Denouncing: Like -or- Don't Like

Do you like the Denouncement system?


  • Total voters
    371
i might like it if it worked correctly.

i havent been denounced by anyone, im friends with rome only. rome denounces me because "a friend found a reason to denounce me"

or, 14 turns into the game france denounces me because "im trying to win the game in the same manner as them" in 14 turns???

im waiting for "i denounce you because you want to win and so do i!"

Although I do think early rushes are bad AI, they usually do this because they are going to rush you soon. Denouncing is not useless. I don't know how it works exactly but I think it will lower other civs relations with you depending on what sort of relation the denouncing civ has with everyone.
 
I'll give you a scenario that happened to me. Lets say we are on an hour glass shaped pangea map. On the bottom (in order starting from the far left) is me, then another civ, then arabia, then another civ.
I take out a civ close to me. Arabia powers into being the top player. Arabia is next to me and we have friendly relations despite Arabia being right next to me. I think I am about on par with everyone but Arabia just powers through the tech tree. What do I do? I denounce them and bribe people to DoW Arabia.

We were friends the entire game but I still do this. Why? Because it will help me win, and it is the only way I can win because otherwise he can just win via scientific victory.

If the roles were reversed it would only be logical for the AI to do the same thing to me if I was that top civ.

The difficulty isn't that the AI will stab you in the back and play to win. The difficulty is that it still plays you at the +/- relations found in CIV4 as well. A human opponent would forgive your past troublemaking if a makeshift alliance is necessary for them to win, however the AI counts the +/- and hates you all game. The AIs just play for the human opponent to lose.
 
gotta say I don't really like it.

but it definitely keeps you on your toes with the military, can't let up on building those advanced units, cos you just never know when the AI is going to stab you in the back.

To be fair, I do it to them all the time too, so why not even up the playing field.
 
Dont care, but it's a step up from the emotionless drones from Civ 4.

The AI should be like little kids in a playground, if Timmy shoves little Jimmy, the rest of the kids should be wary of Timmy and yell "I'm telling!". Civ 4 had those same kids but on valium ("that's not too bad... get over it Jimmy, we are from different religions") Civ 3 had group of kids who traded their techs at cost among each other and stepped all over your territory, even though you spat on it before and named it Orsonland and continuously told them you were going to punch them if they kept doing, but they did it anyways but you didn't wanted to punch them because then they were going to raid all the stuff you've built in the sandbox. Stupid stupid stupid Ted, how many times do I have to tell you?, and what happened to my dinosaur Ted?, I'm telling!

But yeah, It's a step up... it's bad that it's near useless for the player though. It's like an invitation for other Civs to be hostile whenever you do it.
 
Dont care, but it's a step up from the emotionless drones from Civ 4.

The AI should be like little kids in a playground, if Timmy shoves little Jimmy, the rest of the kids should be wary of Timmy and yell "I'm telling!". Civ 4 had those same kids but on valium ("that's not too bad... get over it Jimmy, we are from different religions") Civ 3 had group of kids who traded their techs at cost among each other and stepped all over your territory, even though you spat on it before and named it Orsonland and continuously told them you were going to punch them if they kept doing, but they did it anyways but you didn't wanted to punch them because then they were going to raid all the stuff you've built in the sandbox. Stupid stupid stupid Ted, how many times do I have to tell you?, and what happened to my dinosaur Ted?, I'm telling!

But yeah, It's a step up... it's bad that it's near useless for the player though. It's like an invitation for other Civs to be hostile whenever you do it.

The problem is that the AI's reasons (or the reasons that are displayed) are utterly irrational. Again plugging it but if you search 'What would Ghandi do', a mod which has been spent looking at AI interactions with the player, you'll see a lot of examples where:

1: The AI's reasoning in the interface is bizzare and ruins immersion (You join in with a war with them and you take 1 or 2 cities. NOW YOU'RE A WARMONGER AND YOUR WAR ALLY HATES YOU! A major civ and his satelite CSes declare on you. In retaliation you take the opportunity to kill the CSes on your border. Now you're a threat to the world!). How is this sensible? I can accept them looking at demographics and seeing you running away with the #1 places as a definate and sensible ploy to tie you down with a dogpile, but the way its conveyed is stupid. And quite often you aren't leading in demographics, you're on equal heading.

2: The AI totally misjudges what you are doing (Turns in, having an AI BELIEVE that you are going for the same victory condition when you don't have any clue yourself is damned stupid)

3: Chain denouncing is stupid and it happens frequently. Not only that but it's often irreversable. When your closest ally denounces you, the world is sure to follow.

At the end of the day people aren't going to like this because they don't have enough control over the proceedings in diplomacy. in CivIV we relied on the standard flavours for each leaderhead to give us an idea of who to ally with and how to deal with them. Triangle diplomacy with characters who put low importance on witholding tech trades (Mansa Musa) were often favoured by a lot of players, and most players would try to exclude traditional warmongers (Shaka, Montezuma) from trading circles by sullying their reputation, declaring war and removing them from the game or making sure they were at war for 3/4 of the game with someone who could tank their troops or who was just as bloodythirsty as they were (which was rare, since even the warmongers had hidden respect bonuses for each other)

Civ5 has changed this to try and make the AI's generally more aware of victory conditions, but now they often come across as stupider than ever because the AI can't handle this abstract with the way they've been coded, and the AI aren't making sense to the player either as a result. Many a game I've played only to at least have one or two 'what the feck' moments fly out of left field from one AI's ball court to totally turn world events on their head for the sake of it. And as a player it just makes me laugh.

