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If it says anywhere in the peace interface that the horde would accept a white peace, consider it a remnant of the old system and thus obsolete. That notifier works if you're at war against France, Austria etc. but not against horde nations.

They will only respect a defeat or a win, there is no middle way when dealing with the horde.

It doesn't. The generic peace console with no options selected probably has the "will accept" message at the bottom. This is not the same as a white peace proposal as to get to it you had to either demand or offer concessions. Since you cannot ever offer such a peace treaty to any nation (not just hordes) without selecting at least one option (which immediately affects the indicator at the bottom) his argument has a fairly flimsy basis anyway.
 
The open choice system sounds, at first glance, like a good idea, but a game in which the player controls it's own limitations rather than playing by general rules is honestly quite dull. I suppose Playing Chess with pawns moving like Queens could be enjoyable, but it wouldn't be Chess. The player uses the options available and by succeeding in spite of these is the source of satisfaction. In essence, the open choice system already exists, it's called the Console. Typing in "Prestige" gives you 17,5 prestige. Put the Timurids in a spot in which you think it would accept WP (personally, I would say never) and concede defeat. For every Console input, you can concede three times. It will also affect trading a little in your favour, but hey, it's a solution. So how is this not a solution to this problem if you want to change the rules rather than play by them?
Using the Console is clearly cheating, though - there's no justification for magically getting Prestige out of the sky. This argument, frankly, is incredibly inane, as you're basically saying that no one should ever amend rules they think would be better if amended and should just cheat instead. I've presented a solid case for why this rule change is justifiable and it's rather insulting to compare it to playing Chess with all pawns converted to queens, not to mention just plain fallacious.

And the last half of that post was more convoluted than John Roberts' decision on Obamacare. I met your requirements straightforward and you didn't answer that, just shifted the discussion to an irrelevant discussion about one philosophical methodology that no one was discussing or advocating prior to your post. So until you actually show how what I posted didn't meet your own requirements, I'm going to assert that I've satisfied your conditions and move on.

If it says anywhere in the peace interface that the horde would accept a white peace, consider it a remnant of the old system and thus obsolete. That notifier works if you're at war against France, Austria etc. but not against horde nations.

They will only respect a defeat or a win, there is no middle way when dealing with the horde.
No. It's clear the AI wants a white peace. That's just unarguable. You're just super-imposing a ban on a white peace because you feel hordes shouldn't ever be able to do a white peace. This mechanic fails the set of criteria posted beforehand - it creates less player enjoyment and can't be demonstrated to be historically accurate.

It doesn't. The generic peace console with no options selected probably has the "will accept" message at the bottom. This is not the same as a white peace proposal as to get to it you had to either demand or offer concessions. Since you cannot ever offer such a peace treaty to any nation (not just hordes) without selecting at least one option (which immediately affects the indicator at the bottom) his argument has a fairly flimsy basis anyway.
It does not. The idea goes like this - say you've completely occupied France as England. If you go to select "Offer White Peace," it says "They would accept this offer." So once you see this, go to select "Demand Tribute." The beginning says "White Peace" with "They would accept this offer." If they would accept a white peace - as verified by selecting "Offer White Peace" before - then upon selecting anything (say, Concede Defeat) and then unselecting it (thereby clearing the offer and making it a "White Peace" at the bottom), it says "They will accept this offer."

That is clearly an indicator that the AI wants to white peace. Again, this is just plain fact, I'm not even sure how y'all can possibly argue otherwise.

That is *not* saying "The hordes want to white peace." That is saying "The AI wants to white peace." I have been arguing that there isn't justification for saying "The hordes *don't* want to white peace," and that as this can't be justified either way, it is fallacious to superimpose a ban on hordes' white peace. Where is the problem in any of that logic? (As I'm getting rather tired of all the patronizing comments and irrelevant tangents, advance notice - I'm not going to reply to anything that isn't on-point anymore. Address the argument or don't say anything, please. Y'all aren't stupid, I'm sure you have good reasons to reject my logic - can I see them?)
 
As I wrote in my post you quoted, consider that notifier to not be there. All nations are coded out of the same basic code when it comes to peace deals, PI could have completly removed the "they would accept this offer" when you try to test if they were truly interested in a white peace. They instead went the lazy/fast way around and simply greyed out the white peace offer button when it comes to the horde. It was purely intentional from PI's side to not being able to white peace with them, seeing as they were more likely to cut the head off of any diplomat coming their way.

