Wars

A war in Atomic Dawn has two sides, each led by a war leader, and any number of other participants who joined along the way. Wars begin by declaration, by a guarantee or bloc obligation pulling a country in, or when an international crisis boils over. They end at the negotiating table, by stalemate, or when one side has nothing left to fight with.

Declaring war

Declaring war has its own screen rather than a single click. It shows any casus belli held against the target, and a preview of who would actually fight on each side: the target's real allies and protecting superpower against your own. Declaring costs 3 political capital.

A declaration is blocked while the two countries have a non-aggression pact or an alliance, or while the target guarantees your independence.

Casus belli

A country can earn a casus belli against a neighbour by fabricating one. This is a unilateral diplomatic action that takes about four months, costs political capital to start and a little more every month it runs, and requires a shared land border. Success grants a Border Conflict pretext valid for a year; the declaration screen warns when one is close to lapsing unused. Wars that come out of crises carry their own casus belli, such as annexation, national liberation, regime change or border demilitarization.

• A justified war, declared with a valid casus belli, consumes the pretext, earns the aggressor a little prestige and draws a modest opinion penalty from the target.
• An unjust war, declared without one, is never forbidden, but it draws twice the condemnation and costs real prestige.

AI countries with a taste for conquest usually fabricate a pretext first. The Cold War also stays cold by design: the AI is very reluctant to attack a country in the rival bloc, or either superpower, and rarely picks a war it is too weak to win.

Joining wars

Countries enter wars they did not start in several ways:

• Bloc defence. A country firmly aligned with a bloc is defended by its bloc leader automatically when attacked (see Diplomacy).
• Guarantees. When a guaranteed country is attacked, every guarantor not already in the war is asked to honour its word. Standing aside costs 100 prestige, leaves the guaranteed country deeply resentful (a −150 opinion penalty fading over about twelve years) and shakes every other ally's confidence (−50 each). The guarantee itself stays in force. AI guarantors almost always honour their word.
• Crisis escalation. When a stand-off reaches maximum escalation, every participating sponsor and its allies join automatically, except that the superpowers never fight each other over a stand-off they only back. If one superpower already fights for a side, the other stays out and supports its side by other means.
• Colonial wars. When a faction rises against a colony, the colonial power fights alongside it.

A country joining a war under way is at war like a founder, but starts at a lower commitment and builds it up over time (see Warfare).

Ending a war

Ceasefire

A ceasefire is a treaty clause. It freezes the war: battles stop, and every contested province passes to whoever holds it. Your side gets the land you hold in every practical sense (taxes, manpower, map colour), but the original owner keeps its legal claim, and the province view notes that it is held under ceasefire. If the ceasefire breaks and the front moves again, ownership follows the front with no Occupation timer. Ceasefires do not expire on their own, and the AI may break one when it regains leverage or has unmet war goals. A player who orders an attack across a ceasefire line is asked to confirm first.

Peace

A peace clause formally ends the war and returns every occupied or disputed province to its rightful owner, unless the same treaty cedes it through a province cession, annexation or puppeting clause. Peace terms are applied in a fixed order, so rearranging the clauses cannot change the settlement. Peacetime clauses such as friendship or free trade cannot be folded into a peace deal: the war is settled first.

Leverage makes demands easier to press: occupation, the military balance, the enemy's War Exhaustion and blockades all feed it, and holding every province of the enemy grants the maximum. A movement fighting a guerrilla war never agrees to be annexed or made a puppet, however much of its ground is lost.

Separate peace

A minor participant can make its own ceasefire or peace with the enemy war leader and leave, while the war continues for everyone else. It needs no permission from its own war leader, but it loses prestige and earns that leader's lasting resentment. Its subjects leave with it.

Stalemate and collapse

If 24 months pass without a border change, the war ends automatically and any occupied land becomes the property of whoever holds it. A war also ends when every country on one side has lost all its war support or all its land. An uprising whose rebels still own land is the exception: it does not end merely because the front has stood still, but only by annexation or a settlement.

When a war ends, ground taken by allies passes to their war leader, and allied troops standing on a partner's land hand it back. When a country is annexed, its annexer takes its place in any war it was fighting.

The wars of the era

The 1946 scenario follows several historical conflicts as dynamic wars rather than fixed scripts:

• The Chinese Civil War resumes on 26 June 1946. Neither superpower intervenes automatically. The Nationalist armies are hollowed out by corruption, while the Communists fight a protracted people's war; a chain of developments triggered by the war's course rather than by dates can turn this into Nationalist collapse, the proclamation of the People's Republic and the retreat to Taiwan.
• The Greek Civil War begins when the Democratic Army rises in the northern mountains. It lasts as long as it keeps its sanctuaries across the northern borders, while an American military mission rebuilds the National Army.
• The First Indochina War begins when the Viet Minh rises against the French-backed State of Vietnam. A long war without victory turns French opinion against it, and France can negotiate its way out with a partition at the 17th parallel.
• The Korean War follows the Communist victory in China. The United States' guarantee of South Korea calls it in; if it honours the guarantee, its forces cross from occupied Japan, China enters once the front reaches its frontier, and an armistice eventually settles the war on the line where it stands. For the United States, Korea is also a National Focus episode with branching choices.