How many times has a civ ruthlessly attacked me then when I attempt to counter attack a peace offer pops up and I can't refuse. Totally unreal and VERY frustrating. Worse yet the Democratic 'rule' doesn't seem to apply to the AI!Scrap the entire current system! Something like this would be better:
First you must declare war 1 turn prior to any attack or the war is considered a sneak attack. Either way, the party who is being attacked has the option of declaring war or suing for peace. Sue for peace would go through the Diplomacy channels and may fail.
Then the idea of alliance needs to be strengthend. If you are allied with a country you automatically declare war if they are attacked. And you must wait until the next round to revoke the treaty and cannot offer peace until the following round.
That said here's the real solution:
There needs to be a relations value (say +/-100 with 0 being neutral) assigned to every civ. War declared in support of allies would drop the relation value 50 points. War declared without provocation would drop the value by 100 and a sneak attack by 200.
So if a civ starts out with a very good relation (say 80) and declared an unprovoked war, your relation value with them would drop to -20 but a sneak attack would drop it to a full -100. It would be possible to maintain a positive relation value if you are only allied to other warring factions (similar to our relation to the Italian people in WWII).
Each type of goverment would have a 'peace factor'. From Anarchy at 0 to Democracy at 100. The odds of accepting peace would then be determined by:
peace factor + relation factor/100
So in the above examples using a Democracy:
Allied:
100 + 30 = 130% (must accept peace)
Unprovoked:
100 + (-20) = 80% (still a good chance since their relations were very good before)
Sneak Attack:
100 + (-100) = 0% (No way in He**)
Relations could improve 10 pts for each turn that no agressive action is taken and a sue for peace is offered up to the zero value. That way no matter what you've got a couple of cracks at the other Civ before your government forces you to accept peace.
Additional relationship improvement can be gained by peacefull trade, ect...
And of course all rules should apply to the AI. I can't stand cheating AIs!