Anyone use "denounce" effectively?

[woodshadows]

Does anyone know the "rules" for denouncing.. what circumstances it provides any benefit etc? I realized I have mostly played very isolationist in most of my games, avoiding open borders or friendships and ignoring others opinion of me. I wonder if there's benefit to denouncing others before declaring war on them, or maybe after making peace?

 

[snarzberry]

It's often worth to denounce before you DoW, and I often do, if your target civ has enemies. In diplomacy you can get yourself on a kind of 'team' of three or more civs where there are multiple bonuses being accrued and which reinforce each other. So if one of the civs on my team has been or is at war with my next target, say like if I have just bribed them to, or if they are likely to be at war with my target soon due to proximity, then I'll always denounce them before I invade. Your partner either already has or will eventually denounce also and that will strengthen the bonds of your friendship as you've denounced the same leaders.

 

[fat_tonle]

Yeah... always denounce if you know you are going to DOW or get DOWed.... ALWAYS denounce warmongerers....

Example... I am playing as Russia and I am going for two city culture on a secluded continent. Monty was coming for me... I denounce him and everyone else jumps on him... including Mongolia. Aztecs take a crippling blow and settle for a straight up treaty even though I have two warriors as my military.

Then I knew Genghis would BS after he was done killing Monty.... denounced him, and everyone gangs up on him. I supplied my nearest neighbor with Iron (Korea) but didn't open my borders so he never back stabbed me.

I pretty much played everybody and got the AI's to systematically eliminate one another. Completed Utopia shortly after 1900.

 

[silverspirit]

It is also useful if you are playing a peaceful game.

If you notice an army building on your borders and you do not want to fight them, denouncing them will mostly deter them from attacking...if you have a good reputation.

Remember though, it works both ways. If you are denounced, then attacking them will cause a reputation loss among other leaders, which will cause them to denounce you. You also get a rep gain if denounced, and the denouncement runs out without you going to war.

(Look at the reputation percentage, the higher it is, the less likely other civs are going to turn on you).

The percentage governs how likely neutral parties will declare war on you or friends back stab you (though another mechanism governs that based on many factors - like friends coveting lands, built wonders they wanted, strength of your army, and your reputation level.) Though a civ with a low score in reputation will likely attack, most of the time, they try and remain honorable - or the AI cheats and gives them bonuses.

Denouncing before going to war is a double edged sword though. Having a common enemy and fighting them may give you bonuses with individual civs, but will affect your relations (the reputation percentage) with others who you are not allied with - which affects all sorts of trade agreement prices. But more critically, at some time you will miss step with your allies, which means they will not want to make another declaration of friendship, and then you can lose a lot of goodwill with them, which can cause them to become enemies rather quickly.

Think of it this way. How other civs interact with you is based on your reputation percentage - which is a cumulation of denouncements and war activities (and annoyingly how quickly you sue for peace - which at deity level when everyone demands everything from you at the beginning of the game can cause issues) multiplied by the good and bad things which you have in common with other civs.

 

[Glassmage]

Denounce people that you know have no friends and are hostile to you. If they have friends then try to find a good group of AI's and form an alliance then you can safely denounce people.

 

[woodshadows]

(Look at the reputation percentage, the higher it is, the less likely other civs are going to turn on you).

Is reputation actually shown somewhere as a percentage? Or do you just mean hovering over the leaders attitude to see what factors are playing into their opinion towards me? Like "Denounced us in the past" "went to war with us" etc?

 

[Civciv5]

If a leader denounces me,I always denounce the leader immediatly after that.
Sometimes they have effect(causing everyone to denounce him or me),sometimes not.

 

[woodshadows]

Welp, certainly has been interesting trying to use diplomacy again in this game. There is some sort of logic there, altho elusive to discern at first. The difficulties begin arising however when two friends begin to hate eachother which makes them both automatically start hating you it seems, even despite your best efforts to proclaim bias for one over the other early on. I've done okay keeping Isabella happy with me so far tho, but Ram and Neb have both denounced me after initially being friendly. I am first place tho and have been involved in many wars, generally anytime Isabella goes to war I join in. We'll see how this plays out but so far so good.

 

[BenAxiom]

Is reputation actually shown somewhere as a percentage? Or do you just mean hovering over the leaders attitude to see what factors are playing into their opinion towards me? Like "Denounced us in the past" "went to war with us" etc?

Hovering over the leader's attitude is the only way in which to see past interactions.

As for the OP, I never denounce. I used to, back when I thought the diplo bonus for denouncing an ally's enemy mattered, but like declarations of friendship, really isn't needed to play well. Besides, tracking who denounced whom and when can become a chore.

 

[woodshadows]

Hovering over the leader's attitude is the only way in which to see past interactions.

As for the OP, I never denounce. I used to, back when I thought the diplo bonus for denouncing an ally's enemy mattered, but like declarations of friendship, really isn't needed to play well. Besides, tracking who denounced whom and when can become a chore.

