Relations, Treaties and War

The four ledgers that decide who is at war with whom, how much they like each other, and what they have signed.

Who is at war with whom is not just a matter of what the events say. It is a matter of record: four ledgers that the engine owns, validates and enforces.

The model does not write these directly. It emits compact updates, the engine checks them against the rules, and folds the valid ones in once per turn. That is what stops the world drifting into a state where two countries are simultaneously allied and at war.

Wars

The war ledger is the single authority on who is fighting whom. Each war has a status:

Transitions are explicit and validated. A war can be started, joined on either side, left, put into ceasefire, resumed from ceasefire, or ended. Illegal moves are rejected outright — you cannot start a war that already exists, join a war that is not active, resume one that is not in ceasefire, or end one that has already ended.

Combat requires a war

This is the rule that makes the ledger worth having. An event that narrates battlefield combat must name an active canonical war and the countries fighting on each side. Battles, invasions, offensives, bombardments, active fronts and unit attacks all qualify. An offensive that is plainly not military — diplomatic, economic, trade, legal, media, a charm or peace offensive — does not, so a "diplomatic offensive for sanctions relief" is not mistaken for a battle. A cyber offensive still counts as hostile.

An event describing a battle with no war behind it is rejected while the turn still has a retry left, as is one pointing at a war that is in ceasefire or already over. On the final attempt the turn is repaired rather than thrown away: a war record that still cannot be bound to an event is dropped, along with the war bindings of its events, and the rest of the turn stands. The events survive as narrative; only the canonical war change is lost, and it is written to the diagnostics log.

The practical effect: fighting cannot quietly appear out of nowhere. Someone has to have started a war, and the record says who and when — but a single unbindable record no longer costs you the whole turn.

Relations

One score per pair of countries, from −100 to +100, sorted into bands:

The band is always derived from the score rather than declared separately, which prevents the world from claiming two countries are "cordial" while their score says otherwise.

A pair with no entry is unknown, which is not the same as neutral — it means these two countries have no tracked relationship yet, not that they are indifferent to each other.

Relations move for concrete reasons rather than drifting. A ring of yours exposed publicly in someone else's country sours that pair; so does breaking an agreement, and so does backing their rival. The size of each move is the simulation's to decide — there is no fixed tariff per offence. A score that contradicts a pair's declared status — "friendly" while at war — is reconciled rather than left standing.

The world is allowed to move against you. Nothing spares the player: a foreign power may start something with you, and when there is a fight both sides fight. What the simulation is told not to do is invent a rivalry the record does not support — neighbours are not enemies for sharing a border — and that applies to every pair of countries on the map, you included.

Agreements

A register of what has actually been signed:

Each is active, suspended, ended or expired.

The register only holds what earlier turns recorded. If a turn tries to end, suspend or update an agreement that was never recorded, the game re-aims it at the one recorded agreement with exactly the same parties and type, if there is exactly one. Otherwise that single change is dropped, with a note in the diagnostics log, and the rest of the turn stands. It would rather lose one change than end the wrong treaty.

This is what turns "we agreed to an alliance in a conversation twelve turns ago" into something the world still knows about and can be held to.

Storylines

The fourth ledger, and the least visible: persistent world processes running underneath the events. A storyline is a thing that is developing — a rivalry sharpening, an economy unravelling, a succession crisis building.

Each carries a status (active, dormant, resolved), a pressure and momentum value from 0 to 100, and a date at which it is next due attention. Every live war gets a mirrored storyline. At most 96 are kept.

Storylines are why a campaign has continuity between turns that nothing in the event log explains: something has been building for six turns and is now due.

They are not allowed to stall. An active war, or any storyline at pressure 55 or above, that goes 45 days of game time without a visible milestone has to move: link a real event, change status, or shift pressure by at least 4 points or momentum by at least 6. If a time skip leaves one stuck, the game makes a short repair call for it once the skip is done, with up to ten minutes in total per skip. A repair that fails or runs out of time leaves the storyline where it was and overdue for the next turn. It never costs you the turn itself.

What this changes to play

• Wars have a beginning. You cannot drift into one; someone declared it, and the ledger says so.
• Ceasefire is a real state. It is not peace, and resuming from it is a distinct act.
• Relations are legible. You can see the number rather than inferring the mood.
• Treaties persist properly. An alliance signed in turn three still constrains people in turn thirty.
• Old saves are migrated. A campaign started before the ledgers existed has them seeded from its existing treaty events and conversations on the next jump.

Puppets and overlords

Beta channel only.

On beta a fifth ledger records who directs whom. A puppet is a country whose will is directed by an overlord while it stays a separate country: it keeps its own territory, its own sovereignty and its own colour. One puppet has one overlord; an overlord may hold many; and there are no chains — making a country that holds puppets into a puppet hands its puppets to the new overlord, permanently.

An arrangement is either open — a published protectorate, a satellite every government knows about — or covert. A covert puppet knows it is one and behaves accordingly with whoever in the room has not found out. Other governments learn of a covert arrangement through an active agent inside either party, and go on believing what they last learned until fresh reporting corrects them. The country panel and the map card show what you know: the kind, one sentence on what it means from your side, and chips for mood, since when, and open or covert.

Loyalty is how far a puppet accepts direction, 0–100. It is always hidden — even for an open arrangement — and shown to the overlord only as a band: Loyal (75+), Content, Restless or Seething (below 25). A puppet whose loyalty falls below 35 is given a hidden storyline toward revolt; whether anything comes of it is the simulation's call, and a rising can be suppressed as well as won — at a cost in standing. Annexing a puppet costs the overlord standing too: 8 points of international reputation (out of 100) for a covert arrangement, 16 for one the world could see.

Demands. In the one-on-one thread between an overlord and its puppet, a message can be a demand. It appears as a card hanging off the message that made it. The puppet can Accept, Refuse, or offer an alternative in its own words, which the overlord either accepts or answers by demanding again. Only a refusal costs loyalty, charged once per turn; a refusal can still be thought better of ("Accept after all"), and what has been agreed is final. When you are the overlord, a toggle in the composer makes your message a demand. The cards are choices, so answering one costs no request.

The GM console can make, reclassify or release a puppet directly. A scenario can switch the whole system off with its Puppet states feature, and then nothing mentions subordination at all.

Next

• Diplomacy — the conversations these ledgers record the results of.
• Military and combat — the fighting a war authorises.
• Territory — what a war moves.

Open Historia is under active development on two channels, and this wiki is written by hand — a page can fall behind a release. Last checked against the game on 2026-09-24 · main e62a1c55 · beta 2f48a6c2. If something here does not match what you see in the game, trust the game and say so on Discord.