Do you always denounce back?

[PiggyKen]

I always remain neutral, i don't denounce back unless many other civilization denounce the AI.

 

[EditorRex]

That is such a cool idea and it'd be a nice way to steal a few cities from a neighboring civ without getting stuck with that warmonger label yourself. I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Denouncing is a really great tool for helping the player out. You just need to make sure that the civ you're denouncing isn't friends with anyone you want to keep as a friend. "denounced a civ they've made a declaration of friendship with" isn't a terrible negative hit but you want to avoid as many negative hits with a civ you want to stay friends with as you can since the AI can be so fickle.

If the civ you want to denounce doesn't have any friends I say denounce them. There's actually a good chance your own allies will denounce them too and that civ can become the "world wide whipping boy" without them ever actually having done anything wrong.

This is one area of the game where I'm pretty unclear on the mechanics. Maybe I did something else to earn it, but I'm pretty sure I've gotten identified as a warmonger after capturing several cities from an AI that attacked me first. Am I just imagining this or is there some type of formula to determine how much you can get away with? Also, is there any difference in the "warmonger" dipl. penalty if you take cities by treaty as opposed to outright conquest?

 

[loki75]

I usually don't denounce.
Last night, a "friendly" Ethiopia came to ask me to denounce France. I refused, and they denounced me!
Now, I think only France likes me. Even my "turn 20 friend ever since" Rome has a negative diplo hit "other civs I like better have denounced you".
It's turn 200 and I still haven't reached rocketry, this game is going to be interesting, though no one really is in a position to conquer me/out-tech me. But I really need foreign luxuries for happiness until humanism.

 

[Danei]

Denouncing is a good way to choose sides. Example: Babylon is directly to my west, and Persia is just beyond him. Persia and Babylon have already gone to war in the past and now hate each other. If I don't want to fight Babylon any time soon, I'll denounce Persia, causing Babylon to like me.

Because babylon likes me and hates persia, if they decide to go after anyone, it'll be Persia instead of me, unless something disastrous happens (or I lose all my units and don't make new ones).

 

[Tachii]

This is one area of the game where I'm pretty unclear on the mechanics. Maybe I did something else to earn it, but I'm pretty sure I've gotten identified as a warmonger after capturing several cities from an AI that attacked me first. Am I just imagining this or is there some type of formula to determine how much you can get away with? Also, is there any difference in the "warmonger" dipl. penalty if you take cities by treaty as opposed to outright conquest?

Thing is even if you didn't start a war you get other diplo hits. Some obvious ones would be coveting lands and building cities too aggressively. By puppeting "several" cities these two modifiers will be more intense. There's probably some complex math to determine this threshold (also based on civ personality values) but that's what I figure so far.