pledge to protect vs dof

hi, i want to share a situation i ran into:
i had this scenarion..playing with many civs and many city states,huge earth etc.
with one of the city states i had good thing going,they gave me lots of happiness and we were allies ,so i pledged to protect them .and here comes gandhi,and he just likes to conquer city states in this game ..so he declared war on this city state that i pledged to protect.
now, the thing is i already had declaration of friendship with gandhi..so what to do?
i tell him listen dont attack them,he laughs at me, i try to bargain with him, he wants too much so i refuse,i tried all to avoid war,even demanded him to make peace with that city ,no good.
so i attacked him,killed his units,and went peace treaty.
now, will this count me as war monger cause i attacked when in dof ?
would appreciate the reply.

It's not warmonger. It's backstab. It's almost as bad of a penalty on its own, and it never goes away.

The only reason you dof is so that the AI won't attack or denounce you. Or so that you can immediately proceed to mooch 160% of their gdp but that never happens.

Horseshoe_Hermi said:

....The only reason you dof is so that the AI won't attack or denounce you...

Click to expand...

It's the other way around it's so you don't DOW or denounce. The AI will happily backstab if the price is right and it will get away with it, you on the otherhand will not.

i also thought that it's bad, but i dont see the other ai's treat me any different than before,that's why i ask.(i know in previous games, on regular dof when u attack the ai you're pretty much doomed).
but here they still ask me to dof with them,i can still trade with them ,20,30 turns after the issue with gandhi, so r u sure about this ? cause this pledge to protect i think messes up things..

All you need to do is go put some units in the way of him capturing the CS. He can't take a CS unless he can get a melee unit next to the city, so go interfere with his plans. The city bombardment and garrison will kill all his troops and he'll withdraw eventually.

clever idea, too bad i didnt do it in the first place
i already attacked him,went to war with him,and after i killed 3-4 of his units we got peace treaty which he was greateful for..i didnt take no city from him or anything.
but still, i think this has no penalties on the user.i attacked him while dof with him,cause he attacked a city state i was allied with and which i pledged to protect.i think it's a mechanism of the game which is confusing,but i can definetly say 30 turns later it had no effect at all,except for gandhi being now gurded towards me,but that's fine.

phillipwyllie said:

It's the other way around it's so you don't DOW or denounce.

Click to expand...

Your dof.
Something you do.

The reasons you choose to have something.

Horseshoe_Hermi said:

Your dof.
Something you do.

The reasons you choose to have something.

Click to expand...

The reason for the AI accepting or suggestion(more likely) is so it gains the advantage. It may or may not know this but it can backstab and get away with it but you most certainly can't which is the problem the OP is having. You say yes so you can get lump sums of gold, and that's it.

plus said:

i also thought that it's bad, but i dont see the other ai's treat me any different than before,that's why i ask.

Click to expand...

Are you not seeing the backstab as a red modifier for other AI attitudes towards you?

beetle said:

Are you not seeing the backstab as a red modifier for other AI attitudes towards you?

Click to expand...

no, nothing.in fact everything is the same as before.still signing dof with the other ai's as before,all r friendly to me,maybe because i keep giving them free luxury every once in a while..
i'm using a lot of mods,i suspect one of them has to do with it, the falcon ai mod ?
this one actually makes diplomacy works much like in real life, friends stay friends etc..
maybe that's the reason?

plus said:

no, nothing.in fact everything is the same as before.still signing dof with the other ai's as before,all r friendly to me,maybe because i keep giving them free luxury every once in a while..
i'm using a lot of mods,i suspect one of them has to do with it, the falcon ai mod ?
this one actually makes diplomacy works much like in real life, friends stay friends etc..
maybe that's the reason?

Click to expand...

I think that's exactly the reason. Backstab hate is quite noticeable.

By the way, in my experience when an AI that you have a DoF with attacks one of your allied city states, it means that the AI is "pretending to be nice" although it has already decided to target you as an enemy. Attacking your city state allies is roughly akin to a supposedly friendly AI sending missionaries to convert your cities after you have founded a religion. The AI views this as a hostile act.

For what it's worth, my response in these situations is generally to either block the AI from capping the city state (by parking units in front of the CS to prevent a melee attack and capture) or gift the city state some decent units to defend with. In the worst case, I let the AI capture the city state. Backstab hate is so high that it's only worth incurring when you've decided that you don't care anymore about your reputation with other leaders (i.e. your tech lead is so great that it doesn't matter or you are about to embark on world domination). Otherwise, it's better IMHO to wait for the DoF to expire and then attack the next turn. Preferably after you've paid the offender to DoW the whole world.

you could bribe another AI to DoW gandhi, this might make him retreat from the city state

other than that, things that other people have mentioned like blocking the city state off with your own units works fine. i pretty much never even consider backstabbing; you can probably say goodbye to trading with any AI in the game once you've done that