I just think of crossing the border as spying or sneaking in if there aren't units there. If the "locals" see you and report it to the army, the government is free to declare war themselves if they so chose, but if you are doing a surprise attack, why would you want to tell everyone ahead of time? I would prefer to leave it up to the human player to declare, instead of the computer.

There was no formal declaration of war in Korea from the US, when you look back in history. We just showed up and started fighting (obviously more to it, but we did not declare war upon attacking, or even after hundreds of skirmishes).

Not exactly. There were a series of three UN Security Council resolutions passed in June and July 1950 which condemned North Korea's invasion of South Korea, invoked the right of collective self-defense under the UN Charter (a U.S. Senate-ratified treaty to which the United States was a party), urged UN member states to intervene militarily to halt the invasion, and authorized the United States to assume military command of all UN forces in Korea. The U.S. Congress subsequently authorized all necessary funds to support the U.S. military during the war.

Bottom line: The war was fully authorized by the United Nations, the United States acted pursuant to its treaty obligations, and the U.S. Congress authorized the necessary funds. Thus a "declaration of war" by the U.S. Congress was not required. Arguably, a separate declaration of war by the United States would have undercut the principle of collective self-defense under the UN Charter that the United States and the West were trying to reinforce. This was not the United States vs. North Korea, but the United Nations vs. North Korea.

Arrgh... - and then there will be again unwanted wars, amongst other things especially due to rebelling provinces, if still somewhere in the province is fought - e.g. any nations are beating each another, and you are the fortunate one who gets the province - even more funny on maps with elite AI...

Many of the wars in this period weren't declared. I don't think Hitler decalred on anyone after Poland, except for USA... so that means a long list including Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Denmark (actually not sure on that one), Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, and of course the Soviet Union. Still, everyone knew they were at war with him when the panzer divisions with all the trimmings showed up at the first border town.

So yeah, I would agree that crossing the border should be considered a war declaration. No matter how much I like abusing this feature in the game)))

Wars may not have been "declared" in history but crossing a countries border isn't necessarily war. Regardless of historical arguments, it' a matter of what makes it a better game. I would imagine most people want to avoid having a morale penalty just for doing some recon. If the other player is online they will likely see the units in their land before they see the war announcement in the paper anyway. If they want to declare war for trespassing they can.

However, this feature is abused mainly against inactives and neutrals to reduce attack time. They don't declare for "trespassing". Haven't seen it used for scouting much.

Maybe the "Having RoW with neutral/inactive, then declaring war" issue should be discussed alongside this, its equally unrealistic. I can't hink of any historic case that was abused this way (granting troops access to a country, then those troops seizing the land) except Italy 1943, but that was a special case because Italy blatanly joined the enemy side. We're talking neutral/cordial cases here.

Well, I guess for AI/inactives it does let you initially march faster to first target, but who cares? I don't think there were a lot of AI in ww2, but I'm not sure.