Quote Originally Posted by Akka
Whose king is the idiot ?
- The one who save his country, his throne, his family and his soldiers by making peace.
- The one makes his kingdom disappears, his family lose all power, his soldiers die and his people be conquered, by stubbornly refusing to accept the ceasefire proposed, reasoning that the faction he's at war will come back in fifty years to finish him off, because it's the rules of the game ?
The first one is the idiot in this game. In this game the only purpose is to expand your empire. If you're not doing that, then you will lose. Plain and simple.

Instead of looking at it from the "you'd be stupid to refuse a ceasefire" point of view, look at it from the other side. You've got a powerful country that is trying to make a ceasefire with you. Why would they do that? If they had the military might to conquer you, they'd be foolish not to. The only reason they would want to make a ceasefire is if they are over-extended, and need the time to recover. If that's the case, why would you possibly want to accept? You'd want to attack, as the other country is signalling to you that they are weak.

Additionnally, why should a war necessarily ends with the complete conquest or the reduction to protectorate status to one belligerant ? Is it how you see the game ?
My, how shallow.
And what other purpose is there? The game is designed so that the only way to win is to conquer provinces. I can only win by either getting 15 or 50, depending on which I choose, and by eliminating a specific faction. There is no "make an alliance with X factions" victory condition. There is no "gain X protectorates" victory condition. There is no "be nice to your neighbours" victory condition.

If you want to pretend there is, by all means, go ahead. But the rules and the mechanics of the game are designed to support the condition that does exist - conquest. With that in mind, no, there really is no reason to make peace with another faction unless you have to, or you can use the troops better in some other location. Anything that isn't moving you to the victory condition is (relatively speaking) a waste of time.

Well, that's a reasoning good for Risk and one-dimensional players. You don't need the cultural and historical background of RTW to play such games. In fact, you don't even need diplomacy in such games, as diplomacy is something that existed BECAUSE our lives aren't a game.
But here is a game with this historical and cultural background, and which emulate diplomacy precisely to give these realistic options. So dumbing them down back to the Risk level, is a waste and is what is actually stupid.
Actually, there can be a great deal of diplomacy take place in a game of Risk. But I wouldn't expect you to understand that. You've apparently decided that you've got the elistist "high ground" here, so far be it from me to suggest otherwise.

What you don't understand is that the historical and cultural background of the game have nothing to do with the way the game is played. If you changed all the unit names to orcs and goblins, and changed the city names, and placed it on a fantasy map, the underlying gameplay would not change at all. I put that in bold, just so you wouldn't miss it. You see, the rules the game uses do not take any advantage of historical or cultural backgrounds. I'd be happy if it did. I'd love to see a game where diplomacy could have a big impact on things. But as long as the only victory conditions for TW games is militarily, TW will not be such a game.

With that being the case, the diplomacy system as it exists in the game, fits it perfectly.

There is no point in pretending you're impersonnating the ruling family of an historical empire, with a bountiful of realistic descriptions and details and mechanism, if it's to throw all this out of the windows and go back to a Pacman-like reflexion-level.

All these players that see the point of having these features in the game.
And all those who have more immersion abilities than an amoeba, and are able to simulate like if they "were there".
Which means, quite a lot in fact.
Please, stop with the idiotic strawman fallacies. It's quite obvious that I've never said anything about "pacman-like reflexion-level", so arguing about it is absurd. I can understand if you can't actually argue my points, but creating your own simplistic ones to argue against doesn't help you in the slightest.

Bh