In Europa Universalis II, A peace treaty is a diplomatic action which may end the state of war between two countries or war coalitions. Peace treaties are normally negotiated by the war leaders of the two coalitions, but a country may also choose to negotiate a separate peace, involving only itself and not its coalition allies.
Peace treaties usually involve the transfer of province ownership and/or money from the losing side to the winners, with the amounts based on war progress (systematized as warscore). Demanding military access, force vassalization, and forced conversion are also possible results under limited circumstances, as is forced annexation. If a peace treaty is agreed to, the transfer of tribute and the ending (or splitting) of the war happen immediately. (The war may be split if the peace was a separate peace.) Finally, truces are created between all former belligerents.
Peace Treaties Initiated by AIs[]
From time to time, an AI that you are at war with may offer peace. When it does, depending on message settings, a dialog or a notification of dialog icon will appear. You have to click on the notification icon to see the dialog.
The dialog simply states the AI's peace offer. You can either accept it, or not; there is no possibility of refinement via more negotiation. The dialog is a time-limited dialog; it will stay around for exactly two months, then you automatically reject it and it vanishes. You can accept it any time during the two month period.
Player Initiated Peace Treaties[]
When you are at war, you have the possibility to offer peace to any or all of your enemies. This raises the Peace negotiation screen. There are several steps to making a peace treaty:
- If force annexation is possible, you first must decide whether to do it.
- You must choose the set of countries the peace will apply among, on both sides.
- You must select whether to demand tribute, offer it, or to make peace without tribute either way
- If you demand or offer tribute, you must specify it
- The enemy must decide whether to accept your terms; if it does...
- Peace is made, with various effects and consequences
These items are discussed below.
Force Annexation[]
If you allowed force annexation in your game (see options), and you have 100 warscore against the country you are treating with, you may be offered the force annexation screen. It will only be shown in two circumstances:
- the enemy country is pagan (regardless of its size), or
- the country owns only one city (excluding TPs/colonies)
You can choose either to Cancel, to negotiate peace normally, or to Annex. See the article on force annexation. Annexing an enemy always counts as a separate peace (see below) on both sides.
AIs always force annex if they are allowed to.
Choosing Participants[]
Your country's peace treaties always involve it and one country you're at war with, but you may or may not choose to involve other countries that are in the war, on your side, or on the enemy's side.
If you are the war leader for your war coalition, you have the possibility to offer an coalition-wide peace treaty, or a separate peace treaty. If a coalition peace is accepted, all members of the coalition make peace together. In a separate peace, you make peace only for your country, not any coalition members. You cannot offer peace for any subsets of your coalition other than all of them (coalition) or just you (separate).
Similarly, if the enemy is his coalition's war leader, you can offer the peace to his whole coalition, or just to him. You cannot offer peace to any subsets of the enemy coalition other than all of them (coalition) or one at a time (separate). Of course, you can sign multiple separate peaces.
If you are not your coalition's war leader, you may only offer a separate peace for your part. Similarly, if the enemy is not his coalition's war leader, you can only negotiate with him for a separate peace.
Coalition peace (for both sides) is the default. To offer a separate peace on your side click on your coat of arms in the peace resolution screen (see the screenshot). To offer a separate peace on the enemy's side, click on their coat of arms.
Thus, you can offer four kinds of peace treaty:
- coalition-coalition: between your coaltion (led by you) and an enemy coalition (led by country you're negotiating with)
- coalition-separate: between your coalition (led by you), and any one enemy.
- separate-coalition: between you (alone), and an enemy coalition (led by country you're negotiating with)
- separate-separate: between you (alone) and any one enemy (also alone).
Note that warscore is computed separately for war coalitions and for individual countries in coalition. The coalition warscore is typically the sum of individual warscores, although the cap on warscore from battles makes that not always true. Thus, it is quite possible to have an individual warscore that is much better than your coalition's. Similarly you may have done much better against one particular enemy than against some others.
Choosing Tributaries[]
After you select the participants in the treaty, you must decide who, if anyone, will pay tribute. There are three possibilities:
- Demand Tribute: you demand tribute from the enemy or enemies.
- No Tribute: you offer a white peace, with no tribute either way.
- Offer Tribute: you offer tribute to the enemy.
When you select one of the three buttons, the Choose tribute screen appears. This is the second stage of peace negotiations.
Choosing Tribute[]
There are five types of tributes that you can demand: force vassalization, force conversion, military access, province ownership, and money. You may only offer the last two, province(s) and money. Costs in warscore are as follows:
- force vassalization: 70% warscore
- force conversion: 50% warscore
- military access : 20% warscore
- province ownership : warscore ranges from 2% for a trading post up to perhaps 40% for a rich CoT. You may demand core province of yours, or provinces controlled by you (or your coalition for a coalition peace), but you can only demand provinces that are owned by the particularl enemy you are negotiating with. If you control a province from an ally of the enemy warleader, you can only get it via a separate peace with that ally.
- Money: +1% warscore per 25d, except +0% for the first 25d. You can't ask for more ducats than they have in treasury. All money tribute is shared equally between all members of the coalition.
Resolution[]
There are only two things that can happen in a peace offer: it is rejected, or it is accepeted.
Rejecting Peace[]
In general, there is no effect if a country rejects a peace offer. However, a human player is not allowed to reject a peace offer if the enemy controls all the player's core provinces.
No country is allowed to reject peace if it is 50% less than warscore.
Also, if warscore is 50%+, and a country makes a peace offer with total value not higher than 11% less than warscore, then the enemy country will lose 1 point of stability if it refuses the offer. AIs are allowed to refuse when they are -3 stability, but humans are not.
Accepting Peace[]
Peace is made whenever a country accepts a peace treaty, regardless of which side proposed it. AIs will usually accept peaces of 11% less than warscore, even if the total warscore is less than 50%.
The main effect of peacemaking is that the state of war is ended, and truces are created, between all pairings of the set of members of each side making peace.
If you have any war allies, concluding a peace separate from them makes you exit the current war and start another, with you as attacker. It also gives your former war coalition mates a temporary casus belli (12 months) against you.
Tribute is made according to the terms in the treaty. Each province goes to its controller, or if it is a core province of the country demanding it and the enemy still controls it, to the country which demanded it. Strangely, colonies seem to sometimes violate this rule, going to the war leader of the winning side instead of the controlling country. (More research needed!)