Relations, Treaties and War

The four ledgers that decide who is at war with whom, how much they like each other, and what they have signed.

Who is at war with whom is not just a matter of what the events say. It is a matter of record: four ledgers that the engine owns, validates and enforces.

The model does not write these directly. It emits compact updates, the engine checks them against the rules, and folds the valid ones in once per turn. That is what stops the world drifting into a state where two countries are simultaneously allied and at war.

Wars

The war ledger is the single authority on who is fighting whom. Each war has a status:

Transitions are explicit and validated. A war can be started, joined on either side, left, put into ceasefire, resumed from ceasefire, or ended. Illegal moves are rejected outright — you cannot start a war that already exists, join a war that is not active, resume one that is not in ceasefire, or end one that has already ended.

Combat requires a war

This is the rule that makes the ledger worth having. An event that narrates battlefield combat must name an active canonical war and the countries fighting on each side. Battles, invasions, offensives, bombardments, active fronts and unit attacks all qualify. An offensive that is plainly not military — diplomatic, economic, trade, legal, media, a charm or peace offensive — does not, so a "diplomatic offensive for sanctions relief" is not mistaken for a battle. A cyber offensive still counts as hostile.

An event describing a battle with no war behind it is rejected while the turn still has a retry left, as is one pointing at a war that is in ceasefire or already over. On the final attempt the turn is repaired rather than thrown away: a war record that still cannot be bound to an event is dropped, along with the war bindings of its events, and the rest of the turn stands. The events survive as narrative; only the canonical war change is lost, and it is written to the diagnostics log.

The practical effect: fighting cannot quietly appear out of nowhere. Someone has to have started a war, and the record says who and when — but a single unbindable record no longer costs you the whole turn.

On beta, the battlefields write to the ledger too. Where a land war is fought on a battlefield, an attack across a border two countries are at peace on opens a war between them only when it is a real offensive (a major or total effort), or when the story opens that war itself; a border clash or a minor incident opens nothing. An order a player gives always counts. A route you draw in the War Room into a country that is not in the war is an attack on it: when your troops reach its border, it joins the war against you.

Relations

One score per pair of countries, from −100 to +100, sorted into bands:

The band is always derived from the score rather than declared separately, which prevents the world from claiming two countries are "cordial" while their score says otherwise.

A pair with no entry is unknown, which is not the same as neutral — it means these two countries have no tracked relationship yet, not that they are indifferent to each other.

Relations move for concrete reasons rather than drifting. A ring of yours exposed publicly in someone else's country sours that pair; so does breaking an agreement, and so does backing their rival. The size of each move is the simulation's to decide — there is no fixed tariff per offence. A score that contradicts a pair's declared status — "friendly" while at war — is reconciled rather than left standing.

The world is allowed to move against you. Nothing spares the player: a foreign power may start something with you, and when there is a fight both sides fight. What the simulation is told not to do is invent a rivalry the record does not support — neighbours are not enemies for sharing a border — and that applies to every pair of countries on the map, you included.

Agreements

A register of what has actually been signed:

Each is active, suspended, ended or expired.

The register only holds what earlier turns recorded. If a turn tries to end, suspend or update an agreement that was never recorded, the game re-aims it at the one recorded agreement with exactly the same parties and type, if there is exactly one. Otherwise that single change is dropped, with a note in the diagnostics log, and the rest of the turn stands. It would rather lose one change than end the wrong treaty.

This is what turns "we agreed to an alliance in a conversation twelve turns ago" into something the world still knows about and can be held to.

Alliances that bind

On the stable build an alliance is a record, not a trigger. The ledger is told that an alliance does not by itself put anyone at war, so an ally fights beside you only if the story has it join.

Beta channel only.

On beta, treaties call their members in. When a war begins and a country is attacked, every country bound to defend it is called: partners in an alliance or a defensive pact, a country that gave it a guarantee, and full members of an institution that is a security alliance or a defence pact with it. Only the country attacked calls, and only in a war that began that turn, so an old save is not swept into wars that were already being fought. A country bound to both sides stands aside and breaks nothing.

• A country nobody plays comes in on the defender's side, strongest first, unless its relations with the defender are below −30 or its own war weariness is 70 or more. Then it breaks the treaty instead.
• You are asked. A Call to arms card appears over the map: Honour the alliance puts you at war; Break the treaty costs you 15 points of reputation and takes you out of the agreement (an institution keeps your seat). A call left unanswered for two turns counts as broken.

The cards can be folded away to a small Waiting for your answer button while you think.

War weariness

Beta channel only.

Every country at war grows weary of it, on a scale from 0 to 100 that the game keeps itself; no request is made for it. It rises with every year at war, with the men a war calls up, with the ground a country loses, under a blockade, and sharply with the troops that weather and being cut off wear away, a hard winter above all. Taking ground eases it a little, and it falls away in peace. One period can add at most 35.

Past 50 it tells on a country's armies: they come back up to strength more slowly, with fewer reserves, and fight and move a little worse. The story is told who is weary, so it shows at home. Each government at war is told its own weariness, with the rest of its war, whenever it talks diplomacy: a weary one may seek peace, but nothing forces it to (see below).

You can read it under each war in the 🤝 Diplomacy tab of your country panel (open it from your flag), under Current conflicts (War weariness: and each side's leading country with its figure), and on a country's ⚔ Military card. See national statistics.

