Good question. I assume you understand the real world difference between a cease fire and peace established by treaty. As for the in-game varieties, I have no idea what the effective differences are -- in 16 games I have played to completion, I have never seen any other player (probably well over 100 human players) actually use the "ceasefire" diplomatic relationship.

I have not confirmed this however I have played a "Cease Fire" offer as the equivalent of a "Trade Embargo".

It allowed units to stop firing at each other and I assumed it kept us in a "no-trade" status.

At least when going from Peace to War, that is the equivalent intermediate step.

@MontanaBB, you obviously have not encountered me on a map yet!

Heh. Lucky you.

Teasing aside, will "ceasefire" stop the battle between two enemy stacks and permit them to disengage? If so, that could be useful under certain circumstances where war has started by accident.

If both sides do it, yes.

Good to know. Last October or November, I had two accidental "wars." One was my fault, a situation in which I was using my tactical bomber wing (a.k.a. the "Angry Birds") of about 20 squadrons to attack an enemy ground units stack in very close proximity to the ground unit stack of my ally, which I was supporting. I was using my patented "TB-chain attack," whereby I put the larger stack of 20+ squadrons on hover-patrol over the target and then peel off sub-stacks of 5 squadrons each for direct attacks in quick succession on the enemy ground stack for maximum offensive efficiency. Embarrassingly, I apparently accidentally targeted my ally's ground units that were within 4 or 5 pixels of the enemy ground stack with one of my 4 or 5 substacks of TBs, thus starting an accidental war. Despite my ally and I immediately restoring "peace" and then restoring "share map," my TB wing was stuck on the ground being attacked by my ally's ground units at my ally's nearby air base until a game operator intervened. It could have cost us the game at that point if I had lost those 20+ TB squadrons to my ally's ground units. As it was, I lost 2 squadrons.