They were considered as barbarians and savages by the europeans, and the only way to deal with them were to kill or be killed. It would simply have been impossible to white peace the entire horde, maybe you could white peace a fraction of it at best.....but truth is you weren't dealing with a state or nation. They were nomads, one day they were there, the next day they would be gone.
 
As I wrote in my post you quoted, consider that notifier to not be there. All nations are coded out of the same basic code when it comes to peace deals, PI could have completly removed the "they would accept this offer" when you try to test if they were truly interested in a white peace. They instead went the lazy/fast way around and simply greyed out the white peace offer button when it comes to the horde. It was purely intentional from PI's side to not being able to white peace with them

You're still missing the point. I understand this is intentional. That doesn't make it worthy of preserving on its own. Let me illustrate this from a different angle. Let's say that situation were in multiplayer, and we have another human playing as the Timurids to my Byzantium. We could both pretty easily see that we're not actually in a war. The point isn't whether or not I can (or should be able to) see through the interface that the other player, human or AI, wants a white peace; it's that we know, without a doubt, that both powers want a white peace. I've already argued at length why this should be allowed. Unless you cannot refute that argument, there isn't any basis for objecting to such a change.

seeing as they were more likely to cut the head off of any diplomat coming their way.

They were considered as barbarians and savages by the europeans, and the only way to deal with them were to kill or be killed. It would simply have been impossible to white peace the entire horde, maybe you could white peace a fraction of it at best.....but truth is you weren't dealing with a state or nation. They were nomads, one day they were there, the next day they would be gone.
There are three problems here.

(1) Hordes wouldn't just cut off the heads of any diplomat coming their way. That's probably the most outrageous claim I've heard yet. The Mongols regularly sent out and received envoys from other countries, to demand/acquire tribute/surrender or otherwise. In fact, before the famous Battle of Ayn Jalut, the Mongols sent a surrender notice to the Mamluks - and it was the *Mamluks* who killed the envoys. So there's actually historical basis for hordes contracting in a manner not unlike the form in the game, and basis to say that the non-horde powers wouldn't accept white peaces. This is why you allow white peaces; if the hordes don't want to white peace, then they don't, and they cut off the heads of envoys. But they wouldn't *always* do that, and if they decided they wanted to white peace, why not?
(2) Yes, the hordes weren't a coherent state. The system itself just treats them as one. Whether that's a flaw in the system altogether is a separate issue - I think it works, it certainly isn't historically accurate but at the same time it's hard for me to envision an alternative that works well to model the actual nomadic tribes here. But if it's going to treat them as a coherent state for other diplomatic functions, then it makes no sense to draw an arbitrary line and say "But they can't white peace."
(3) Even if both objections above are refuted, we still fall back to (this summary of) my argument earlier: "In THIS CIRCUMSTANCE [outlined above], we cannot conjecture with any authority on how the hordes would react, therefore we cannot claim any authority to "know" that the hordes would not accept Diplomatic Option X [including a white peace], therefore we cannot substantiate a ban on horde white peaces."
 
And another important point - if hordes couldn't contract like non-hordes, why can hordes ally with one another, vassalize one another, white peace with one another, etc.? The fact that the full array of options are present for horde-horde and nonhorde-nonhorde wars, but not horde-nonhorde wars, presents a serious inconsistency in the argument that hordes can't contract like non-hordes. I suppose the argument could be made that hordes shouldn't be able to ally/vassalize/etc. other hordes, but as no one has put this notion forth yet, I can only assume that this feature is considered acceptable, in which case there's just a glaring inconsistency in how hordes are being treated in DW5.1.
 
You're still missing the point. I understand this is intentional. That doesn't make it worthy of preserving on its own. Let me illustrate this from a different angle. Let's say that situation were in multiplayer, and we have another human playing as the Timurids to my Byzantium. We could both pretty easily see that we're not actually in a war. The point isn't whether or not I can (or should be able to) see through the interface that the other player, human or AI, wants a white peace; it's that we know, without a doubt, that both powers want a white peace. I've already argued at length why this should be allowed. Unless you cannot refute that argument, there isn't any basis for objecting to such a change.