The only consistent and fairly competent AI I've seen in my games is Genghis. The guy takes no bull and regularly dagger DoW's the player at the best possible moment. He fights wars on his own terms and fights neighbours close to him, while trading from afar. That in my opinion is competent play, especially if I was playing a military game like him.
 
I just played a game where everybody is buddies. I killed Iriquois, nobody cares. All still friends. All of the sudden Friendly Bismarck denounces me. No black marks except "Your friend denounced you." 1 or 2 turns later after being denounced by him, he is guarded and has "Your friend denounced you" and a whole slew of other stuff tacked on. It just magically appeared. To him, I was a warmonger ages after destroying Iriquois and maintaining all my relations, I was coveting wonders, a bunch of crap. Shortly after that, my coalition of the willing started to sour in a similar backwards manner. Denounce and still friendly... 1 or 2 turns later guarded with a whole slew of other stuff tacked on. Chain denounce I guess it is called. It was nonsense and felt like a bug. At any rate, it's certainly not controllable by the player. Ultimately the world DOW me and I rid my continent of AIs -Nap Bismarck - and rode out the clock until Gold Victory. Turn before Gold Victory, the two reluctant-to-make-peace AIs sue for peace. Complete nonsense. It feels bugged. Diplomacy feels wrong right now and denounce is a part of that.
 
I just "finished" my third game in a row because of denouncing. It's always the same I am somewhere in the midfield, had never declared ware on anyone and everyone is friendly with me. Then someone declares war on me, I take a few cities of the agressor and soon after that someone denounces me. After that a second civ denounces me, and a third it goes up until everyone hates me. In the end all nations on earth declare war on me and are not accepting any peace offers.

I really don't get it. Yeah, I don't denounce other nations first, but why should I? They didn't do me any harm, I am friendly with all of them. I feel punished just because I don't play aggressive...
Its really bad that even when I discover new nations the first like me, than they denounce me, then they declare war on me. It's just ridiculous and frustrating. Even for fantastic gifts the won't take their denouncement back (if that is even possible).
 
voted yes but with some reservations, I like the concept and it seems works ok most of the time in the few games I've played so far (smaller maps). Just needs to be more nuanced and recoverable from.

I'd like to see some context on the denouncements, i.e. why you were denounce. eg.g for killing civ, being a liar, denouncing their friend, whatever

Then each ai would decide at the time if it cares and how much (based on what the game situation is) and you only get the penalty if it cares

There could also be an option for each civ to publiclly agree/disagree with the denouncement for extra diplomatic effect

so you get denounced by civ A cause they covert your lands and then your friend civ (who wants to suck up to you) pops up and says how disgraceful civ A is and what a whiney menance they are
 
I abstained because I actually don't care about this wrotten misdesigned concept they dare to call "diplomacy".

It didn't work in the beginning, it doesn't work now. It is crap, and the denouncements are just a part of it.
 
I am not too fond of this system, mostly because of the reasons already stated above. However, I had the system work quite nicely in my favor a few times also.

For example, I was first to get to astronomy, and set out to discover the other continent. Found America, Songhai, Spain and Iroquois. It turned out that Songhai were hated by everyone (and had been denounced), so I pre-emptively denounced them too. This made the other civs there my friends ("we denounced the same leaders"), and pacts of friendship followed soon after. Unfortunately, the Songhai were wiped out a good while later, and then the diplomatic fabric began to break down. Still it gave me three reliable trading partners for an important part of the game.
 
I abstained because I actually don't care about this wrotten misdesigned concept they dare to call "diplomacy".

It didn't work in the beginning, it doesn't work now. It is crap, and the denouncements are just a part of it.

Same here. Diplomacy might as well just be ignored (except for the pointy stick variey) since it is useless and often counter-productive to try and cultivate relations. The game loses a lot of depth, therefore.

I will admit that I had the same feeling about Civ4 BtS for about a year until I learned how to work diplomacy, so maybe it is possible to learn this different system.

But right now where I'm at... even making a conscious effort, the diplomatic results are always the same: someone hates me and declares war on me, I destroy their army, maybe take back a city or two lost in the first days of the war, relations sour, then next time I get DOW'd upon, everyone starts calling me a bloodthirsty warmongerer and inevitably will hate me and go so far as to attack me if they see an opportunity. How can I be a bloodthirsty warmongerer if I never declare war on anyone and never capture a city that I didn't settle myself??? Unfortunately, diplomacy is full of that kind of nonsense, so for the time being I think ignoring diplomacy completely is no worse (and probably better) than making an effort at it.
 
absolutely fukking annoying is all I can say about it...Incessant denouncing even though they are friendly just another broken feature in a game full of broken features...Fukking horrible, get it Firaxis, Fukking horrible.

