OpenFront Embargo: Timing and Trade Control

Use a targeted embargo when you want to stop trading with one player. Use Stop Trading with Enemies only when you want to stop your trade with every eligible non-ally, including neutral partners. Neither command shuts down that player’s trade with everyone else. Manual embargoes persist until removed; the five-minute embargo created by an attack is a separate mechanism.

Choose the command and understand its duration

A targeted embargo changes one trading relationship: the one between you and the selected player. It is the useful default when you have identified a specific route you want to close. You do not need to cut every other partner to deny that route. Starting the manual embargo creates a persistent restriction, and stopping it removes your restriction on that player. There is no five-minute expiry attached to this manual command. Do not plan a recovery of your income around a countdown that the command never started.

The global command is a batch action. In v0.35.2 it skips yourself, Bots, your teammates and players allied with you, then starts or stops your embargo against the remaining eligible players. The important word is your: this changes your relationships with those players, not every relationship on the map. A rich opponent may lose a valuable route to your port while continuing to trade with several other players. That opponent can remain rich after your embargo without the embargo having failed.

The global action has a cooldown of 100 simulation ticks. At ten ticks per second, that is ten seconds of simulation time between global actions. It also needs at least one eligible player. There is no requirement for 100 influence, a living capital, or a trade port. Having no useful maritime income can make the action strategically pointless, but that is different from being ineligible to use it. The targeted command does not use this global cooldown.

An attack can create a different, temporary embargo. Its configured duration is 3000 ticks, or five simulation minutes. This is not a selectable five-minute version of the manual trade button. Attacking someone to create a temporary restriction commits military resources and can change diplomatic relations through the attack itself. It is not a harmless way to sample another player’s response. A manual trade stop, by itself, does not set the relationship score to minus twenty.

Action	Scope	Duration or limit
Targeted manual embargo	Your trade with one selected player	Persistent until removed; no global cooldown
Global manual embargo	Your trade with every eligible non-ally	Persistent; ten-second global cooldown
Attack-created embargo	A relationship affected by the attack	Temporary, 3000 ticks

The global start action leaves an existing embargo unchanged. In particular, it does not upgrade an existing temporary restriction to a permanent one. If that distinction matters to your plan, check the targeted command for that relationship instead of assuming that another global sweep renews or converts its duration.

When you want a short economic experiment, use a manual targeted stop and deliberately decide when to reopen it. You are choosing a review time for your own decision, not invoking a special timed command. Before reopening, check whether the other player has also embargoed you: removing your own restriction cannot remove theirs. This distinction prevents a common misreading in which the button appears to have done nothing because the other side still refuses trade.

Measure the route you can actually deny

The best target is a trading relationship you can observe and can afford to lose. Start by identifying which of your ports exchanges ships with which opponent, then compare that relationship with your other sources of gold. A large enemy empire is not automatically a profitable embargo target. If most of its trade goes to third parties, your own stop may remove only a small share of its income. If that same route is your main source of gold, you can hurt yourself more than the richer player.

Consider an FFA in which Blue trades with you, Green and Yellow. You see a valuable flow between your port and Blue’s port, but you have no reliable information about the other two routes. A targeted embargo against Blue stops the relationship you control. It does not stop Blue trading with Green or Yellow. The decision is therefore whether denying this specific connection improves your position, rather than whether one click can collapse Blue’s entire economy. Keep those two questions separate when reading the leaderboard.

Now add a neutral partner, Red, whose route supplies your next defensive purchase. A global stop would cut both Blue and Red if neither is allied with you. That costs the reserve you wanted to protect. The targeted command closes Blue while leaving Red outside the action. If the actual goal is to stop funding one rival, the global button has no extra benefit simply because its name sounds stronger. The cost of accidentally losing Red’s route can exceed the gain from cutting Blue.

Existing ships do not provide a guaranteed grace period. For an uncaptured trade ship, the game checks whether trade with the destination owner remains allowed while the ship is active. If trade is no longer allowed, the ship is deleted without its normal delivery payout. An embargo can therefore affect ships already travelling, rather than merely preventing the next departure. This is cancellation of that trade, not piracy income awarded to the player pressing the button.

Escorts do not bypass the trade restriction. A warship can protect an allowed route from capture, but cannot make an embargoed destination accept the trade. Equally, an embargo is not a substitute for defending your coast: it does not stop an opponent constructing warships or sending a landing force. Use trade versus piracy to separate protecting a legal route, capturing an enemy ship and closing your own trading relationship.

After the stop, observe your own income and the traffic on the affected route. Avoid interpreting a short, noisy interval as proof of an enemy’s total dependence. Other ports, station arrivals, captures and purchases can all change visible totals. Reopen or keep the embargo according to the route’s actual value and your reserve, not according to whether the opponent reacts with an emoji. A useful result is a better economic position, even when the rival never publicly acknowledges the change.

