How does reputation work?

Question

Is it related to influence at all? I've heard things about other CSs and civs going to war or changing their diplomatic status with you depending on how you treat other civs or CSs. Is this true? If so how does it work? Is it safe to go around smashing CSs without all the other civs and CSs getting mad at you? I would like to know how this works before starting wars.

Edit: How does this effect teams? My sister and I are playing LAN and we're on the same team. If she attacks some city states, what happens to me? What happens if she starts and I help? Also, when a CS says "We have a serious dispute with X, please murder them for us," does that work the other way around? If I kill Y and help X instead, do I get anything for it?

Answer 1

Just to set the stage, "influence" is the way a city-state feels towards you, and you gain influence through gifts and by doing quests for the city states. There isn't a single source for "reputation" or any easy way of tracking it globally. You do have certain modifiers which each civ which could be considered a reputation of sorts.

Declaring war on city states does impact this per-civ reputation, and in some cases it can permanently change your influence with the city states. If you go on a city state conquering rampage, city states will start to band together and declare war to try and stop you. Further, your reputation with the other civs will take a major hit in many cases.

Declaring war on civilizations can effect your influence - city states allied with the civ you declare war on will also declare war on you and their influence will immediately drop all the way to the minimum number it can be. City states that aren't allied to anyone you're at war with don't tend to care, though.

Essentially, if you go around declaring war and conquering civs, get used to being denounced by other civs. If you eat city states for breakfast, get ready for city states to permanently hate you, and you'll be denounced yet again.

There are some ways to get your war on without taking major hits to diplomacy - this question and its answers go into more detail on that subject.