Denouncing: Like -or- Don't Like

Do you like the Denouncement system?


  • Total voters
    371
With many of these stories of chain denouncement, there is an element of, "all I did was defend my territory and then take 1 or two of the attacker's cities, and they all call me a warmonger now!"
Sounds like CIV thinking. This is not CIV. Why are we presuming that taking 1 or 2 cities from a globally well-respected attacking civ, should not come with severe consequence? Because CIV rules were as such.
 
If diplomacy actually worked I could see it being useful, but in it's current state it's just annoying.
 
With many of these stories of chain denouncement, there is an element of, "all I did was defend my territory and then take 1 or two of the attacker's cities, and they all call me a warmonger now!"
Sounds like CIV thinking. This is not CIV. Why are we presuming that taking 1 or 2 cities from a globally well-respected attacking civ, should not come with severe consequence? Because CIV rules were as such.

I don't think you have to take any cities to be called a warmongerer. All you have to do is be declared upon numerous times and survive. Then you are the bloodthirsty one. Sure, its different rules, I'm ok with that. Where the "problem" comes in is that too much of the diplomatic aspects of this game are completely outside the control of the player. There is little point in trying to plan your relations when they are so unpredictable. Its still a fun game... just be ready for war at any time and you'll probably do alright. I often play Civ4 that way, even, but then it is my conscious choice to do so. So I think its a much shallower game than previous installments in the series.

But if you think its just as good or better, great for you! Don't let my criticism take any fun away from the game... its just my opinions. And I see from Steam that there are millions playing CiV at any given time... and not one of them cares what I think, probably. :lol:
 
yeah need an option to dissolve a declaration of friendship nicely. like a - its time our civs went their separate ways option. then you could decide to agree and dissolve friendship nicely or denounce

I think this is one of the critical points. If you agreed to a pact of friendship early on, there is no reasonable way to change your mind later. I liked you in 500 BC and so I have to remain friends in 1850 AD? Or else have the whole world denounce me and declare war?

I think all of these relationships should decay over time unless both sides take action to renew them.
 
With many of these stories of chain denouncement, there is an element of, "all I did was defend my territory and then take 1 or two of the attacker's cities, and they all call me a warmonger now!"
Sounds like CIV thinking. This is not CIV. Why are we presuming that taking 1 or 2 cities from a globally well-respected attacking civ, should not come with severe consequence? Because CIV rules were as such.

I actually think the title of warmonger and bloodthirsty are tied to how much XP your military units gain. Before the patch when I went for culture victories and hunted barbs with the BarbXP mod in order keep my military highly promoted. Despite my civ never being in a war others started to call me bloodthirsty.
 
With many of these stories of chain denouncement, there is an element of, "all I did was defend my territory and then take 1 or two of the attacker's cities, and they all call me a warmonger now!"
Sounds like CIV thinking. This is not CIV. Why are we presuming that taking 1 or 2 cities from a globally well-respected attacking civ, should not come with severe consequence? Because CIV rules were as such.

The point is the reactions don't make sense. A warmonger strikes me as a person who INSTIGATES wars or eliminates entire civs irrespective of peace treaties offered. If the ai replied to you taking the ai's cities with something like 'you took our friend's city', that would make more sense, rather than a vague hypocritical blanket statement.

Honestly the ai should only be worried if the player starts conquering entire civs or 6 or 7 cities. That seems like a more realistic threshold, rather than paranoid knee-jerk reactions by the counsel of skynet to pen the player as most wanted as soon as he cherry taps a size 1 city
 
The way the diplomacy system is implemented, there's an inevitable downward spiral towards total world-wide free-for-all war. There is only one (!) way to gain a positive relation, and that is to declare friendship - but you can't do so if you don't already have a positive relation. This means that once you have an enemy, they're an enemy forever.

Look at the global politics tab of the diplomacy overview in any late-stage game. It's pure red. Everyone hates everyone else. It's not just everyone hates the player. No. Everyone hates everyone.