How exactly is it you "know" that they want a white peace? For all you "know" they have just finished stamping out their latest TSC and forcing their eastern neighbors to their knees and now have 70k+ screaming barbarians headed to reclaim their territory from the Mams then stomp all over you. Your claim is akin to saying that before the '40 invasion France and Germany weren't really at war and wanted white peace on both sides. Just because someone isn't currently marching an army through your cities (or vice versa) doesn't mean "both powers want a white peace".
 
How exactly is it you "know" that they want a white peace? For all you "know" they have just finished stamping out their latest TSC and forcing their eastern neighbors to their knees and now have 70k+ screaming barbarians headed to reclaim their territory from the Mams then stomp all over you.
If we're referring to the multiplayer example, then it's a given in the hypothetical I'm raising. If we're referring to the singleplayer example, then we can see on the peace screen what's going on. Have you ever tried what I'm talking about? I'm assuming not, because if you had, you would realize that if the Timurids were coming to attack me and meant to expand my way, it wouldn't show "They would accept this offer." when the bottom part says "White Peace." When the AI hordes intend to expand into your territory, they won't accept *any* peace deal (including an offer of tribute) until they've started doing damage (and may not at all). The bottom part of the screen doesn't lie, if they would accept a white peace there, they would accept a white peace. It's a priori.

Your claim is akin to saying that before the '40 invasion France and Germany weren't really at war and wanted white peace on both sides. Just because someone isn't currently marching an army through your cities (or vice versa) doesn't mean "both powers want a white peace".
...this is the worst analogy I've seen in the thread... nothing and I mean *nothing* about this situation is analogous to any point in World War II at all.
 
Ok, disregarding that I don't think you've shown much, if any, proof for historical hordes wanting a white peace, lets take your ingame example and see if they would want a white peace.

Now, you want a white peace, that's obvious after 3 pages. But the Timurids? What use do they have for a white peace right now? You've done nothing of note to them, obviously, or you could get them to concede defeat. They're also not doing anything to you to warrant a concede defeat from you. Now, a white peace accomplishes...stopping you from trekking across Mamlukian lad to come attack, otherwise you can't threaten them.

But you're not doing that, so what would they gain? Nothing, they don't care about you. A non-horde nation would likely white peace out due to the negative effects from war, but hordes don't have anything similar.
 
Yeah, you clearly didn't read any of the thread, or didn't understand anything I've said. And your last statement is the whole fucking point, the AI (were it a non-horde) would white peace, meaning it wants a white peace, and there's no reason why it shouldn't have anything similar. I've gone over at length why I state the things I'm saying here; please read (again if needed) and then reply.
 
You've stated that the AI (the one that all the countries would share) would want a white peace. The one that is based off of the regular, civilized AI. That would want a white peace because being at war is inherently a bad thing.

But it's a horde! It doesn't care if it's at war or not, white peaces are absolutely worthless to them.
 
...this is the worst analogy I've seen in the thread... nothing and I mean *nothing* about this situation is analogous to any point in World War II at all.

It's exactly like your claim: The Timurids are off doing things elsewhere instead of storming through your lands so you are claiming they clearly want white peace with you. Germany was off doing other things so obviously they wanted wp with France since they weren't storming through French lands.

You are clearly hung up on the fact that PI didn't feel the need to put in a completely seperate peace interface for the Horde nations. Why would they when the interface works perfectly adequately for both scenarios? Conditions exist where a non-horde nation would agree to a wp, and the interface says so, we all get that. The point you don't seem to be getting is that horde nations aren't like non-horde nations.

You could argue that a lot of nations should have similarly restricted diplomatic or peace options because they don't really fit in the western model but a line has to be drawn somewhere. PI went with a fairly simple one: nomad horde or not. You can argue whether or not the restrictions placed on such interactions are accurate or not. Others have actually done so somewhat in this thread, supporting the current system. Your entire argument has been "the interface says so" coupled with "it's obvious" and a dose of "the hordes weren't really that way" without any examples to support your desired change. Saying that having their envoy killed showed they were willing to make a wp is farcical. You said yourself they "regularly sent out and received envoys from other countries, to demand/acquire tribute/surrender or otherwise." indicating the options available were surrender, give tribute, or otherwise with otherwise clearly meaning the raids continue. If you had an example of a wp type agreement you surely would have listed it in support of your argument.

