Daniel,
I've already outlined the reasons I wouldn't have made the deal, quite apart from the largest issue-that being there is a limit to what kind of deals one ought to make in this game. It's not the real world. You aren't sparing the People the frivolities and dangers of war, and if you end the game with the highest income, having fought not a single war but drawn all your borders by words and not deeds, that success comes to nothing if you didn't have any fun.
I draw the line, for myself, at this notion of eternal peace between any two countries, but particularly any of the Big Four (France, Austria, the OE and Spain), because such a position, where Austria more or less gives away provinces and the two leave one another strictly alone, would not be any fun for me. Quite apart from the fact that this wasn't eternal peace as you and Lurken seem to suggest (the Dutch provinces were left out of it) and it would be far better for France in the long run than Austria, I wouldn't have accepted it even if it were. And neither would Cheech.
That's not an intellectual disparity. That's just a fundamental difference in our approach to the game, yours and mine. I like wars. I think this is a war game. I think the ultimate strength of one's own nation is less important than the
relative strength of all nations, and war is one of the paramount means of weakening your neighbors. If at the end of the game a hyperteching England is making more money than your Mongol-like France but you can say you've defeated Austria thirteen times and Spain eleven times and occupied Moscow with Napoleon, you beat England in my book. And I think you had more fun doing it.
We can debate whether the deal was a good one on face-I don't believe it was and I've already stated my reasons-but there's just a difference of opinion here on our priorities in this game. No need to resolve them-widely divergent styles is one of the things that makes the game great. I enjoy nothing more than beating your ass on the field of battle after you've spent two hundred years counting coins.
And I know you get a perverse pleasure watching the rest of us throw our money away on pointless conflicts from behind them-moreso, I would guess, than in the actual counting itself.
But what it comes down to is that Duke agrees with Cheech and me. Where you, Lurken, Oz, et al, or Cheech, Mulli and I, for that matter, stand on it is ultimately irrelevant-Duke thought it was a bad deal. And so he didn't agree to it.