Several things are needed.

(a) Players (and AIs) need to be able to mend their ways, and be rewarded for doing so. I'm settling cities too aggressively? Ok, I'll stop settling cities. But I want to know that in 50 or 100 turns, if I don't settle any more cities, my diplomacy penalty goes away. Currently it doesn't.

(b) Denouncements need to be retractible. Again, look at global politics. Everyone has denounced everyone. Arguably, friendships need to be retractable as well, so that there'll be fewer "backstabbed" in the global politics, and less of the "your friend found reason to denounce you" crap.

(c) There need to be other ways to gain positive relations with other civilizations. There's one that I think would be simple and effective (stolen from city-state diplomacy). If player A and player B are both at war with player C, then any time player A kills a unit of player C, player B likes player A little bit more.

Also, other posts above mention reactions to denouncements - when A denounces B, C has the option of agreeing with A, ignoring A's denouncement, or politically defending B. However, I don't know if this would be too disruptive to game flow. Maybe the icon on the right side of the screen that announces the denouncement could have a click-menu to it, where by default you ignore the denouncement?

here are some positives:

1. we desire friendly relations with you
2. pof
3. we have a pof with the same leader
4. we have denounced the same leader
5. you rescued our people

that's a bit more than 1. if you go guarded with somebody you can try for a POF with one of his allies, or you can denounce one of his enemies. if somebody is outright hostile then you'd better get your military ready, I've had other civs go from hostile back to guarded when they see my military stationed along the border. also, when you're at war you can't just completely take someone over, try to get an ally or CS to finish off his last city. if you are stuck doing it yourself, try not to do it more than once. If you have to go crazy with offensive war then make sure to keep the steamroller going b/c you're going to get lots of hate from the rest of the world.
 
I don't think you can really do that. I am sick right now, so i took the time and tried everything to prevent the denounce fest. I didn't settle near anyone, kept my troopers of the borders and didn't even attack one city state. This worked fine for some time. There was group of 4 nations that worked together, we're were all befriended until at some time one guy started the backstabbing and denounces you. After that you can just try to contain the damage but in the end it will always be same: Everyone hates everybody. When you start hopping from one war declaration to the next just to keep your good relations up you know it's to late. ;)

The most annoying thing really is that in the end there is no one left to trade with.

Funny fact: At some point people might become friendly again, but that just means that they are going to declare war on you 10 rounds later. First I hoped the denouncement wore off, but war comes every time (Yes, I spent the last three days playing civ...)

For now I decided to stop playing until there is a patch. The last half of the game is just always the same. :(

I've found that refusing all POF's is usually the best policy. If I'm particularly vulnerable, going for cultural, playing a builder centric game, etc then I might make a dof with a nearby civ or 2.
 
I strongly dislike the system. It is a huge method of punishing the player. When the developers created denouncing, I don't think they imagined that the crazy AI would go nuts with it. They denounce you no matter what. Almost every game you play will result in the so called "Avalanch Effect". This being, one AI denounces you and the rest will follow suit. Because of denouncing you will inevitably find yourself at war with every country.
 
I strongly dislike the system. It is a huge method of punishing the player. When the developers created denouncing, I don't think they imagined that the crazy AI would go nuts with it. They denounce you no matter what. Almost every game you play will result in the so called "Avalanch Effect". This being, one AI denounces you and the rest will follow suit. Because of denouncing you will inevitably find yourself at war with every country.

In fact I find the result quite variable. If you denounce one of your friend's enemy then good points gained for that friend. you can use it to really do something.
My last game was on Immortal, small archipelago, only one civ denounced me and two other civs denounced each other. No war at all the entire game until my diplomacy victory. While another Immortal small archipelago game using Spain leads to the "every one denouncing every one" situation. My denouncing a friend's friend turned out to be the turning point. Both games were aimed a peaceful diplo victory. So I think whether the "Avalanch Effect" happens or not greatly depends on your way to victory and your diplomatic strategy. I think the point is making sure who's going to be your long-term friends and who's temporary friends and enemies.
 