I also don't see how you can possibly say that in mp "it's a given" that a Tim player would want a wp with a nation that can't currently do any damage to them at all. Why would they? Being "at war", even with a horde, is a lot worse for you than for him, particularly since he is undoubtedly already at war with other nations. A.I. nations act the same in mp as they do in sp so you being "at war" with a big bad horde paints cross-hairs on you. If I'm the Tims you would be lucky to get off with a concede defeat in that scenario assuming we didn't have some sort of team game going on.
 
Hordes, at least in game, get the regular penalties for being at war when warring with another horde, such as not losing WE for being at peace. Thus being at war is detrimental, regardless of what either party is doing. WP's thus have value.
 
brifbates, please stop talking until you actually read what I've said. You're continuing to miss the point because you continue to ignore crucial parts of what I'm saying. I have stated, repeatedly, that the AI would accept a white peace. I have stated how I came to this conclusion, and told you exactly how you could verify this for yourself in a similar situation. That you continue to go on about how this is equivalent to World War II Nazi Germany-French relations in 1940 is the only thing that's "farcical" in this thread.

You're also misunderstanding the multiplayer aspect. I am stating, as a given for the example, that the Timurid player wants to white peace. This is not negotiable; it is the whole point of the example. I am presenting you a scenario, which you have to admit is at least possible and not improbable, wherein the Timurid and Byzantine players want to white peace. You have no justification for saying they cannot.

You're also continuing to misrepresent my argument completely with regard to how the hordes would act. I have not said definitively that the hordes would act any given way in this situation - in fact I have been very clear to state that we cannot meaningfully speculate on how the hordes would act in the situation I presented. Thus, the assumption that already exists in the game - that they would never white peace ever - is baseless and should be tossed. You cannot look at that situation and give me any serious, researched, expert opinion on how hordes would act. You just can't. There's no historical analogue, much as you like to waste all of our time with your stupid WWII analogies pretending there is. And in absence of the ability to give such an opinion, you cannot rule out the possibility that they would not white peace. For all your missing my point with comments about the interface, even IF all I were saying is "the interface says so," that's no worse than your argument, which boils down to "the game says so." The fact is that we cannot say definitively what would happen here, so banning a valid resolution option is nonsensical, especially since that resolution option is actually available to the hordes anyway. To spell it out as plainly as possible:

The interface is saying the AI, were it able, would accept a white peace. That is fact.
There is no justification for saying that the hordes, were this situation to happen in real life, would absolutely never accept a ceasefire. That is fact.
Thus, it makes no sense to prevent the AI from making a mutually-beneficial decision with the player on a basis that itself is unjustified. That should logically follow without any trouble.

I hope this serves to clarify things, because I'm not going to reply to your posts from hereon if you continue to misinterpret or misrepresent what I'm saying. Sorry, I hate to d that and I know I'm sounding rather mean at this point, but I'm getting really tired of having my points completely bastardized here and it would save us time not to continue misunderstanding each other further.

Xeorm: So your argument is that there's merit to a white peace between hordes, but not between a horde and not-horde. I can accept that, perhaps - except that clearly the player controlling the horde is deciding (as we can see from the peace screen) that a white peace WOULD be meritorious. (If not, the peace screen would not say "They would accept a white peace," because, seeing no merit in a white peace, they wouldn't be willing to accept it.) So if your argument is that a white peace should be allowed to the hordes when the hordes find merit in it, shouldn't you be sanctioning white peaces between hordes and non-hordes, on account of the fact that a horde would only accept a white peace if the horde finds merit in it?
 
The interface is saying the AI, were it able, would accept a white peace. That is fact.
There is no justification for saying that the hordes, were this situation to happen in real life, would absolutely never accept a ceasefire. That is fact.
Thus, it makes no sense to prevent the AI from making a mutually-beneficial decision with the player on a basis that itself is unjustified. That should logically follow without any trouble.

There is no justification for your assertion that the hordes would, if such a situation arose, accept a ceasefire either, that is also fact. Unless, of course, you have some evidence you haven't chosen to share.

You are the one arguing for a change in the game system. As the one advocating a change, the burden of proof is yours to show that:

a) the system, as is, is wrong from a historic point of view; and that your proposed change while correcting a historical error, does so without harm to the game playability/difficulty etc.

OR

b) the system, as is, is not functional from a playability standpoint; and that your proposed change will correct this without doing undue harm to the underlying historic framework of the game, difficulty, etc.

You cannot argue effectively that there is evidence supporting the argument that hordes would make wp with non-hordes. This means you are presumably arguing case b.

