Wdym span multiple treaties?

Right now, if you wanted treaty that talks about “An Old Guard’s ships” you’d be in a bit of a pickle. If its a subrule of Arms Disclosure Treaty, then there is a chance the signatory wouldn’t know what an “Old Guard” is. If its a subrule of The Old Guard Treaty, there is a chance the signatory wouldn’t know what “ships” are.

By allowing treaties to list their dependencies, we can ensure all emperors following the new treaty both know what ships are and know what an old guard is.

Also, I think this would free us up the ability to get rid of the “Signatories to a subrule become Signatories to the parent rule” and instead go with “Only top level rules are Treaties or Universal”

and if you want a subrule of a treaty to be its own treaty, you can just give it a single dependency

this would allow us to still use subrules to properly format a treaty, without turning the treaty into a mess of “what happens if someone doesn’t sign this part”

I’m not seeing the pickle, there. Stats defined by Treaties aren’t local variables in the sense that other Treaties can’t “see” them, they just say that those variables only exist for the named Signatories, and as Emperors those Signatories exist across the whole game. A newly-minted standalone Treaty of “A Signatory who has a Fleet and is also an Old Guard is an Admiral” would work, unless I’m missing something.

Sure, if you sign a dependent treaty you know what you’re getting into.