What if the 'human player' would collect a series of automatic 'opinions' on the AI you want to attack just like the AI does in order to decide what its opinion is of other players? What if you then had a diplomatic option to 'denounce' the target civilization to other civilizations, and based on their opinion of the target combined with your 'evidence', you could receive a reaction as to how they would feel about you going to war with the target? Maybe this could even reduce their opinion of the target to the point where they are ok with you attacking? Or even cause them to join in, or break treaties if the evidence is strong enough and lowers their opinion enough? That way, the system kind of makes use of what is already there in the AI 'opinions'.
I know this is probably outside of the realm of possible given budgets and development plans, but I had a few ideas to expand upon my post in the latest dev journal that I wanted to just spit ball out there.
If it were possible to tie some AI 'eyes' into the 'human player', in order to allow for diplomatic 'evidence' as I mentioned in the quote above, couldn't that data be used for other things as well, like player advisers? We already have a system in place for the AI to tell you what it thinks of you, make demands, etc based on the information they collect. If the 'player AI' collected that same data, could you rig up a system where your 'advisers' tell you what they think of your current situation, based on 'real world' data?
So, if I am playing the 'all mighty toad' of the 'kingdom of the swamp', and the boarders of 'toad stool city' border right on Umber's territory (and empire), my advisers have two negative states right there (close borders, negative opinion of empires in general), and might advise me to station more troops there, to go to war with Umber for their insolence in demanding tribute, or research more defensive technologies to keep up with what we've seen them bring to the battle field.
If you really want to boost the immersion quality of the experience, and development time of the feature, you could even program the 'player AI' to match the 'opponent AI' in terms of attitude. Maybe playing as Umber means my advisers demand that I go to war with the Kingdom of the Swamp for being weak fly eaters who don't deserve to lick Urxen boots.
