The AI won't let me in their treehouse

So, in my latest game I've had the recurring problem of all the AI not quite being BBF's for life, but If you hate one of them, they'll all turn sour towards you, and refuse any and all offers.
So I've come to the conclusion that all the AI have a nice little tree house, and you're the new kid on the block, and you are looking to join, as it comes with advantages like fair trade deals and RA's. But they're all a bit nasty, and you have to do EVERYTHING they tell you to, and if you disagree with them once, its a lifetime perma ban, and they'll tell all their friends that you're a rat faced liar and scoundrel.

This came about when the first person I met was Askia, so as we all know, he's likely to get killed by me or someone else by at least mid game. then I found his cap was about 12 tiles from mine, so that really ramped up my disire to kill him. Also, I choose goddess of festivals for my pantheon, since I had plenty of wine, and he had plenty of incense, so at this point I was looking for any reasons NOT to kill him at some point.
And then he pulled this:
.......... Maybe this is why he always dies off, does he just go out of the way to tick his neighbours off?!
SO I was going to DoW him in the next 10 turns. Then Ethiopia asked me if we should make a joint attack on them, to which I agreed. Short story even shorter, the Songhai sicced to exist by turn 90. But then like I mentioned in my last thread, like Shaka and the Inca did, Ethiopia denounced me for DoW'ing the Songhai, and then everyone hated my guts.

Problem here is that, we both declared war on the SAME person, at the SAME time, but then Ethiopia gets mollycoddled by the other AI, whilst I become the spawn of Satan to them. Now I understand why Ethiopia didn't like me after the war, its because they wanted some of the land. However, during the war I was yet to see ONE unit from Ethiopia fighting. So the AI has this idea that it can just sit around on the side lines, eating all the snacks and punch, and then when it gets an equal amount of rewards for the effort it put in ( AKA, BUGGER ALL) it then will just sit and cry, and everyone will die with them :/

This just annoys me to no end, we had a mutual agreement that we hated to Songhai so if they died, we could both be happy. So if I get told of for DoW'ing, should Ethiopia? NOPE, and its my membership from the tree house revoked for life.
This isn't very clever on Ethiopia's part, as they've just hired someone with a bigger army to kill someone else, then complain about them. The only prize they got out of this is top spot on my "who shall I kill next list" (I'm not even going for a domination victory)

Now EVERYONE will refuse any fair form of agreement with me. This is diplomatically and economically stupid. its the equivalent of everyone still hating Germany after WWI, and refusing to do ANY trade with them. Whilst I do understand this harms me as I can't get more luxes in, it hurts them TOO as they won't take any of my stuff. Also telling the man with the big army that there's no diplomatic way to get their spare stuff just makes them MORE likely to want to kill you.

So you know what? Screw that AI clubhouse, i'm going to make my own with all the city states Sure they might not have a large army of anything, but they give me rewards for doing their jobs and actually use diplomacy. Really, I now think that they have the best AI coding in the game

SO thanks for reading my "analogy" and have fun :3

Killing off any civ will earn you hate points, even with your friends (but your friends won't show it)

In addition, the more cities which you captured, the more hate points you will have accrued during the war.

There are other important factors: did you have an active DoF with Askia? How about Open Borders?

Had you promised him that your troops "were just passing through" when he noticed them massing nearby? Had you already declared war on other civs or CS? If so, how long ago were these things?

Being the victim of a chain denouncement is no fun. Neither is the "another civ I like better than you has denounced you, therefore I don't like you either" message. So, yes, I know what its like to be excluded from the treehouse. Its not fair! (But chances are you may have done some things to annoy a few of the other civs first)

Yes, Askia often founds his cities in annoying spots. Never saw him run away. Never. Not a single time. Okay, once he was strong - but I kinda helped him with that then... I even saw Monty runaway twice (once he took an entire continent, once he took 3 capitals and didn't eradicate his enemies - no, he left them with one crappy city each. Very smart for an AI), but not Askia.

