty is an Armistice. (Alternatively, the option is called 'Peace treaty' and just starts with an armistice.)
* When a peace treaty kicks in, all military units belonging to peace-treaty players inside your border are immediately disbanded. They cannot send military units through your borders, and non-military units are prohibited from most actions. Breaking a peace treaty drops you straight to war (dropping to ceasefire might be neat, but would just be annoying).
* Non-military units are also prohibited from doing actions that would cause 'reason for war' under ceasefire, armistice, peace and alliance. The 'reason for war' concept is removed. It was never transparent, and quite abusable.
* Under alliance, players may enter each others' borders at will. Breaking an alliance drops you to 'armistice' treaty, giving each player time to move their units out of the other player's territory before a new peace treaty kicks in and disbands units.
* There should be a shortcut key that gives next unit in land of enemy for easy removal or moving of units caught in enemy territory. 
The resulting treaties will be: War, Ceasefire, Armistice, Peace, and Alliance. Obviously, we will have a problem with civ1/2 ruleset compatibility, but I think we should ignore that, rather than insist on generalizing treaties first, because that is seriously hard work.
Category:Design