While your isolated incident may well call for the possibility of such a resolution, you must remember that putting wp as an option in a peace agreement is not conditional, either it is there or not. You can't say "well when this happens you can make wp with a horde" it is either available always or never. So, does adding wp as an option always available to participants in a horde vs non-horde war do more undue harm to the historic basis and/or intended difficulty of the game than leaving the current issue unresolved. I think most would argue that it clearly does so.

At this point it is for the devs to decide whether to make a change based on your particular proposal. Since they have already specifically NOT done anything to change the case where you have no option to end a horde war when said horde is 100% occupied by another nation other than concede defeat/offer tribute I think it's pretty safe to say your chances with this smaller subset of that case are pretty slender.
 
No, largely because the numbers telling the AI to make a white peace if it could is very meaningless, merely a holdover from using the same calculations that it would use if they were a civilized nation.

The little tell at the bottom of the screen isn't exactly foolproof either, as I've had it say an offer was acceptable with no terms, but they still wouldn't accept a whitepeace, and even the occasional where it says terms were unacceptable until I added terms.
 
So until you actually show how what I posted didn't meet your own requirements, I'm going to assert that I've satisfied your conditions and move on.

Sigh...

Such a assumption would be unwarranted. 1) was solved by claiming that there is no analogue and thus irrelevant to take history into equation. This is a cop-out and a refusal to even approach the mind-set of the East- and Near-Asiatic tribes. The proposal raised in 2), I responded to by claiming that added options used at the players discretion is flawed since it is changes the idea of games as rule-set you use to it's max effect. This "option system" does not even take into account that the AI is unable to ignore a beneficial option and it might completely crash the current set-up. If a country is at war with 6 countries, it will always seek WP with a few because the standard AI believes peace is the natural state. However, Hordes are not meant to think in this way and giving them the option of WP (which they will use) would -- most likely -- annihilate the concept of the constant threat that is your tribal neighbor.

At this point, I think it's clear that you do not want the revise even the sillies of arguments like "the Timurids want peace because the old code says so." We have entered the stage of meaningless debate -- which is still fun, albeit mainly because people like to hear the sound of their own voice. That is the reason I will most likely come back -- pointless as it is. :)
 
There is no justification for your assertion that the hordes would, if such a situation arose, accept a ceasefire either, that is also fact. Unless, of course, you have some evidence you haven't chosen to share.
That has never been the crux of my argument. Why do you people continue to act as though it is? My whole point has been that we cannot know if the hordes would necessarily do either one. Thus, we cannot rule out the possibility that they would. It's as simple as that.

You are the one arguing for a change in the game system. As the one advocating a change, the burden of proof is yours to show that:

a) the system, as is, is wrong from a historic point of view; and that your proposed change while correcting a historical error, does so without harm to the game playability/difficulty etc.
It isn't so much "wrong" per se, as "unknowable." It's a guess from the dev team that seems to lack justification. My gut instinct is that the only absolute that can be accepted is that there are no absolutes - and thus, the statement that they ABSOLUTELY would not accept a white peace (current system) cannot be accepted as true.

Further, you're not taking this back far enough. Wasn't the same burden on the dev team in implementing this measure in the first place? THAT is why I have a problem with this whole "you have the burden of proof because you're changing the system!" thing. The very implementation of the DW horde mechanics was itself a major change, but there's no historical reason to assert that they would never accept a white peace. Thus, this aspect of the system shouldn't even be here to *be* changed.

b) the system, as is, is not functional from a playability standpoint; and that your proposed change will correct this without doing undue harm to the underlying historic framework of the game, difficulty, etc.
You overstate the burden. I don't have to demonstrate that it is dysfunctional, only that my proposed change would improve the playability of the game and/or enjoyment of the players without doing damage to the historicity of the setting being changed. As I've maintained throughout, my change is not determinably more or less historic than the default setting, because we cannot conjecture effectively as to what would be historically accurate. However, as I've demonstrated earlier, this change would do no harm to playability or enjoyment and could only have potential to improve both. Thus, I've satisfied (b).

You cannot argue effectively that there is evidence supporting the argument that hordes would make wp with non-hordes. This means you are presumably arguing case b.

