I signed up earlier, and I am willing to raise my bid for Switzerland to 0 inflation just for fun.
About a "low ship" value, just as long as we have a good general impression of what this number would be, I think we'll be ok. If you're sending 20 percent of the number of ships your foe is using, losing that number would probably hurt you more than the benefit of delaying a landing. The same would apply for percentages as low as 5 percent, which could still equal 50 ships fairly easily.
If we're talking about single digit values for warships(which could be stretched but only a little), I think it would be reasonable. For galleys it should be a little more.
I still think there should be a definite limit that everyone understands though. If someone sends out 1 less ship than they're allowed, just penalize them for it. But it could be done using a curb, so that breaking it by just one ship would result in a minor penalty, while making a very obvious breakage of the rule like sending one ship fleets out would mean something a lot worse like +1 inflation.
When all these rules are finished, there should be a required confirmation from all players that they've read them all and understand them, so that nobody can claim ignorance as an excuse(and maybe forgetfulness as well).
For DOWing nations that are aligned with people you have a truce with, the only way to handle this without causing problems is to outlaw alliances altogether for countries that are not in war. This would have another benefit, in that wars would have a smaller natural tendency to become major alliance wars, and players would be more inclined to use reasons other than "he's my ally" for joining or not joining a conflict. And it would remove to need to have a "you must cancel MA when joining" rule, to have one less thing to remember to do.
