July 2 of YR6 The Tor (JERKS) captured 254 acres of land from on the battlefield (AMA).
For what it's worth all ops and hits were ordered to stop this tick (the 2nd), some noob hit them 3 hours later (for 88 acres...)
I don't think there's a hard line where a hostile starts and stops. There's a number of factors:
a) I had asked for CF like 48 hours or so before that, and I was told that we'd get a CF when either we warred or our biggest province was 70% the size of AMA's smallest province (does this seem reasonable?)
b) Our activity and ability to return fire had definitively dropped over the 24 hours prior to us going to war.
c) They were 16k acres up.
d) They had started doubling multiple provinces - which alone doesn't necessarily void the hostile, but it clearly indicates that AMA felt confident enough with the state of things to take the risk, because our capability to control them was so shot.
e) We ordered ops stopped, began a conflict with another kingdom (which shortly escalated to war), and offered CF.
f) We had no intent to war AMA and we wanted the conflict to end, and they were well aware of both.
Edit: g) Based on their terms in a), I'll add that AMA gave us no realistic or fair way to escape the hostile any other way. (Unfair because of the effect such actions would have on the chart...)
To me it's clear that AMA had long since reached the point where they would RATHER be in hostile than have the conflict over, because it was allowing them to explore large amounts and claim hostile protection. Even by the time we delivered our last hit, there wasn't much of a relevant battle happening at all anymore...
Certainly none of these things on their own end the conflict, but I think all taken together the balance tips towards the hostile being over? And if not permanently over, then at least on a temporary hold, the sort of which allows a notice to be served...

