An embargo is a promise you pay for. Nobody gets to sign one for free and feel righteous about it. The bill turns up on your Economy page.
Naming a target
In the treaty builder there's a new kind of treaty article next to the law lock: the embargo. Pick any country in the world and add it. From then on, every country that belongs to the treaty embargoes the target for as long as it stays a member. A treaty can embargo several countries, once each, and mix embargoes and law locks freely, up to its limit of twenty treaty articles.
The target can't join, and can't be talked into it. A treaty that embargoes you is closed to you: you can read the invitation, but the checklist will tell you why you can't accept it.
Both sides pay
Every embargo costs GDP on both sides, and the size of the cost depends on who's on the other end of it.
- The target loses more the more countries pile on. Each new member adds its share of world GDP to the total the target is cut off from.
- Members lose more the bigger the target is. Embargoing a giant is expensive. Embargoing a small economy is nearly free.
- Nobody loses everything. A country always keeps at least a quarter of the GDP it would otherwise have had.
| Country | Loses | GDP before | GDP after |
|---|---|---|---|
| A (target, $10tn) | 37.5% | $10tn | $6.25tn |
| B ($30tn) | 7.5% | $30tn | $27.75tn |
| C ($20tn) | 7.5% | $20tn | $18.5tn |
A country that's both embargoing and embargoed by the same partner, or linked to it by two treaties, still only counts it once.
Check before you sign
Joining an embargo treaty is never blocked because it's expensive. That's your call. But the treaty builder and every treaty page show an Economic impact line for your country: "Joining would cost your country about N% of its GDP." Read it before you found or join anything aimed at a large economy. The figure is approximate, because world GDP shares shift every month.
Seeing the damage
There's no pop-up telling a target it's been embargoed. It finds out from its own numbers.
- On the Economic Growth tab, a Lost to embargoes figure appears once your country is involved in any embargo. It's added to the growth chart as a band, and to the history table as a column.
- A new Embargoes tab lists the countries embargoing you and the countries you embargo, what each costs you, and the treaty responsible. Countries on both lists are marked Mutual.
Because it comes straight out of GDP, the loss flows into everything built on it: the budget collects less tax, industries shrink in dollar terms, and a heavy embargo can push debt-to-GDP into a worse credit rating.
Getting out
An embargo is an overlay, not a scar. It never touches your underlying growth, and it doesn't compound: a year of embargo costs the same each month as a month of it. Leave the treaty, or watch it dissolve, and your GDP is back to full strength at your next calculation, with no recovery period.
The cheapest embargo is the one on a country nobody trades with. The most effective is the one nobody can afford to join.
The full formula is in the wiki under Economy: Embargoes, and the treaty rules are in International Treaties.