Ending a war: peace on terms

Beta channel only.

On the stable build a war ends when the story ends it. On beta a war can also end on terms, which the game carries out itself. Terms are two things:

Peace offered to you. A country nobody plays that is at war with you offers peace when it decides to, never at a fixed weariness: its leader writes to you in your diplomatic chat with it, and the terms are shown on that message with Accept and Decline. A weary or losing country may still fight on, and one that is winning may still want peace. Its leader may also offer peace in a reply when you are talking to it. An open offer lapses after four turns, or when a new one takes its place.

Peace you propose. In your chat with an enemy, Peace opens two choices, the ground and the reparations (nobody pays, or 1% a year for 5 years, or 3% a year for 10, either way round), and Send terms. They are sent as your message, and the enemy's leader answers them in its reply: it accepts, declines or offers other terms of its own. Propose peace in the chat, under each of your wars in the 🤝 Diplomacy tab, opens that chat. A war fought against another player is ended by talking to them.

Between countries nobody plays, a war ends on terms when the story says the two made peace.

What each side knows. A government at war is told its own war whenever it talks diplomacy, in a time skip, in a reply to you or in a group chat: how weary it is, its supplies, the ground each side holds, how its battlefields go, a blockade, its allies and calls to arms, and the terms on the table. It decides what to do with them: one running short may ask its allies, or you, for help.

A peace made ends the war in the ledger at once. Its battlefields close when time next passes, so the map shows them until then. The reparations a country is paying or being paid, and for how many more years, are listed in the same tab.

A ceasefire can still be settled. A war under a ceasefire or an armistice can be ended on terms like one still being fought, and the ground moves with them.

Storylines

The fourth ledger, and the least visible: persistent world processes running underneath the events. A storyline is a thing that is developing — a rivalry sharpening, an economy unravelling, a succession crisis building.

Each carries a status (active, dormant, resolved), a pressure and momentum value from 0 to 100, and a date at which it is next due attention. Every live war gets a mirrored storyline. At most 96 are kept.

Storylines are why a campaign has continuity between turns that nothing in the event log explains: something has been building for six turns and is now due.

They are not allowed to stall. An active war, or any storyline at pressure 55 or above, that goes 45 days of game time without a visible milestone has to move: link a real event, change status, or shift pressure by at least 4 points or momentum by at least 6. If a time skip leaves one stuck, the game makes a short repair call for it once the skip is done, with up to ten minutes in total per skip. A repair that fails or runs out of time leaves the storyline where it was and overdue for the next turn. It never costs you the turn itself.

What this changes to play

• Wars have a beginning. You cannot drift into one; someone declared it, and the ledger says so.
• Ceasefire is a real state. It is not peace, and resuming from it is a distinct act. (On beta, peace terms can still be made from it.)
• Relations are legible. You can see the number rather than inferring the mood.
• Treaties persist properly. An alliance signed in turn three still constrains people in turn thirty.
• Old saves are migrated. A campaign started before the ledgers existed has them seeded from its existing treaty events and conversations on the next jump.

Puppets and overlords

Beta channel only.

On beta a fifth ledger records who directs whom. A puppet is a country whose will is directed by an overlord while it stays a separate country: it keeps its own territory, its own sovereignty and its own colour. One puppet has one overlord; an overlord may hold many; and there are no chains — making a country that holds puppets into a puppet hands its puppets to the new overlord, permanently.

An arrangement is either open — a published protectorate, a satellite every government knows about — or covert. A covert puppet knows it is one and behaves accordingly with whoever in the room has not found out. Other governments learn of a covert arrangement through an active agent inside either party, and go on believing what they last learned until fresh reporting corrects them. The country panel and the map card show what you know: the kind, one sentence on what it means from your side, and chips for mood, since when, and open or covert.

Loyalty is how far a puppet accepts direction, 0–100. It is always hidden — even for an open arrangement — and shown to the overlord only as a band: Loyal (75+), Content, Restless or Seething (below 25). A puppet whose loyalty falls below 35 is given a hidden storyline toward revolt; whether anything comes of it is the simulation's call, and a rising can be suppressed as well as won — at a cost in standing. Annexing a puppet costs the overlord standing too: 8 points of international reputation (out of 100) for a covert arrangement, 16 for one the world could see.

Demands. In the one-on-one thread between an overlord and its puppet, a message can be a demand. It appears as a card hanging off the message that made it. The puppet can Accept, Refuse, or offer an alternative in its own words, which the overlord either accepts or answers by demanding again. Only a refusal costs loyalty, charged once per turn; a refusal can still be thought better of ("Accept after all"), and what has been agreed is final. When you are the overlord, a toggle in the composer makes your message a demand. The cards are choices, so answering one costs no request.

The GM console can make, reclassify or release a puppet directly. A scenario can switch the whole system off with its Puppet states feature, and then nothing mentions subordination at all.

Next

• Diplomacy — the conversations these ledgers record the results of.
• Military and combat — the fighting a war authorises.
• The War Room — battlefields and fronts, on beta.
• War at sea — fleets, sea battles and blockades, on beta.
• Territory — what a war moves.

Open Historia is under active development on two channels, and this wiki is written by hand — a page can fall behind a release. Last checked against the game on 2026-10-25 · main 6e6239c4 · beta d7e8fa85. If something here does not match what you see in the game, trust the game and say so on Discord.