This may be just a rant, or it may be me looking for some insight on the diplomacy system.
Having gotten a DoW from Napoleon, and being technologically superior, I decided to make his life a little difficult. Earlier in the game, he conquered half of Catherine's land, and they're still at war. Since Catherine's closest to me, I decided to go whomp him. Seeing as I'm playing culturally (with only two cities so far, might expand for oil/aluminium/uranium), I don't want to keep his cities, puppeted or otherwise. So I raze one former Russian city to the ground, and then get to Moscow, conquer it, and return it to Catherine. Mind you, I didn't get a "Liberate" option.
Liberate is only an option if the civ is out of the game. I think it's annoying generally that a "return to its original owner" isn't one of the options when you take a city, as it was in Civ IV (which went too far by allowing you to give cities back to AIs that had never owned them just because they were culturally dominant in the surrounding area).
I puppeted it for a few turns, then gifted it to Russia. What does our relations say about that? "We've traded recently". Uhm, that's one way of putting it. Another one is to say I saved your sorry hide.
Just clumsiness with the way they name modifiers - you will get a greater bonus for 'trading' a city/capital back to its owner than you will for, say, giving them a bit of gold or a spare resource, but you won't be able to tell that from the tooltip. It's the same way that you can be considered a warmonger for multiple different types of action (either attacking city states, or attacking multiple civs), even though different civs will treat the two modifiers differently (civs that like CSes will tend to object more to attacking them than to declaring war on other civs, for instance).
Diplomacy in Civ5 annoys me (building friendly relations rarely end in anything but mooching or backstabbing),
This has always been the case in Civ games - you'll usually have friends approaching you asking for favours, and will get positive modifiers for acquiescing to their demands. It's a mistake to see that as a negative, since they'll rarely ask for things you can't spare and it's all part of building up good relations - in Civ as in reality. The more you help them out, the better deals you'll get from them in turn and, ultimately, the more likely they are to pitch in when you need help. You're not going to get anyone to declare war on your behalf without judiciously-applied bribery, but then unless you have very longstanding trade/open borders, you aren't going to in Civ IV either.
One thing that is welcome in Civ V is that, due to the negatives that accumulate with an AI that declares war or denounces a friend of another AI, if you do have a friendly relationship with someone they're more likely to denounce or go to war with your enemy on their own initiative; they're also more likely to stay in the war, while someone you bribe may just take your money and then declare peace at the first opportunity (as happened with Darius in one of my early Civ V games). I even had one game where Isabella declared war on my enemy Korea, moved a bunch of her units to my city and fought off the Korean attack, and then declared peace - seemingly purely to protect my territory since she didn't attempt to make any territorial gains of her own.
While I'm at it, I noticed something interesting about my diplomatic relations to Catherine. She's basically hated my guts for the entire length of the game, constantly denouncing me (and me denouncing her in turn).
This is generally not a good plan - if you just keep pissing her off with denunciations her relations are going to remain negative and she'll continue to denounce you. The point of denunciations is to stick a bullseye on an enemy civ you want to isolate or cause problems for, and also to boost your standing with other people who hate her - sometimes you can force other civs into war with that enemy if it's hated enough, without you having to lift a finger. So unless you have a strategic need to denounce Catherine (such as gaining points with Napoleon, or prompting him to go to war with her again), it's best to avoid doing it. The more people you denounce, the more likely it is that they'll have friends, and those friends will then dislike you and be inclined to denounce you in turn.
Then I decided enough was enough, DoWed her, and killed pretty much all her units (wasn't interested in her few crappy cities). What happens? When we declare peace (at a hefty cost to her), she suddenly loves me.
This is an artefact of the 'we've traded recently' modifier and the way it's handled. When an AI is facing annihilation, it sees any peace deal, whatever the price, as a positive trade in its favour - so you'll actually get better relations with a civ you've nearly wiped out than one you declare peace with on less favourable (to you) terms. Yes, this should be fixed - however for the AI it serves the purpose that a very weak civ is less likely to declare war on you, and in the Civ diplomacy framework the only way that this can be enacted is by giving a positive enough modifier to make that civ 'friendly'.
In a recent game Bismark was off the map. I took one of his cities from the AI that had conquered him. I took the option of giving the city back to Bismark, putting him back in the game.
Result? He hates me and attacks my CS three turns later.
Yeah, diplomacy is pretty weird in CiV.
Yes, this very often happens with civs you liberate - I haven't worked out why (mechanically). Maybe they have the "You captured our original capital" modifier if you take it, even if not from the original owner? Also, they tend to revert to the relations they had with you before they were wiped out - so if Bismarck didn't like you before (and, being Bismarck, he almost certainly didn't), he won't like you after liberating him - there isn't a positive modifier for liberating a civ, I don't think.
the AI is playing to win and is playing like a human online...
However the developers thought it was a wise idea to make interactive diplomatic screens and diplo modifiers SO it looks like the AI can act like as a role moddel but in reality it isn't...
I don't mind a AI that is playing to win but don't put it in a model with diplomatic options like Decleration of friendship and denouncement some players could actualy thinx that there are diplomatic options and relationships...
Playing to win isn't the problem - trying to play to win *as though it was a human* is a problem. For instance, a human will often get pissed if his favourite Wonders are taken by someone else - but the same human will be able to evaluate that in the context of his strategy, considering such things as (a) which Wonder was it?, (b) is it critical or just a 'nice to have', and (c) does he gain anything by taking action against the civ that captured it? The AI can't be programmed with this understanding of strategy, and it can't tell - for instance - that it would be in its interests to dislike, and so increase the prospects of war with, someone who has the Hagia Sophia (since it then has a chance of capturing it), but that it gains nothing by doing the same to someone who has the Great Library (since that gives a one-off bonus and doesn't give it to the player who captures it). It also, of course, doesn't plan its attacks based on considerations like "That city has the Hagia Sophia, so I want it", so you end up with strange situations like an AI that ultimately goes to war over the Hagia Sophia and just attacks cities with no Hagia Sophia in.
Denunciations and DoF are actually very good additions to the system that do recognise that the AI is an AI and treat it accordingly, by giving both AI civs and the player tools to influence the behaviour of other AI civs towards one another. I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the point of, say, a DoF is to have good relations with the civ you're friends with. It's not. The point is to have good relations with the civs that civ is friends with, and to give you some protection against hostile civs since any action they take will make your friends think less favourably of them.
Its one of the 2 diplomatic AI or playing to win not both
In the real world, diplomacy is all about playing to win - it's about making sure your side gets the best deal. If that doesn't translate to a game's diplomacy system the diplomacy should be tweaked to favour 'play to win', not discarded.
I was in a game with Siam civ.I was eyeing for a city state that have resource I need.When I declared war with that city state.Siam civ that was friendly denounced me even if they don't have alliance with that city state.And I ended up warring with 3 civ leaded by Siam.
Siam by its nature likes city-states. This is partly programmed into that civ's personality, but even if not allies there's a good chance it was friends with the CS you attacked (you won't get any notifications about that), since the Siamese UA is triggered by friendship status rather than alliance. Add to that possible 'attacked a city-state under our protection' if they'd pledged to protect it (which doesn't require alliance), 'competing for the favour of the same city-state' or 'consider you a warmongering menace to the world' penalties, and war over city-states is very likely especially with civs that like playing the city-state game (including Siam, Greece, Songhai and Mongolia).