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yeah its kind of realistic. But Civilization 4 was WAY more realistic. Look at Germany for example. They had the whole world , against them for starting a war, lets say thats in CIV 5 terms, a denounciation, from every Civ.
So the +, - system in CIV 4 was way better and more realistic. By far. For example You still have America and England and France still powerfully allied because of WW2. If that was a civ 4 game it would be ALL in the green. England and France arent going to just start denouncing you tomorrow morning. But in Civ 5 they will. Thats not realistic at all, UNLESS its like Germany attacking Russia in WW2, but they werent allied, they had a non aggression pact, thats different to being allied. Thats closer to cease fire than anything else. Germany and Italy were completely allied so they never attacked each other in WW2 EVER, did they? nor did Germany ever attack Japan, because he needed allies, as all countries do.

So i dont mind the denounciation process IF a civilization is starting a world war or becoming bigger and bigger and your ENEMIES start to ally to form the denounciation against you . But to just be denounced after 100's of years with your allies isnt very realistic at all, UNLESS something very serious happens that causes your ally to leave you forever.

Another reason why Civ 4 really owns this game.
 
Hello,

I abstained because the idea is good but the implementation is bad. Together with the DoF it could make for some interesting alliances or blocks of different fractions in the world. But to me it feels that the AI denounces me for no apparent reason. Even if we are on Friendly terms. Then other AIs don't like me because my friend "found reason to denounce [me]". From then on it's a downward spiral leading to a DoW from everyone (preferably at the same turn).
 
I voted for "Abstain" because in my opinion the system would be good if it was used reasonably. But the AIs denounce eachother (and the players) far too easily, so the system is not good as it is.
 
Good idea, poor implementation. It feels like it was rushed out to appease all those clamouring for a diplo patch. With another week or so of testing and balancing it could have been a far better change. Although the "trying to win in the same way as us" negative modifier makes no sense, everyone's trying to win - why should it matter which victory condition I'm going for? (Note to firaxis: I am NOT advocating a "you're trying to win" negative diplomatic modifier)

Now, how can it be fixed?
1. As mentioned by others, AI's should view other denouncements (especially backstabbing) through the lens of their own goals and relations, and denouncements should have a reason (for the player add a menu after pressing denounce to choose between a few different reasons)
2. Get rid of the aiming for the same victory condition modifier
3. More depth to how the AI views warring between other civs, taking into account their relations with the aggressor and victim, previous relationships between the two, possible reasons for war, both parties actions during previous wars and if they asked the aggressor to go to war. Some of these modifiers should improve relations.
4. All modifiers should slowly normalise towards 0 over a period of time.
5. It's currently easy for a civ to go from friendly to hostile, but difficult to get it to go the other way, suggestion 4 is a step towards that but a few more positive modifiers would help.
 
The AIs just play for the human opponent to lose.

This is the problem. It should be that the AI plays to win, but they don't. They play to make the human lose. They can get friendly with each other to the end, just to spite the human. I've watched the 3 front runners gang up on other civ's one by one, while one was on the clear path to space victory. The other 2 civ's should have backstabbed the spaceship builder instead of continuing to help destroy the other weaker civs.
 
yeah its kind of realistic. But Civilization 4 was WAY more realistic. Look at Germany for example. They had the whole world , against them for starting a war, lets say thats in CIV 5 terms, a denounciation, from every Civ.
So the +, - system in CIV 4 was way better and more realistic. By far. For example You still have America and England and France still powerfully allied because of WW2. If that was a civ 4 game it would be ALL in the green. England and France arent going to just start denouncing you tomorrow morning. But in Civ 5 they will. Thats not realistic at all, UNLESS its like Germany attacking Russia in WW2, but they werent allied, they had a non aggression pact, thats different to being allied. Thats closer to cease fire than anything else. Germany and Italy were completely allied so they never attacked each other in WW2 EVER, did they? nor did Germany ever attack Japan, because he needed allies, as all countries do.

So i dont mind the denounciation process IF a civilization is starting a world war or becoming bigger and bigger and your ENEMIES start to ally to form the denounciation against you . But to just be denounced after 100's of years with your allies isnt very realistic at all, UNLESS something very serious happens that causes your ally to leave you forever.

Another reason why Civ 4 really owns this game.

In Civ 4, Germany would have taken over Europe because England and Germany both had Hinduism as religion, keeping them at friendly status no matter what Hitler would have done. Talk about owning.

If you are denounced by your friends, then you clearly need to learn how diplomacy works. The system works quite well, I think. Could be that it's a bit iffy if you are too far ahead, but then you should probably increase the difficulty a notch anyway. I never have any problems keeping friends through the whole game and dictating world diplomacy. Sounds to me that what people really want is a dumbed down system.

Same victory condition is lame though, no doubts about that.
 
I have to say i don't like it, it feels like a tacked-on afterthought with regard to the diplomacy design, to me at least, personally i feel the problem stems from the "trying to win" attitude of the AI, it's immersion destroying.
 
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