AI denouncing

Hey everyone,

I have been sinking some time into civ5 lately and I have come to wonder the following.

Does the AI denounce you sometimes because of your bold-red actions, but if they had the choice they would rather not to?

So this sounds a bit ridiculous given that the AI doesn't hold preferences in that sense, but I find that there are 2 types of denunciations (I play a domination game, one Emperor one Immortal, same results):

1. The AI is willing to go to war with you and happily cuts off all trade and any possible favours that they could give you. Classical "you're warmongering, I hate you know" response.

2. The AI denounces me, but the next turn it immediately asks for shared embassies, and will then request trade deals with me (lux for 3gpt, no more). They will also not declare war at any point, even if I carry on capturing capitals or eliminating civs.

I get this feeling that the 2nd case seems to be that the AI itself, usually a neighbour, actually benefits from me in many ways, but my actions "leave them no choice" so to speak. A bit like a bandwagoning effect. That if they were a human player, they would let me get away with it, because their own profit is higher when they do not denounce me. The civs in question were Rome in one game, Egypt in another. Especially Rome surprised me, as I expected a denounce-friendly-backstab circle, but nothing of the sort happened.


Have you experienced this? Any thoughts?

There are times that if you have a DOF that your AI friend will tell you that you must denounce X or else they will instead denounce you.

But that #2 is mostly the AI knows it can't beat you in a fight so all it's going to do is denounce you and propose to embargo you / your primary luxury.

And your better off NOT trading a luxury to the AI for only 3 GPT; its true the AI probably doesn't need it for happiness purposes, but this does greatly speed up the AIs next Golden Age and why help an AI that you know hates you.

I don't know the answer, but here is what i noticed: you can keep friends even after beating few civs to dust. I was playing a huge map the other day and had two civs dominating east and west of the map (with me dominating center) A number of smaller civs were around them, and they constantly got harassed by their big brothers. So, after killing, like 4 civilisations with my own hand i still had 2 solid friends with 0 (!) red modifiers. Both of these friends were small civs, constantly having trouble, and, i guess, looking for my alliance. I did play diplomacy well, but, usually, playing well at this point is irrelevant.

Anyway, maybe they were benefitting from me too and never denounced me because of that.

Both cases are familiar. I have always assumed that in the second case the civ is put under pressure from another civ to denounce you, or it acts on a city state quest. The latter should only occur if you have been harassing city states.

In my observations it seems worse as soon as you're leading in points by a large margin (say emperor and below) and more predicatable on Deity and Immortal. Anyway it must be a lot of RNG at work too because the AI will denounce at the stangest moments too.

In my experience the AI will always denounce you(and other AI civs) if it has a reason to do so, unless it is being deceitful. I've also found that denouncements usually lead to war(in the AI's eyes) so if you perceived to be very powerful then those weaker civs might not denounce you for fear of you DOwing them.

Consider this: during a bout of heavy warmongering you recall a civ to life. They immediately ask for a DOF which you accept. When you hit 'next turn' they denounce you because of your sever warmonger score.

If you are goi g domination, make friend, and/or dow, with friends far away. That is the only way I know to keep any trading partners for any decent length until no one will talk friendly to you.