The hot deformation characteristics of Cu-13Zn-1Ni-1Sn-1.5Al gold-imitation brass alloy in a temperature range from 953 to 1123 K and a strain rate range from 0.001 to 1 s^-1 were investigated by hot compression tests. The stress-strain curves show that the flow stress decreases with the increase of temperature and the decrease of strain rate. The dynamic recrystallization grains appear while the temperature reaches 1073 K at a constant strain rate of 0.01 s^-1. The constitutive equation of the alloy was established and its deformation activation energies were obtained at different strains (ε=0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8). When the strain is 0.8, the constitutive equation of the alloy is = 7.22×10⁹[sinh(0.0187σ)]^3.67exp[-227.17/(RT)], and the deformation activation energy is 227.17 kJ/mol. The dissipation power maps and instability maps were established at different strains, which suggested that the recommended processing condition for hot compression was in the temperature range of 1010-1040 K with a strain rate of 1 s^-1.