While your isolated incident may well call for the possibility of such a resolution, you must remember that putting wp as an option in a peace agreement is not conditional, either it is there or not. You can't say "well when this happens you can make wp with a horde" it is either available always or never. So, does adding wp as an option always available to participants in a horde vs non-horde war do more undue harm to the historic basis and/or intended difficulty of the game than leaving the current issue unresolved. I think most would argue that it clearly does so.
Well, firstly, it cannot damage the historic basis of the game, because the option is always up to the players to decide whether to utilize the white peace. If you personally felt that the historic basis of the game would be damaged by accepting a horde's white peace, you can reject it every single time without a problem. If you personally felt it wouldn't, you can accept it (or not) without fear of losing that basis.

Secondly, given how delusional the AI is about white peaces in the first place, I would highly doubt that it could damage the difficulty of the game. I covered that back on the first page; I believe that the AI's stubbornness in peace deals is an accurate reflection of the stubbornness of the leaders at the time, and so any arguments from horde's honor obsession can be covered by this innate stubbornness as it is. The AI isn't going to offer/accept a white peace unless (a) there really isn't any fighting between you two, or (b) it's clearly not going to get anything better out of you. So if you're struggling at all against the AI, it's unlikely you'll get a white peace from them, horde or not. Because you would only reasonably get a white peace in a situation where you have the upper hand or aren't fighting, it can't be said that inserting the white peace would make it less difficult; you'd just have odd situations like the one I've been citing resolved without unnecessary complications.

At this point it is for the devs to decide whether to make a change based on your particular proposal. Since they have already specifically NOT done anything to change the case where you have no option to end a horde war when said horde is 100% occupied by another nation other than concede defeat/offer tribute I think it's pretty safe to say your chances with this smaller subset of that case are pretty slender.
Indeed it is at that point - I don't think it's slender, per se, because there's a number of reasons that could explain why they haven't done it yet, but yes, it's their call right now. Where do I go to bring this to their attentions again? I believe you said before but I've forgotten...

No, largely because the numbers telling the AI to make a white peace if it could is very meaningless, merely a holdover from using the same calculations that it would use if they were a civilized nation.
Not at all! After all, they use those calculations to determine whether or not to white peace between hordes. It can't just be argued that this is a holdover - it still actively gets used to determine actual white peaces for inter-horde fights, not just whether one could be accepted between a horde and nonhorde!

The little tell at the bottom of the screen isn't exactly foolproof either, as I've had it say an offer was acceptable with no terms, but they still wouldn't accept a whitepeace, and even the occasional where it says terms were unacceptable until I added terms.
That first one means they wouldn't actually accept it - I've seen it before, the instant you add a term and remove it, you'll see whether they would accept a white peace. I would assume likewise in reverse, add a term and remove it to see the actual result. (I haven't seen this latter occasion myself, but it would make sense that it's analogous to the first one, which I have seen plenty of times.) And yes, for the record, I did add and remove a term to check if it were actually a white peace or not. It should be taken as a given that the AI would accept a white peace in this situation; I haven't determined this in error. The argument is about whether or not they should be allowed to accept it.

Such a assumption would be unwarranted. 1) was solved by claiming that there is no analogue and thus irrelevant to take history into equation. This is a cop-out and a refusal to even approach the mind-set of the East- and Near-Asiatic tribes.
It is *not* a cop-out. You know, and I know, very very well, that the situation I posted is entirely a result of the abstraction that naturally follows from this game. Land is divided into rigid province boundaries which gets colonized and at an exact point of settlement population (1000 people), all the land in the territory flips ownership. These divisions are arbitrary, some moreso than others. It is a necessary act of arbitration to make the game function at all. But it makes no sense in reality to just arbitrarily flip an arbitrarily-divided chunk of land from "nomadic" to "Mamluk" or "Byzantine" or whichever. In reality, if this had taken place, we would say that the Mamluks settled the southern Caucasus/northern Iranian lands after successfully beating back the Timurids. The one spot there would not be inhabited by Timurids, but would be left uninhabited, awaiting Mamluk habitation. We would say that the Mamluks were expanding into this one final stretch of uninhabited land the Timurids used to roam in, a stretch of land that bordered the boundary which the Byzantines would claim as sovereign.