I also just finished a game where not everybody denounced me. Just half of the world, but that was ok because I went postal on my neigbours.

The main difference was: I didn't attack city states. Not one.
So I saved the game and attacked a cs and a round later three nationes denounced me. I guess the CS are sacrosanct.
 
I like the concept but not the way it is currently implemented. Which I will admit has probably more to do with the AI then the denouncing mechanism in itself.
 
I also just finished a game where not everybody denounced me. Just half of the world, but that was ok because I went postal on my neigbours.

The main difference was: I didn't attack city states. Not one.
So I saved the game and attacked a cs and a round later three nationes denounced me. I guess the CS are sacrosanct.

I almost never attack a CS and usually get chain-denounced. That's just one of the variables. In my experience, the first denouncement or two is because I'm winning, then the rest are because I've been denounced. I agree with the above poster-- I think this system is a step in the right direction, but it's not implemented well. I don't think they were able to test it out extensively because they were in too big of a rush to slap that particular band-aid on the diplo problem, so hopefully a patch or two down the road they'll have it cleaned up better. Hopefully.
 
don't like it, it's very badly implemented and doesn't make sense
 
My latest experience: I'm playing a large continents map with 12 civs, immortal level. I decided to play an all-out warmonger, and completely ignored diplomacy. So I never traded with my neighbours, never made any declarations of friendship, and never denounced anyone. I declared war on any neighbour that I thought I could survive against, and was literally *always* at war (actively) with at least one neighbour. However, all the other civs on the other continent, I completely ignored.

What was the diplomatic result? Well, all the AIs that share my continent, and which now (19th century) are almost extinct ... they don't mind me that much. They all consider me "a warmongering menace to the world", and they desire my land, but that's the only complaint they have against me! As for the chaps on the other continent? Well, Suleiman's been a pest, and has been at war with me ever since his first caravel found me. Every few years, he demands everything I have. But the other guys? Some of them are still (19th century) offering me declarations of friendship! The others agree I'm a warmongering menace, but overall, I've got great relations with everyone. How have I acheived this? By completely ignoring diplomacy, and by fighting everyone that I can.

Of course, this is just one game, and may be an extrordinary case, but it really implies to me a serious problem with the game.
 
The problem is it's a system of demerits only and most of the demerits come from things like settling cities, building wonders or pounding the tar out of your neighbor, in other words playing the game. Soon everybody hates everybody else and there's nothing that can be done to fix it.
 
Soon everybody hates everybody else and there's nothing that can be done to fix it.

You know, everyone keeps saying it devolves into "everybody hates everybody" but I have never, ever seen that. My experience is always "everybody hates the human." A few civs may denounce a few others, but the human is the only player I've seen get chain denounced and then DoW'd by everyone. In fact, the mutual hate of the human seems to make the AI get along better, if anything. Not that I've seen that in every game, but I've certainly never seen it happen to an AI.
 
As an example of "everyone hates everyone", let's look at the world politics tab of my current game. Year is 1886. Ten civilizations.

The average AI is at war with 2.4 other civilizations.
The average AI is friends with 0.0 other civilizations.
The average AI has denounced 5.8 other civilizations.
The average AI has backstabbed 1.8 other civilizations.

The fact that out of 9 AIs, no two AIs are friends shows that the system needs to be repaired.
 
You know, everyone keeps saying it devolves into "everybody hates everybody" but I have never, ever seen that. My experience is always "everybody hates the human." A few civs may denounce a few others, but the human is the only player I've seen get chain denounced and then DoW'd by everyone. In fact, the mutual hate of the human seems to make the AI get along better, if anything. Not that I've seen that in every game, but I've certainly never seen it happen to an AI.

Probably has something to do with the difficulty level. I usually play on immortal where the AI are pretty aggressive. They hate aggressiveness even though they are aggressive, so they wind up hating one another.

Also I play Pangaea maps, which probably contributes to it as well.
 
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