... Without [Universal] in the title, isn’t this a treaty? The kind of treaty that modifies other rules outside its own text? The kind we must all rely on the wisdom of the Player to veto?

It’s a grey area as a treaty.  for now while I consider.

Does it modify other rules?

All it does is modify what the votes of people who sign the treaty are. And it doesn’t give them more voting power. Just the ability to better control what their final vote actually is.

You’re right, I should have read more carefully.

Nope, actually I think I was right the first time. The Ruleset says “When a Proposal creates or modifies a Treaty, every Emperor that voted FOR it becomes a Signatory to that Treaty; for this purpose, a DEFERENTIAL vote is never a FOR vote.” This one contains the possibility that “if a Proposal modifies a single treaty,a DEFERENTIAL vote… counts as a FOR vote on that proposal.” Thus, this overrides a Universal Rule by the “more specific beats less specific” principle.

By the same logic, I could create a Treaty that read “If a Proposal modifies a single treaty, a VETO vote by any Signatory of this Treaty, which group automatically includes the Player, counts as a FOR vote.” Doesn’t that occupy the same theoretical gamespace?

Clucky, this has the same admin-subjectivity issue that you called out an earlier proposal for nonsignatory admins.

Furthermore, it’s not clear as-written whether Emperors who didn’t sign this treaty but did sign the one under amendment count as voters for resolving double-DEFs.

I’m not sure I agree it has the same subjectivity issues.

If a player signs a rule saying their vote is X, that means their vote is X even if the admin doing the admining doesn’t sign that same rule.

Emperors who don’t sign this treaty are still “signatories of the treaty in question”, so their votes would still count