To then say "Therefore, because the Byzantines' border touches this uninhabited piece of land which used to have Timurids in it and was slowly being settled by Mamluks, Byzantium was at war with the Timurids" is absurd. There wouldn't be a war until the Timurids came back and reclaimed the land, then marched on Byzantium. The entire notion of even *being* at war would be ludicrous. It just would not be a war, plain and simple. And it is just not possible to speculate with any credibility that the Timurids would not only consider themselves at war with Byzantium but would refuse to stop considering themselves at war with Byzantium. No amount of glimpsing into their mindset with scholarly evidence is going to produce any scenario that's remotely analogous to the game abstraction, analogous enough, at least, for reasonable conjecture about how they would have acted. It isn't that the history is irrelevant, it's that if we're honest with ourselves, we can't say what they would do in this hypothetical abstraction, because that abstraction is too far removed from reality to build a reaction from how they acted in reality.

The proposal raised in 2), I responded to by claiming that added options used at the players discretion is flawed since it is changes the idea of games as rule-set you use to it's max effect. This "option system" does not even take into account that the AI is unable to ignore a beneficial option and it might completely crash the current set-up. If a country is at war with 6 countries, it will always seek WP with a few because the standard AI believes peace is the natural state. However, Hordes are not meant to think in this way and giving them the option of WP (which they will use) would -- most likely -- annihilate the concept of the constant threat that is your tribal neighbor.
...but if they're overwhelmed by wars with everyone and looking for white peace, then by definition, they're no longer a threat anyway. That's the reason it works. The AI at present does not ask for a white peace unless it either recognizes it must get peace somewhere to keep from total annihilation or it recognizes that you're not fighting at all and haven't been for years. In the first case, to refuse to allow hordes to white peace would mean that you think hordes would not seek to stop their own imminent annihilation. I submit that this is not a reasonable understanding of the hordes. In the second case, you're not fighting - in reality, this would mean you're not at war. Signing a white peace to end a "war" that doesn't really exist might seem a bit awkward when discussing hordes, sure, but it makes more sense to have a ceasefire than to have one side or the other concede that it "lost" a "war" that didn't really exist. In either case, the white peace option is clearly beneficial.

And, again, I must assert that if you personally believe you should never white peace with hordes in order to capture the full gaming experience, that option is not taken away! It is still always within your power to refuse white peaces offered to you. So you lose nothing from this proposal, nor does anyone else from your position. It just enhances the gaming experience for those of us who feel this system would be improved by this feature.

At this point, I think it's clear that you do not want the revise even the sillies of arguments like "the Timurids want peace because the old code says so."
That's clearly not what I've said at any point in here. It's not just "the old code" that you can haphazardly dismiss; it's still actively used for nonhorde-nonhorde, horde-horde, and horde-nonhorde. I've further made extensive arguments detailing why this would be beneficial, and I would appreciate more than your extremely disrespectful straw men in responding to my statements.
 
Did you read[?]/.../

...what? /.../ I'm kind of blown away that that's not extremely obvious.

How the fuck do you even come to that conclusion? /.../patronizing comments/.../

If you're going to be patronizing douchebags, you could at least read the goddamn thread.

/.../it's rather insulting to compare it to playing Chess with all pawns converted to queens, not to mention just plain fallacious. /.../ And the last half of that post was more convoluted than John Roberts' decision on Obamacare. /.../ As I'm getting rather tired of all the patronizing comments and irrelevant tangents

Yeah, you clearly didn't read any of the thread, or didn't understand anything I've said /.../

brifbates, please stop talking until you actually read what I've said. You're continuing to miss the point because you continue to ignore crucial parts of what I'm saying.

/.../You're also misunderstanding/.../ You're also continuing to misrepresent my argument completely /.../ you like to waste all of our time with your stupid WWII analogies/.../
/.../You know, and I know, very very well, that the situation I posted is entirely a result of the abstraction that naturally follows from this game. /.../ That's clearly not what I've said at any point in here /.../I would appreciate more than your extremely disrespectful straw men in responding to my statements.

EDITED:

I believe you have made your point clear after tens of comments, it's just that it's not very compelling. I can only respond to what is written and react. If you believe you are being misunderstood, my apologies, but in continually calling people patronizing, you don't really deal with people in a level fashion either. It works both ways.

[Hat off] Unlike the Horde, we can recognize a stalemate, so maybe we should WP? :)
 
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Quotes entirely removed from context do wonders for making your point. Every single one of my attacking comments came after my request that others *stop* with the attacking comments was ignored. If people are hitting you and they don't stop when you ask, how is it contradictory to strike back?

...and as we're not at war, a white peace would be silly! Just call it a day and comment no more if you like, you won't hurt my feelings.