And AI doesn't really care if you declare a war. The diplo penalty for that seems to be almost nothing. I declared about 5 wars (if not way more!) in my peaceful Byzantium game to curb the huge Mongolian invasion with my friend Harald after he tried to take 5th - or was it 4th? - city state. It ended up with Ash joining the fray and leaving Mongolia with one crappy city. He became a kinda-runaway afterwards. Then I declared several times to save my friend Harald from Ash's troops, never got even a single warmongering menace modifier (but I think I really should've gotten a sort-of "saviour" modifier with Denmark. I declared war just to save their asses from Ash and destroyed several units on/near their borders)

Every time in peace treaty against Ash/Genghis I got either one city state to liberate/take (only took one that was too well placed though, better to have a certain ally in Congress) or gold.

So, they only care if you take cities. Warmongering penalty for declaring war seems to be nearly nothing (at best it'll be dark red and disappear in 5-10 turns) unless you had a DoF/promised you won't attack, but the one for taking cities is big. Not as giant as it was G&K though, in one of my Venice games I eradicated Montezuma, took Brazil's capital and one city and Askia/Casimir still remained my faithful allies til the end of the game.

Nope, this was my first war, and I had no agreements with Askia. I know any form of warfare will make the AI dislike me more, but my point is that he settled in my face, refused to do anything about it, so I taught him a lesson, and now none of the AI will touch me with a 10 foot sterilized barge pole being held by someone else. But I did kinda smash all his cities, since I was also after parts of his land and 2 cities where in bad spots which could have been used much better.

Then again, last time I played china I started going for the SV, but then enough people annoyed me to kill EVERYONE on the planet. Heh

Also, I won't kill any civs who are afraid of me, unless I'm going domination, its nice to see them respect me, so I'll be their friends.

That's EXACTLY what happened to me in my last game, completely wiped him off the map about 50 turns after.

I'm so sick of having to tip-toe around the AI just to get fair deals and other things, now I just take whatever I can, give nothing back and kill them.

Edit: Oh yea, it was Askia as well.

Yeah, definitely make your own Super Secret No AIs Allowed Club with your City-State pals.
Then go crush the other Civs.

The AI does really seem like an 8 year old a lot of the time, so this is a good analogy.

The AI will hate you for taking lots of cities through war. The AI will also hate you for growing large and becoming a big empire, especially if you are next to them and they like the land you own. Killing off the entirety of Sonhai and taking all their cities means that you
1) committed genocide on an entire civ (which was horrible in G+K, although I don't think it is matters as much in BNW)
2) took 3 cities through military force, which means you are a warmonger out to gain territory and were not fighting for any reason other than that (according to AI logic).
3) became an empire with 5 cities, which meant that the AI will blame you for expanding too fast. They will also become a bit afraid of you, and unless you have nukes, fear leads to hate instead of anything else.

Now, I know this seems backwards at first, but when I'm playing the game, I often find myself using the same diplomatic process as the AIs. I don't care who declares war, but as soon as someone becomes really big by conquering a bunch of stuff, I get concerned and join the hate train, especially if the person is on my continent.

To minimize diplomatic penalties, try taking cities through peace deals (don't count as much off diplomatically). If you can get a large army and destroy their opposing armies (and pillaging their lands helps too), you can get a ton of gold, luxury resources, and cities through peace without getting a huge warmonger penalty and keep up diplomatic relationships with the AI.

Also, I've found that joining in on the hate train against a warmonger who ignores this advice is a very good way to get in the AI clubhouse. Unfortunately, this can make playing this scapegoat or warmonger very hard unless you bribe others to declare war too, and hope you can get the world to hate each other (reduces the strain and hate on you). Playing bigger maps can also make it easier to hold alliances and improves the diplomatic aspect of the game decently (although long turn times make this not always worth doing).

Screw their treehouse... Make your own with CS, it's much more rewarding in the end

This has been happening to me since I moved from prince to king... You destroy one civ, even though they gave you plenty of reasons to do so and the AI will hate you forever. One more reason to DoW other AIs after that, I mean, they already hate you...