I'm looking for ideas for a game I'm designing and trying to find games to look to for examples.
The mechanic I'm having trouble with involves deal making, I want a situation where the game enforces the honouring of agreements to some extent but not absolutely, i.e. the player can stab someone they've made a deal with in the back, but it'll cost them to do so. So far I haven't found any existing game that does something similar.
As for the current plan: The game is an area control/war game using a Paradox Interactive style (Crusader Kings/Europa Universalis video games) control/ownership system. If you conquer an opponent's province you control it and deny it to them, but you only actually own it and can use it for yourself when you agree to a peace where the owner formally cedes it. Players can also make formal non-aggression pacts and truces after making a peace deal. However, a player that breaks a truce is put outside of this system for a time and any province of theirs that is taken immediately becomes owned by the person that takes it.
That's one of the things I considered with the 'people can take your stuff for free' rule, it means that if you succeed the backstabbing doesn't cost you anything, but if you fail the consequences are much more dire than just losing a fight normally.
I hadn't really considered internal consequences, there's two metrics it could affect, there is the strength of troops and food production of the peasants/land, negatively impacting either could be interesting, less powerful troops means you're more likely to lose a straight up fight (I haven't really decided yet how random I want fights to be, so I'm not sure how punishing some loss of combat power would be), less food means you can keep your troops in the field for less time. Both would keep the 'if you betray someone you better make it good' aspect. Definitely something to think about, thanks.
Thanks for the suggestion Yort, I'll check out Senji.