Publicly denounce

[awa81]

When and why do you publicly denounce AI?

 

[Yzman]

When they annoy me I do it. Strategically you can do it if you are the enemy of someone and another person has already denounced them to get a relationship bonus for denouncing the same person.

 

[joncnunn]

1/2 a turn right after they denounced me.

When and why do you publicly denounce AI?

 

[TheDice]

Denouncement is useful just before you DoW a civ. It brings the other leaders who hate your target out of the woodwork ("perhaps the combination of our denouncements will teach them a lesson"), helping you find possible war allies. I always denounce a few turns before I declare. Now if only I could beg for stuff from friends like the AI does to us!

 

[basta]

^What they all said.

A denouncement is usually a prelude to war, and I'd just add that you should review your RAs and resource deals before you denounce. I like to sell any and all non-essential reources to the AI I'm about to denounce/attack for gold and then get the resources back when I DoW, even if my smileys go for a few turns.

Yes it's a borderline exploit but the AI backstabs too and gets insane advantages anyway so I don't have a problem with it.

Also, occasionally at game start you'll meet a hostile AI who immediately insults you, say at turn 12 or so. If his unit is weaker, I immediately DoW on him. At that stage his units are either scouting or hanging around his far-off capital. It's pretty much a phony war and not much usually happens but if you kill off enough scouts and escort units with settlers you'll weaken an obvious enemy early, get some free workers, and he'll sue for peace soon enough with excellent terms.

 

[awa81]

I played a game and was good friends with all Civs except Persia who had attacked me first. We had war, peace, war and so on and in the late game he asked for peace but I decided to continue the war beacuse he had some silk and dye I wanted to control.
Anyway, the next turn Rome and India denounce me, and the next turn 5 more Civs denounce me.

Should I denounce all the Civs the next turn? I don´t want to start a war with 7 civs at the same time.

 

[basta]

Should I denounce all the Civs the next turn? I don´t want to start a war with 7 civs at the same time.

You DoWed too many times and are now regarded as a warmongering menace. At that point it doesn't much matter what you do diplo-wise, just prepare for war with your neighbors, and for a DoW dogpile from everybody else if you get weakened enough.

 

[Ibian]

It's actually a surprisingly broken tool. Had a game yesterday, one city, going for culture win (accidentally won diplo instead). Egypt to my east (local superpower), 3 other civs to the north and east.

Egypt was giving me the evil eye, so i denounced them. I usually don't do that, favoring trading partners, but i only had 3 resources to sell and they weren't going to give a good price so i figured, why not.

Turns out this gave me several gamelong allies. Egypt quickly decided to get rid of me, everyone else denounced egypt, my buddies on the continent went to war against them, and i was left alone to culture it up by everyone except egypt. Usually i end up friendless by the late game, but not this time.

Also, the GG building is awesome under the right conditions. Egypt had to march through mountains to get to me, and there was only a one tile opening. Plop a fort down and nothing got past it, not even when they sent a gunship against my rifleman. Probably could have sacked half their cities if i had bothered to make some artillery instead of buildings, but eh. Next time.

A thought occurs. Could it be that my military inferiority (i had 4 land units at most at any given time) could be part of why the other civs sided with me? helping the innocent underdog against the evil warmongering Egyptian overlords? Or did i just luck out?

 

[MadDjinn]

It's actually a surprisingly broken tool. Had a game yesterday, one city, going for culture win (accidentally won diplo instead). Egypt to my east (local superpower), 3 other civs to the north and east.

Egypt was giving me the evil eye, so i denounced them. I usually don't do that, favoring trading partners, but i only had 3 resources to sell and they weren't going to give a good price so i figured, why not.

Turns out this gave me several gamelong allies. Egypt quickly decided to get rid of me, everyone else denounced egypt, my buddies on the continent went to war against them, and i was left alone to culture it up by everyone except egypt. Usually i end up friendless by the late game, but not this time.

Also, the GG building is awesome under the right conditions. Egypt had to march through mountains to get to me, and there was only a one tile opening. Plop a fort down and nothing got past it, not even when they sent a gunship against my rifleman. Probably could have sacked half their cities if i had bothered to make some artillery instead of buildings, but eh. Next time.

A thought occurs. Could it be that my military inferiority (i had 4 land units at most at any given time) could be part of why the other civs sided with me? helping the innocent underdog against the evil warmongering Egyptian overlords? Or did i just luck out?

this part isn't broken. This is an example of it working properly.

Egypt got all warmongery, and others didn't like that. Had you not denounced them, the others may not have minded you losing.

military inferiority is usually the cause of wars. If you've got no units, the AI will decide that you are a nice target.

 

[Ibian]

Hrmm i guess nobody likes someone wishy washy about choosing sides like i usually do. This requires more investigation.

 

[Martin Alvito]

military inferiority is usually the cause of wars. If you've got no units, the AI will decide that you are a nice target.

There is the small problem that I cannot possibly keep up with the AI's production of zombie hordes, so I am almost inevitably going to eat a DoW around turn 100. It's possible to stay friendly with all your neighbors if you severely curtail your expansion, but that introduces other problems.

 

[MadDjinn]

There is the small problem that I cannot possibly keep up with the AI's production of zombie hordes, so I am almost inevitably going to eat a DoW around turn 100. It's possible to stay friendly with all your neighbors if you severely curtail your expansion, but that introduces other problems.

It's usually not the 'keeping up with' aspect that's the problem. Staying within the range of 10-25% is generally a good thing. (Ie, if they have 3000 pointy sticks, you better have at least 300)

One nice thing about the patch is that the calculations will be changed to incorporate promotions and gold in reserve. So high teching/fast gold plans can keep the zombie hordes away for a bit. Especially if you've got multi-attack units super promoted.