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In what I've played of Civ IV thus far (which admittedly isn't all that much), I've found the degree to which AIs make demands extremely annoying. The fact that AIs don't tend to view rejected demands as a cause for immediate war is a huge improvement over Civ 3, but that improvement is largely offset by how much more often AIs seem to make demands now than in Civ 3. If the mechanism were based mostly on requests that it would help relations to honor but not hurt relations to turn down, the requests wouldn't be a big deal. But having to either give up something for nothing or take a hit to diplomatic relations seems patently unfair.
The situation is made even worse by the non-negotiable nature of demands, and by the fact that they have to be accepted or rejected on the spot. You can't say, "I won't give you this tech, but I'm willing to give you that one instead." You can't check what deals you have with a civ you've been asked to cancel your deals with, or look around the map to see how losing open borders would affect your situation, before deciding how to respond. Put those two factors together and the system is both less flexible and less easy to make good decisions with than it ought to be.
There are two issues that I regard as especially serious. One is the "trading with our worst enemy" angle. It would be reasonable to have "trading with our worst enemy" or "refused to stop trading with our worst enemy," one or the other, hurt relations. But put the two together and trading with two mutually hostile civs can result in both of them disliking you. That might be appropriate when the civs are actually at war with each other, but I think it's both unrealistic and unfun otherwise.
The other thing that I find especially annoying is when civs demand essentially state-of-the-art techs. I could understand perfectly if backward civs would get upset if advanced civs refuse to help them out a bit. But in a tight tech race, I think it's both unfair and unfun to punish players for refusing to give up a hard-fought tech lead. The situation isn't as bad as it could be in the worst situations in Civ 3 (where I occasionally faced a choice of either giving up a hard-fought tech lead or going to war), but it's still really annoying. And Civ 4 civs seem to come demanding techs a whole lot more often than Civ 3 ones did.
If demands were implemented better, I might view them as a valuable part of the game. But as it is, they're almost entirely an annoyance that I wish there were a way to turn off.
Nathan
The situation is made even worse by the non-negotiable nature of demands, and by the fact that they have to be accepted or rejected on the spot. You can't say, "I won't give you this tech, but I'm willing to give you that one instead." You can't check what deals you have with a civ you've been asked to cancel your deals with, or look around the map to see how losing open borders would affect your situation, before deciding how to respond. Put those two factors together and the system is both less flexible and less easy to make good decisions with than it ought to be.
There are two issues that I regard as especially serious. One is the "trading with our worst enemy" angle. It would be reasonable to have "trading with our worst enemy" or "refused to stop trading with our worst enemy," one or the other, hurt relations. But put the two together and trading with two mutually hostile civs can result in both of them disliking you. That might be appropriate when the civs are actually at war with each other, but I think it's both unrealistic and unfun otherwise.
The other thing that I find especially annoying is when civs demand essentially state-of-the-art techs. I could understand perfectly if backward civs would get upset if advanced civs refuse to help them out a bit. But in a tight tech race, I think it's both unfair and unfun to punish players for refusing to give up a hard-fought tech lead. The situation isn't as bad as it could be in the worst situations in Civ 3 (where I occasionally faced a choice of either giving up a hard-fought tech lead or going to war), but it's still really annoying. And Civ 4 civs seem to come demanding techs a whole lot more often than Civ 3 ones did.
If demands were implemented better, I might view them as a valuable part of the game. But as it is, they're almost entirely an annoyance that I wish there were a way to turn off.
Nathan