Protect teammates and neutral partners

In a team match, distinguish three relationships before using the global command: a teammate, a player personally allied with you, and an unrelated neutral player. The v0.35.2 global command skips the first two groups. It does not skip the third merely because that player has not attacked you. The label Enemies should not be read as a filter that selects only hostile relation scores. Every otherwise eligible non-ally can be included, regardless of whether you currently regard them as a useful neutral partner.

The version change is narrower than a complete redesign. The v0.34.25 global command already skipped teammates, yourself and Bots. The v0.35.0 change added the personal-ally exception and renamed the button. Keeping team trade open was therefore possible before v35; preserving a personal alliance outside that team is the new part. When comparing an old screenshot with your present lobby, identify which relationship is involved before concluding that the whole rule changed.

Consider a team game with your teammate Blue, your personal ally Green and an unallied opponent Red. You want to stop your trade with Red while retaining the first two relationships. The global command spares Blue and Green, and includes Red if the cooldown and eligibility conditions allow it. Red’s own teammate can still trade with Red. Your button does not embargo their internal team network, and your teammate has not automatically issued the same embargo just because you pressed it.

If Yellow is another neutral trading partner, the global action includes Yellow too unless you personally have an alliance with Yellow or Yellow is on your team. An alliance between Yellow and Blue is not the same as an alliance between Yellow and you. Check your own relationship rather than assuming that a teammate’s diplomatic agreement protects every member’s routes. If you need to retain Yellow while cutting Red, issue the targeted command against Red instead of sweeping everyone.

Reopening requires the same attention. The global stop action also skips current teammates and personal allies. If a player was embargoed earlier and later becomes allied, do not assume that another global action will necessarily clear that player’s old restriction. Check that relationship individually and remove your embargo directly where needed. Then check whether the partner still has its own restriction against you. Both directions matter to whether trade can resume.

Relationship with you	Included in the v35 global action?
Same team	No
Personal ally	No
Neutral, without an alliance	Yes
Allied only with your teammate	Not protected by that fact alone

For coordination, tell teammates which relationship you are changing and why. A clear instruction such as stopping your own trade with Red preserves more information than claiming that Red’s economy has been shut down. The latter can lead teammates to underestimate an enemy still receiving gold from other partners. The team trade coordination guide explains how to compare shared routes and responsibilities before turning a local economic decision into a team plan.

Check rail, recovery and the next decision

Rail is not universally immune to embargoes. A train’s next station checks whether trading with the station owner is allowed. Your own station remains available to your train; a station belonging to another player depends on the trading relationship. An embargo can therefore disrupt cross-player station access even while an entirely domestic network continues to operate. The useful distinction is station ownership, not the visual difference between a train and a ship.

Suppose your factories and stations form a domestic network, while one branch reaches a rival’s station. Closing trade with that rival does not automatically switch off every domestic train. It can, however, make the cross-player destination unavailable. Before describing rail as a reliable fallback, inspect which stations the route actually needs. A replacement that still depends on the embargoed player is not independent simply because it runs over land. The train network guide provides the wider planning context for branches and station access.

This also changes how to interpret an opponent’s recovery. If the opponent keeps earning gold after the stop, several explanations are possible: domestic rail still works, maritime trade with third parties continues, or another independent income source is carrying the economy. None proves that an escort defeated the embargo. Check the relationship and the actual destination before escalating. Building more warships in response to the wrong explanation can spend the reserve that made the economic action worthwhile.

Your own recovery starts with identifying whose restriction remains. Remove your manual embargo if you want the route reopened, then check whether the other player still embargoes you or whether an attack-created restriction is still present. Do not keep pressing the global button in the hope of removing every possible restriction. Its cooldown and current skip list still apply, and it only changes your own eligible relationships. A direct check of one partner is usually easier to interpret than repeated map-wide actions.

Before acting, answer four questions in order. Which partner do I intend to deny? Which useful partners would the global action also include? What income or station access will I lose? What observable condition will make me keep or reverse the decision? These questions work on a compact map, a long sea route, in FFA and in team play. Geography changes the value and replaceability of a route; it does not change the command into a global shutdown of an opponent’s economy.

After acting, check your reserve before adding military pressure. A trade stop does not protect a port, cancel an enemy landing or pay for a replacement fleet. If you cannot defend the route’s endpoint, an embargo alone will not solve that military problem. Keep the economic decision and the defense decision connected, but evaluate each on its own evidence. For a first economy and a safe reserve, return to first match; for the trade decision, retain one clear main answer here rather than relying on an outdated five-minute probe checklist.