Formal Talks

Possibly so. However, I think it is because the costs of war are great, players tend to want a return on their 'investment'.

Game design is also important, as Deacon has suggested.

Under the old Court-Agema rules, the Court would settle matters by the transfer of a city or other 'inconsequential' gains to secure peace. In that respect Court Agema was very much historic in terms of outcomes. Richard may not like it and have criticised it as being institutionally unhistoric, but the game itself has many such compromises over how historic institutions worked for administrative/balance purposes. To me, achieving a historically congruous outcome and allowing games to move on by satisfying the honour of players is worth an unhistoric game mechanism, particularly when without such a mechanism players seem incapable of reaching that kind of settlement, going instead for outright destruction.

This is probably because they know if they mess a position up they can simply walk away and take another one in another game. Very unhistoric! If the game is to have a basis in history, then surely the purpose of the rules should be to encourage such historic play and discourage unhistoric play? Just imagine how different G7 would have been if I had been able to take England to Court Agema over its breach of treaty with France? No need to invade, the matter would have been settled instead of getting out of hand. Similarly, I could have taken Austria to Court over her breach of treaty, thereby removing the need to escalate things over her unjustified attack. I may still have decided to fight it out with Austria given the circumstances, but her spurious reasons for war would no longer go unchallenged and dominate the game. Treaties would be upheld and the word of a ruler would be restored to its rightful place as what was expected. The rules would encourage honourable play, which is what they were designed to do. Of course, wars would still happen, but when players reached the point where they no longer knew why they were fighting or simply wanted to stop, a mechanism would be in place to allow them to do so. This would encourage players to stick with their positions during difficulties and give long term players protection from those who join for the short term just to cause trouble. I suggest there is much more glory from building up a nation over 10 or 20 years than destroying such in 2 years?

I can't remember exactly when Court Agema was abolished and new treaty rules came in, but I'm fairly sure that for most of the lifetime of LGDR Court Agema was a feature. Indeed, in the announcement it was acknowledged that "while generally speaking they [the treaty rules] were successful, in certain cases they fail badly. These new rules are intended to repair this flawed part of the game." Perhaps the repair has introduced more problems than it solved, and as players have proved incapable of rising to the challenge of sorting out their differences, a return to the old system is long overdue?