Poe here. I noticed that some folks are frustrated with forced truces. Having found a way to get around them, I thought I should share what I learned.

The only technology you will need to grab is 'Xenolinguistics.' This tech, available from ERA II, unlocks basic diplomacy options with other empires. And here is a picture of it:



Here's what you do: make a demand of the empire that has forced a truce on you. If that demand is sufficiently outrageous, your opponent will immediately call off the truce and declare war upon you. That's it.

You make a demand by going to the diplomacy menu, selecting your foe, and clicking on the blue page icon next to the empire's sigil. Here's a screenshot of that:

One thing to be aware of: it appears there can only be one diplomatic communication sent between empires, per turn. This means that you can't make a demand on the same turn that your enemy forced you into a truce (the demand icon wont even appear on the diplomacy screen). So you'll have to wait until the next turn. Furthermore, if your demand was not egregious enough, you wont get a response until the following turn and the truce will still be in effect. There is a silver lining though, in that you get what you asked for. Yes, as far as I can tell there are only two outcomes, they agree to the demand or they declare war. Oh, also you cannot make a demand on turns where you receive a response, as that counts as a diplomatic communication.

There are certain constraints to how you...compose your demand. You can ask for one and only one of the following: one of the FIDSI resources (food, industry, et cetera), man power, a luxury good, or a strategic resource. You can ask for as much of that one resource as your enemy possesses. Also you can ask for one technology that they have and you don't. You can demand a resource or a technology or both.

If your goal is to provoke a war, your best bet is to demand a tech and whatever they have a lot of. In the game where the above screenshots came from I demanded about a hundred transvine, about a hundred dust trees, and a tech with both of those demands and no war was declared. When I asked for their 300 or so hyperium they took the bait. I even repeated that same demand twice more on subsequent truces and it worked then as well. Sometimes a technology by itself is enough.

Oh, uh, "whatever they have a lot of" isn't quite accurate. In this same game, I demanded all of the craver's dust (about 1k) along with a tech and they agreed to it. Certain resources are more valuable per unit, a rather unsurprising fact.

Demands can be lucrative. You may want to consider capitalizing on the weak position you've put your enemy in by toning down your demands (just enough so that they don't declare war would be ideal), rather than immediately resuming open hostilities. In my case, I was able to use those luxury resources to liberally upgrade my systems which was a great boon. Just something I encourage you to consider.

On that note, something that you'll quickly notice is that the game does not give you any advance warning of how your enemy will take the demand. There's no way to discern where the tipping point is between acceptance and refusal. We'll have to develop our judgement from experience, I suppose.

At any rate, I hope this guide has acheived what it sets out to do: teaching you how to get around the forced truce. Thanks for reading!