It seems to have worked to my advantage somewhat in this game. I notice I have a modifier on attitude when I denounce the same enemy as my intended friend civ "you have denounced the same civ as us". It has allowed me to cheaply bribe people into wars that have kept everyone mediocre and distracted while I've been preying on weak neighbours. Possibly this sort of diplomacy is only really effective in the early game or while you're low in score, I'm sure as my power increases even more Isabella will turn on me eventually too. I have played most of my games ignoring the diplomacy completely and done fine, but this is an interesting angle to the game to explore and it's fun trying to use diplomacy to kill opportunities for a civ to become a runaway. For instance, in the early part of the game Isabella and Genghis both had huge scores. Isabella denounced Genghis and I denounced as well. I then bribed her to go to war with him. This led to a protracted conflict and their scores pretty much stagnated while mine caught up with them. It also wasted their army in a pointless conflict in which neither side got the upperhand.

 

[mutant-enemy]

I'm quite the opportunistic bastard here: I denounce those who get denounced regularly (e.g. Genghis, Monty, etc.) in order to make friends with their enemies.

Also I tend to support my neighbour's neighbour and, when it comes to a DoF with them, I denounce my (our) neighbour. This MIGHT lead to a DoW by him but hey, it's 2:1 then. Usually this works just fine for me - never had big problems when it comes to diplo.

Depends on my mood and the situation though.

 

[silverspirit]

Is reputation actually shown somewhere as a percentage? Or do you just mean hovering over the leaders attitude to see what factors are playing into their opinion towards me? Like "Denounced us in the past" "went to war with us" etc?

Actually, its called approval - sorry could not remember its correct name. Its on the demographics tab. Its your aggregate general feeling of other civs towards you. The computer takes this score to help determine what actions it can perform, along with the individual interactions with another civ (denouncements, past wars, trade deals et al).

High scores in approval mean you can get the best trade deals, low scores, you will not get good deals. And if you have a low score, a civ declaring war on you may not get commented on, but with a high score, even if you have no friendship with others, they may denounced as warmongers.

(IE approval is the general reputation, while all the other factors, such as individual civ modifiers like past wars, along with your tech level, score, army strength, friendships and economy will determine if you will be attacked or not. A high general approval helps prevent attacks, even if the other factors are negative, while a low score will invite wars onto your doorstep, even if the other factors are in your favor)

 

[woodshadows]

Actually, its called approval - sorry could not remember its correct name. Its on the demographics tab. Its your aggregate general feeling of other civs towards you. The computer takes this score to help determine what actions it can perform, along with the individual interactions with another civ (denouncements, past wars, trade deals et al).

Wow that's a revelation to me, all this time I thought that approval referred to happiness within my own civ, I had no idea it referred to other leader's feelings towards me. That's great information to have.

 

[headcase]

I'm pretty sure approval is related to happiness. On a semi-related side note, check out your approval rating on turn one when playing on Prince, compared to the computer. Balanced indeed.

 

[blasto]

I must represent my skewed perspective on this.... its almost impossible to get AI to attack you using diplomacy. This includes denouncing. In fact, I can verify that in most cases, if you just go down the list and denounce every Civ, you'll end up in a more positive position overall than negative. I'm presuming that this is because to the AI, being denounced is slight, but then they'll give you a green positive marker for denouncing someone that they denounced or didn't like. So by the time you're done denouncing everyone, about half will look at you more favorably even though they were denounced by you too.

I back stab, make demands, tell them not to settle nearby, break agreements at every chance and even still they rarely DOW.

 

[BenAxiom]

I'm pretty sure approval is related to happiness. On a semi-related side note, check out your approval rating on turn one when playing on Prince, compared to the computer. Balanced indeed.

Yeah, here's an old post that offers a calculation of approval.

The Demographics "Approval Rating" has nothing to do with diplomacy; it's strictly a measure of your Empire's Happiness Level. The base Approval Rating (Happiness Level of 0) is 60%; any Happiness surplus (or deficit) is multiplied by 3 and added to the base so a +10 Happy empire will be at 90% approval and a -10 Happy empire will be at 30% approval.

It's from this thread.

And here's a shot of a demographics screen. The calculation seems to work:

Spoiler :

 

[qemist]

Yeah, here's an old post that offers a calculation of approval.
It's from this thread.

And here's a shot of a demographics screen. The calculation seems to work:

Spoiler :

D-ah-umn! I thought Silverspirit was teaching us something and it seems he was just blowing smoke. Or was he? I'm a little suspicious of MP's calculation. For one thing it implies approval ratings of more than 100 or less than zero are possible, but I have never seen these.

I need to play more to find out.

 

[BenAxiom]

Maybe, but we're talking simple population percentages here, so bottom is 0% (nobody likes you) and caps at a total love of 100%. It would be cool if someone checked the math at another stage of the game to verify.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

Denouncing is entirely dependent on your relationship, and the target's relationship, with all of the other AI players. If the target is enemies with other civilizations, those other civilizations will usually like you when you denounce the target. Likewise if you have poor relations with most civilizations, denouncing the target will probably have little or no effect. If you use Denouncing wisely you can set much of the world against a warmonger, but be careful as this might just invite said warmonger to gobble up all its neighbors. It's happened to me once.

 

[Breezin]

I personally use it as a prelude to war in hopes that the computer AI will be baited into attacking me. That way I get a war when I want not when the computer wants.

Also, I've heard others use it as a way to build relationships with friendly AI's. That seems a little more vague as it's sometimes difficult to know who hates who given the poor diplomacy screen.