Never knew there is such a thing as a favored civ. But otoh maybe it's just any civ you explicitly declare friendship to?

That's just a guess, but declaring friendship does improve relations a tad, so maybe the penalty in case of war is the ther side of the coin (if there's no downside, then you could just declare friendship to everyone).

That being said of course it would be better if stuff like this would be displayed...

Yeah, but the q' is what exactly counts as favored civ. Or is it any civ you had very good relations to right before the war?

That could be it.  I'm playing malevolent and in the diplomacy window it said they had a different ideology, but of course it doesn't tell me whether it is pragmatic or benevolent.

I was trading with them and have a very high diplomacy, so they were rated as "close" even though I didn't have any treaties with then aside from open borders.  But in this game, because I have open borders with all the other majors, and am trading with almost all of them, with my high diplomacy I'm "close" to most of them.

The more I think about it tho more I think you're right, it is the pragmatic trait, which (afaik) is information the player has no access to before declaring war.

That might very well be a good name for some relationship status other than the one I saw in my game.  But since the diplomacy window showed that my adversary didn't share my ideology, it doesn't match the message I saw.

For sure this is from the Pragmatic Tree.

That next and final pick that has EVERY civ DOW you needs to be changed to just having the other pragmatic civs DOW you.

Yes, that would be a significant strategy/diplomacy factor to play with.  Some of these things need to act as a deterrent more than a reaction.  Making the Diplomacy choices more interesting is a big part of immersion and replay.

I had the "everybody declares" event happen to me.  That was a rude surprise!  I am not sure it would have stopped me at that point, but it would have made me stop and think about it two or three times.  As far as I am concerned, when a game makes you do that stop and think reaction, it is succeeding in its purpose.  That, and rewarding me with shiny things.