War and rep.

[BalthusTraveler]

What causes other civs to develop a negative reaction to you if you were not the civ they went to war with? Does simply the act of declaring war make it unable for you to get Right of Passage, or is it ROP-violation wars that cause this?

Also, do computer civs develop a negative reaction to other computer civs they are at war with? Ex. if I attack a computer civ that went to war with my ally/trading partner with no provocation, will they develop a negative reaction to me?

I ask this because I just finished the Rise of Rome conquest. I was playing Persia and had been sucking up to Rome the duration of the game so that they would not declare war on me while I was taking out the Macedonians. I had been struggling to hit the 20% control mark after I defeated the Macedonians. Scythia had betrayed and attacked Rome during the battle against the Macedonians, so I decided to eliminate them to prevent them from backstabbing the Romans (or me) again. Rome did not react negatively to me after I did this, and the war was not an ROP-violation (I did not declare it on Scythian soil).
Later, I needed still more territory, so I got a military alliance and ROP from Rome to use against the Goths, and conquered them to the point where I controlled 19% of the map. I needed just one more percent to hit the 20 percent, so I declared war on the Carthaginians without provocation (they had done so to me earlier and stole one of my cities on an island). I got the island city back but was unable to put much of a dent in the Carthaginians, and Rome refused my offer for a military alliance, claiming I was "treacherous" or something similar, despite the fact that Rome had been fighting Carthage the entire game! I ended up going over the 20 percent mark with only 5 turns to spare when I used my Military Great Leader to sneak attack a Roman outlying city, because they had become too stubborn to work with. Why did this happen?

 

[Tone]

Declaring war when you have no units in your enemies territory at the start of that turn is fine. You suffer no rep hit for that.

Declaring war when you have units inside a rival territory at the start of a turn is not good. I'm afraid that I don't have a great understanding of the penalties for doing this as I don't like to do ROP rape.

Breaking a PT before the 20 turns are up is a big no-no and it sounds like this is what happened in your game. How did the war with the Goths end? Did you take peace within 20 turns? Alternatively did you give gpt or resources as part of that alliance deal and then knock them out? IIRC that also counts as breaking the alliance. Again I've been of limited use here as I don't tend to use alliances when a civ is on the brink of extinction as I'll want all their lands for myself.

A third possiblility is that your trading rep was blown earlier in the game by breaking a previous deal and then you only tried the alliance deal with a sweetener of gpt or resources. Once your trading rep is gone, they will only accept items up front from you (such as techs or hard cash) but it doesn't sound like this was the issue here. Do you have more details about what you offered?

Hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps that I've left.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Anything involving Carthage is out of question if, as you say, Rome has been at war with them the whole game. This is because an AI is 'blind' to any rep-hits you have taken in dealing with civs they are at war with.

And anything involving Scythia and Macedonia seems out of question too. After all directly after the wars, as you say, your rep was intact.

This leaves the Goths. And even though you did not mention all the details I am fairly sure you got your rep hit from prematurely making peace with them and thereby breaking both the RoP and the MA (against the Goths) you had with Rome.

 

[BalthusTraveler]

That makes sense, because I made peace with the Goths when I got them down to one city which was extremely far away from any of my units that could have captured it. I made a peace treaty because there was no way I could have captured it in the remaining 5 turns.

Scythia had already betrayed and declared war on the Romans, and beating them was considerably easier than beating the Romans had been.

Egypt had declared war on every single civ in the game except mine (because I kept giving them gifts) at some point. They had been badly beaten by Carthage, provided easy access to Numidians, had a good deal of population, and had built Hadrian's Wall in their cap.

I really didn't want to have to take any Roman cities, it was a last-ditch move to win the game.