civilization-5
I am in the middle of a game where I am the Chinese, so I am obviously going to play aggressively.
I have declared war on two city states, and in turn, I have had about 6 more declare war on me.
Good question. I've been playing on Prince level and I would like to suggest some principles that may help you to go to war without getting everyone else displeased. As you know, going to war can be very beneficial but also: Hostile/Guarded Civilizations are next to impossible to trade with.
You may be able to go to war without diplomatic penalty by signing a Defensive Pact with a friend, and then paying the leader that you want to go to war with, to Declare War on your friend. However the very act of Declaring Friendship nearly always results in getting just about everyone else displeased, precisely what we are trying to avoid.
You can Declare War freely if you pay everyone else to declare war on him/her first.
Declaring war, on an map filled with islands, at the beginning of the game as soon as make first contact with other Civilizations is OK. Nobody will accuse you of warmongering, like they do later.
However, the big problem is this: you go to war, you demolish them, you don't commit genocide (because that will get you accused of warmongering by everybody). Instead you leave them a little runt of a village on some lonely tundra. You even sign a peace treaty whereby they give you a couple thousand gold and Furs. Everything seems fine. Is everything fine? No! First they will Denounce you. Then they will go around making Declarations of Friendship with as many other Civs as they can. Then the other Civs will start Denouncing you. In the end most other Civs are Hostile/Guarded.
To get around this, I've been trying to sow the seeds of discord, e.g. I declared war on America and Suleiman as soon as I met them at the beginning of the game. It took ages for me to beat Suleiman and in that time America had made Friends with India, Arabia and Siam. So I paid India, Arabia and Siam to Declare war on America. They only stayed at war for a relatively short time, but I it seemed to sour relationships enough, to stop America poisoning everyone against me.
You can also steal Workers from your enemy and march them over to Barbarian camps whereby they will be captured. Then when your enemy begs for peace, and you accept, immediately sack the Barbarian camp, and return the worker. This will create the green "You freed their captured citizens!" pacifier which often is enough to prevent them Denouncing you.
It is also worth noting that your enemy can only Denounce you (and thereby turn everyone against you) once you have made peace with them.
(I also played one game where I sacked a City-State and Siam Denounced me as a warmonger, but then reloaded the auto-save and sacked the City State again + also paid Siam a stack of gold. And then they didn't Denounce me.)
So not only is it possible to declare war on Civs without diplomatic problems you can also commit genocide with impunity, through the Wonderful Use of Genocidal Proxies! e.g. after capturing all but 1 city from your enemy, pay a nearby Civ to declare war on your enemy, (perhaps also gift them 1 or 2 Longswordsmen), then hammer the last city of your enemy yourself with your navy until their green city defence bar is at zero. Then wait...eventually...... the last city will be captured, (and everyone will dislike/denounce your mercenary Civilization for doing the dirty deed).
In general, paying other Civs to Declare War, will sometimes convert Neutral Civs to Friendly status (in fact it seems it may also sometimes make your enemy Friendly after he/she sues for peace)
My 10 point plan for keeping everyone Friendly is as follows:
NB this plan doesn't work all the time - it does help but the game is geared towards war, like walking on egg shells. However since following this plan + paying other civilization to Declare War on my enemies, I have had all 11 other Civilizations on Friendly status (currently I have all Civs Friendly with 2 completely destroyed by proxies and the other 1 Guarded on a little one hex island, but not Denouncing me).
Generally, it rather helps to understand the reasons behind the disposition of each Civilization: If you click the Diplomacy button at the top-right of the screen, it will show a list of any other Civilizations that you have met. By each of these is their current disposition towards you: Neutral, Friendly, Hostile, Guarded and Afraid (btw the last of these is rare, only appearing if you get the white "They fear your might" trigger).
By hovering the mouse over the disposition of each civilization, you should get some reasons for their current disposition, (the following lists are probably incomplete):
Pacifiers/reasons for friendship (green):
Triggers/reasons for hostility (red):
So it seems like there's 5 times as many ways to provoke hostilites with a leader as there are ways to make friends with him or her. Gifts usually don't seem to count for much. However, (as i said before), if you publicly Declare your Friendship, then the Civilization that you are "Friends" with, will demand the odd gift, and if you don't agree then they will probably Denounce you, leading to "Your friends found reason to Denounce you" affecting all Civilizations. To be honest, I am beginning to wonder: Are Declarations of Friendship worth it?
I accomplished this once. Some things I remember:
You might have missed something else entirely. I know in the case of barbarian missions you must be the one to finally KILL the units, weakening them in any amount is simply ignored. Maybe that applies here?
On another note, gifting units provides only a minor boost in relations, nothing compared to fulfilling any request or any gift of gold. You should not bother unless you really don't want the unit you are gifting. (I let military city-states spawn units for me always, and simply give them right back if I don't need them.)
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