Unknown reason for DOW

[bryanw1995]

Ok, I know all the ways to stay peaceful with other civs. Well, at least I thought I did. I recently started a game trying to test out REX/ICS. Started off near gandhi and washington. I haven't dow'd anybody, but eventually I got too close and ghandi dow's me. ok, I get that. he only has 3 cities, I take over 2 of them, but then WHAM-O babylon/egypt/greece/england/america all declared on me within 5 turns of each other. The others were all roughly even with me on score and military, but babylon is the runaway civ (40 techs to 30 for the next highest civ, double the score of next highest, etc). I really thought I had a good grasp of the diplomatic system, but it seemed odd that they all went after me at once. I was in the middle of the pack on military. It just seemed weird that anybody other than washington would even think that going after me made sense, if anything ghandi was the one on the ropes.

Only things I could see that might explain: 1. my military was near the avg but slightly below it, and 2. ghandi asked me for peace and I said "no way, jose".

Does refusing a peace offering count as a declaration? washington at least said "now's my chance to take you out mofo", but several of the others cancelled poc's before declaring and specifically mentioned my "warmongering".

 

[Snapp]

"Now my chance to take you out" is typically a sign of a weak military.

Refusing Peace seems to count as "Bloodthirsty".

There is also something to due with number of cities, or some ratio of cities to military.

When I play ICS and have a smallish military the AIs all seem to declare war on the turn after I place city #6.

 

[Martin Alvito]

AIs don't like it when you capture cities. They seem to like it even less when you raze cities.

If you want to avoid diplomatic hits associated with war, the only way to do it appears to be to kill units, but not cities. What probably happened is this: you were fine with everyone diplomatically until you took cities. Then you became disliked, Pacts of Secrecy against you were signed, and a couple of those civs bribed the rest to declare on you.

 

[Lyoncet]

Along with eradicating a civ (taking/razing the last city) and chronically going back on pacts, taking lots of cities by force is about the biggest hit you can get to your diplo. Also as others have noted, at least several of those DoWs looked like opportunistic "now's my chance to get ahead" moments rather than "hey that guy's a jerk" declarations.

Best thing you can do to keep that from happening is to isolate a target civ with pacts of secrecy up the wazoo, or barring that bribe a few people to go to war with each other. Once one side starts taking cities, you can join in and not have to worry too much about being targeted as #1 on the bloodthirsty list. Just keep doing that until you win. Also, always get another civ to eradicate a player so you don't take that huge hit. (Thank you Aimless Gun for bringing that to light.)

 

[Slowpoke]

The decision of whether they want to go to war is rediclously complicated (what makes them HOSTILE), but the decision on whether to actually go through with it is mainly determined by these things:

A)Do they have enough units built up? If not, big minus
B)Are they already in a war? If yes, massive minus.
C)Is there grand strategy to conquer? If yes, minor plus
D)Are you about to win the game? If yes, massive plus
E)Are you a soft target? If yes, big plus. Less plus if you have a decent army.

So getting them to fight each other is the absolute best way to stay out of war, since it kills their units and they're in a war. Chances are on deity or immortal, the only way to prevent a hostile civ from attacking is if they're fighting someone else.