Playing peacefully/denouncing

[Imhotep]

I tend to play in a peaceful manner, focusing on technology or culture victories, although I did a retaliatory conquest war at the beginning of my current game.

It's Renaissance era now and I'm on Friendly terms with 8 of the 9 civs and unfriendly with the other, since I captured a couple of his cities, as mentioned, at the beginning of the game.

So if I hadn't conquered those cities, I'd probably be on Friendly terms with everybody.

I had similar experiences in Civ V. All the other AI civs would love me and I would almost never get declared war on after the Ancient era. This meant I could could enter the modern era safely with a small force of archers and spearmen.

When I look at the AI's relationships with each other, it's a mixed affair, with wars, denouncements, friendly and unfriendly.

So it's a completely different world going on between them. To be honest, I find it a bit unrealistic and dull to not also have antagonistic civs threatening me.

One thing that could redress this is Denouncing. I don't generally denounce other Leaders, while, on the other hand, AI civs seem to frequently denounce each other.

So I'm thinking that maybe I should do more denouncing and denounce the aggressor whenever an AI civ declares war on a civ that I have a Friendly relationship with. Trouble is, I often miss the announcements of war declarations and similar.

When do you think I should I denounce AI civs? Any war, even if justified?

I'd love to see a mod that gave me a notification whenever such an occasion arose, with the option of denouncing.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

You don't need a mod to tell you when to denounce someone, or even an excuse. This is especially true if you are deliberately trying to sour relations with other civs. Just denounce away.

As for having peaceful relations with the world, that is a natural and intended side effect of playing peacefully. Souring relations is almost trivial if you want to do it. Throwing out random denouncements would do it (or not-so-random if you prefer to denounce based on some trigger), but also declaring wars or making demands will work as well. For example, pick a weak neighbor, denounce them, declare a formal war, crush their army, and then pillage a bunch of tiles. That should give you at least one enemy.

[Imhotep]

I'd like to feel I had a reason for denouncing.

What I'd like, in the base game or as a mod, is for the game to prompt me at proper times for denouncing.

So, for example, if an AI civ declared war on another civ I was friendly with, a pop-up would appear saying something like, "So and so has declared war on your friend such and such. Do you wish to denounce them?". Yes / No.

These pop-ups could be triggered to appear at the same instances they would if the human player were an AI player, so using the same logic for denouncing as the AI civs.

[Imhotep]

Are there any mods that clearly convey important information, such as declarations of war?

There's the Simplified Gossip mod, but that just simplifies the text. Here's a screenshot.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/789734332657602655/4412B163DD7A2FA8DCF2CA46ACBDD0C026CA17B6/

There's a lot of less important news that the game tells us about - such as another civ building a settler or researching a technology - mixed in with the other more important stuff like declarartions of war. See the screenshot above - "Mongolia declares war on Brussels" doesn't stand out any more than "Mongolia completed development of Professional Sports" and similar.

Is there a mod that perhaps color-codes the different categories of news? So declarations of war could be in strident red or something, and therefore easy to catch the eye.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

I'd like to feel I had a reason for denouncing.

What I'd like, in the base game or as a mod, is for the game to prompt me at proper times for denouncing.

So, for example, if an AI civ declared war on another civ I was friendly with, a pop-up would appear saying something like, "So and so has declared war on your friend such and such. Do you wish to denounce them?". Yes / No.

These pop-ups could be triggered to appear at the same instances they would if the human player were an AI player, so using the same logic for denouncing as the AI civs.

The game does give you notifications when a Civ declares war on one of your declared friends. It doesn't automatically give you a yes/no dialog for denouncement, but when you get the notification you can contact the aggressor and denounce them using the normal method.

You'll have to pay attention to the announcements that the game sends you, though. They appear along the right edge of your screen at the start of each new turn. Those notifications are not cluttered with minor gossip, and are also easier to access than the gossip list. (Edit: Also, they remain for the entire turn or until you dismiss them, so there's no risk of missing an important notification unless you just ignore them.)

[Imhotep]

I'll try and take greater care to read them all each turn, and then obligate myself to do my fair share of denouncing.

[Broken War Horse]

Also the game will tell you when you have Casus Bellia against a civ. For example a civ converted one my cities and the game gave me Casus Belli to go to war against them. In one game I got that in mid game and there was no penalty for going to war and most of the civs thought it was the right thing to do. I now look for those Casus Bellia. Another way is when an Emergence is declared. I also avoid the war route on less I am attacked or some civ is converting my city. In that case there will be no peace until that civ is dead! If you do take the peace they will continue to convert your city, they have not learned boundaries.

[plaguepenguin]

If you are looking for dragons to slay, one fruitful resource would be the emergency system. Emergencies can be called by any player who is suzerain of a city-state, or ally of a civ, that loses a city to a conqueror. If another civ calls the emergency, you are forced to either join or refuse to join. If no one else calls it, you get only that not very obtrusive notification on the right side of the screen that you can call the emergency, so you have to be on the lookout for those.

An emergency lets you get into a war without incurring grievances. If you win, you get rewards. I'm especially fond of the extra benefit of 6 envoys (in your era) in a liberated CS, a CS that has had other envoys wiped out by being conquered by that nasty aggressor (I assume the other envoys are wiped because I am always the suzerain after liberating a CS, but I admit that I haven't confirmed that by looking at the envoy totals). Beating back the aggressor is more often than not aligned with your interests, especially if you're in the friends-with-everyone mode that you describe, but sometimes not, and you want to vote against an emergency if you are aligned with the aggressor.