Not true..

Benevolent has bonuses to diplomacy and influence..   I have won games as Benevolent without building a single troop ship...


Granted it took building a metric crap ton of culture stations but culture flipping should be one of the biggest means by which a benevolent AI plays...     

Benevolent cultures should also be able to create alliances much earlier in the game...    thus when their Allies inevitably get attacked by the war monger races they will have ample ability to build troop ships and win via war...

as long as said empires are close.  If they are on the other side of the map, the AI will have difficulties holding on to these planets.

Sure.  But I don't think the AI could ever reason in that way, no more than it could pursue the 3 ideological branches at the same time on an immense map.

Yes, that I agree with you.  I did not agree with your first statement that an AI should be locked in a peacenick situation just because it is not malevolent.

I'd like to second the OP. In my current game, I'm allied with 4 cultures.

Two of them are far weaker than I am and the recently went to war (the Torians were culture-flipping worlds from the very feeble Yor). Neither of them has asked me to go to war with the other yet (I am currently engaged with the fairly scary Drengin).

I do not want this brush war disturbing my back country or threatening my plan to get a diplo win after breaking the filthy fang-faces. Hence the Nth time I pined for a "make peace with" option in the trade UI.

I could see a diplomatic option of threatening wormongering factions to stop going to war.

Agree, and i think we will see it but sadly probably not until the next major expansion next year.  I'll bet (hope) we see minor improvements with continuing patches