>There is no real negotiation between players, other than an implicit, passing agreement when you don't provoke someone by attacking them.
It depends how you play. I've seen people make treaties for all sorts of things for various durations, e.g. don't attack from Country X into Country Y and I won't attack across that border either.
Backstabbing in Risk or Catan is generally pretty obvious, though. It's more like, "Sorry, I need Australia." It's generally clear from the state of the game that it is headed there.
In Diplomacy, it's a matter of choosing which of your friends to backstab. In a three way dynamic, it's basically two friends deciding that if the three of you crash in the mountains, they are eating you first.
Depends. I had many great risk games where trough game actions I made people believe I had a different objective to what I had, only to pivot at 3/4 of the game and win because my goals where undefended. It requires a bit of luck with cards and a well executed strategic tempo to play the combinations when the other sides are weak and cannot immediately do a combination back, but still.
Some knock-off editions in Chile actually link...like it's generally called Perú, and I've never seen a map with Antartica, and besides Chile by it's extreme geography causes cartographers serious typographic problems. There was a map recently, a basically honest Mercator projection that replaced every country's territory with its name. It worked great, except for a mysterious country called CHILE CHILE CHILE CHILE CHILE. Broke the nomenclature completely.
Binding or non-binding treaties? Because in diplomacy everyone is always making non-binding treaties, promises and threats - and that's where the betrayal comes in. I have heard of some people using binding treaties in diplomacy (i.e. three turn ceasefire between France and Prussia) but that has always struck me as a terrible idea because you're shifting moves into the open and things get boring and cliquish.
A "binding" treaty where the terms of the treaty are supposedly binding, but, like on the real world stage, the only penalties for breaking them is a lowered trust from all the other countries/players, sounds fine.
A binding treaty where if you break them someone will say "that's against the rules of the game, and the rest of us will stop playing if you don't comply" sounds terrible.
It depends how you play. I've seen people make treaties for all sorts of things for various durations, e.g. don't attack from Country X into Country Y and I won't attack across that border either.