Here's the situation:

I'm Carthage and have about 8 cities, I share my continent with Arabia to the North, and Inca to the West and South. Saladin has about 10 cities same with the Incan.

I begin my first, second and third wars of religious unification and take the Incan down to 5 cities which now occupy the scrubby tundra area along a semi circular coastline at the south of my continent. He capitulates and is now my vassal (which I did more to humiliate him than anything else . . . hahaha) anyway.

I give him some gifts and get him up to friendly and I notice he's got 4 gold per turn availible for trade. I offered him some resource expecting to get the 4 gold. Nope. He offers me 24 gold per turn. :confused:

I'm like, "ok???"

So naturally I try it again, and it works. It works two more times. I'm pulling in a total of about 90 gold per turn from him and yet the diplo screen says he's only got 4 availible.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

~Crighton

p.s. - there is no emoticon for rolling in coinage is there?

there is no emoticon for rolling in coinage is there?

I believe this: :gold: might do? Granted, not really an emoticon, but okay... :D

To answer your question, I think this is normal. To pay you for your offer, he lowers his research rate. If you offer him something again, he will lower it again to pay you. He will keep doing this until he is at 0% research.

IMO, a vassal who can't research on his own, is not so useful. I usually ask them to research one thing, while I research something else. If he is pleased/friendly with me, I can usually get a very good deal on his research. I prefer to keep my vassals strong enough so that they can support me. A vassal who is weak is of little use, except if you are going for conquest/domination.

General Failure

Ah!!!!

That makes sense. I had left him in shambles (I just wanted the votes in the UN and leave a chance at the domination vicotry since I wasn't about to occupy scrub land with my own people) I had just assumed that his crappy tech rate was due to what I had left him with to survive.

This is good to know. Now I can add pimping to my list of tactics towards vassals, turn the guy into an atm . . . very promising, thanks.

Another question occured to me, is there any math for the vassalage upping your maintenance costs etc? I'd be curious to see it.

~Crighton

Another question occured to me, is there any math for the vassalage upping your maintenance costs etc? I'd be curious to see it.


Now...if you're asking about math, you are asking the wrong person... :crazyeye:
Math makes about as much as sense to me as Chinese does...absolutely none! It's a good thing I am not Chinese. :D I'm sure there is some kind of formula for this, but I wouldn't know it.

I can only tell you that in my current game, I accepted Saladin as a vassal, since he kept on begging me to protect him. He had about 6 or 7 decent sized cities, but he was stuck between me and Huanya, who were both considerably more powerful than he was. I figured I might have him as a sort of human shield against Huanya, because Huanya was very close to me in tech and points and I wanted to declare war on him.
Big mistake! Saladin turned into a money sink! I had to lower my research to keep my gold from going negative (I was running 90%, making about 15 - 20 gpt). And of course, now I can't get rid of him!
I tried being a bad master, made him pay tribute etc. He paid everything I asked for, but wouldn't cancel the vassalage. Only about 35 turns later, he suddenly comes complaining I can no longer protect him because I am too weak, so he is cancelling the deal. Glad to get rid of him! How he got the notion I was too weak is beyond me too, because according to the power graph, I am at least 3 times as powerful as he is, and about 20% more powerful than Huanya, the second most powerful Civ in the game...

I have infantry and am about 4 turns away from Combustion, which will allow me to crank out those panzers... The world will soon change in appearance!

General Failure

nay, I would suck the vassals finance dry and power fuel my research speed. If you want your vassal to be strong give techs and ressources for free to him.

How he got the notion I was too weak is beyond me
Unfortunately, that is the only excuse that Firaxis gave them for cancelling voluntary vassal-hood. I doubt that it will be expanded upon in the patch later this month, but one can hope!

Unfortunately, that is the only excuse that Firaxis gave them for cancelling voluntary vassal-hood. I doubt that it will be expanded upon in the patch later this month, but one can hope!

Ah, that would explain that then. It's just a strange way of saying "we've had enough of this treaty". I hope that Firaxis puts in some more descriptive messages, like "You were too demanding" or "You treated us unfairly" or something like that.

Thanks, Jaybe! That clears that up then.

General Failure

IMO, a vassal who can't research on his own, is not so useful. I usually ask them to research one thing, while I research something else.
General Failure

You can ask a vassal to research something? How? Don't tell me I've been carting vassals around for months now without knowing this!
:confused:

Someone mentined in the diplo screen for talk about something else you could direct the ally / vassals attention towards a particular city, etc. I haven't had the chance to see this for myself yet, but I too would like to know about the research thing as well.

You can ask a vassal to research something? How? Don't tell me I've been carting vassals around for months now without knowing this!
:confused:

If you go into diplomacy, click "Let's discuss something else..."
There should be an option to alter their research. "We would like to you to research..." or something like that.

HTH,

General Failure

If you go into diplomacy, click "Let's discuss something else..."
There should be an option to alter their research. "We would like to you to research..." or something like that.


Wow, cool! I can't wait to try it.

I can't wait to test this out . . . . can't play till weekend . . . . argh!

IMO, it's not so wonderful. The only vassals I've gotten were through capitulation, and they aren't willing to trade tech with me after I pound them into submission. If you have an overall diplo rating of something like -5 or worse, it takes a long while for them to forget, even if you have the "mutual military struggle" positive diplo modifier working for you. So, being able to direct their research doesn't help all that much. At most, you can get them to research something so it costs less for you to research it yourself, later.

But why bother? Sell as many resources as possible at around 20 gold per turn, and power up your own research, just as weimingshi suggests above.

I don't give away techs to vassals because I'm afraid they will trade them. I do give away extra resources even if they can't pay for them, especially iron and horses. After all, I want them pumping out good military units for me.

Unfortunately, that is the only excuse that Firaxis gave them for cancelling voluntary vassal-hood. I doubt that it will be expanded upon in the patch later this month, but one can hope!
Yeah, its funny when they break away saying "your too weak" and then when you try to get them back as a vassal, they say "you have grown too powerful for us..." They probably weigh your %land in your borders for this, but it's rediculous as my army could defend them, me, my ally, and still take over another civ.

Also, you can direct vassals (and allies) in war to any enemy city. This is great if you have your eyes set on certain cities and you're worried about vassals/allies grabbing it before you.

1. Go to Let's Discuss Something Else...
2. Select "We would like you to focus on..." or something like that
3. Tell them what city to go after!

nay, I would suck the vassals finance dry and power fuel my research speed. If you want your vassal to be strong give techs and ressources for free to him.

This is how I approach vassels and it works extremely well. Most of mine of one or two cities though and well behind on tech so anything they research is pretty worthless. Better to sell them duplicate resources that are doing me absolutely no good and convert their money into my research.

I hate and abominate vassals - not that I've had many: after the horrible experiences with the first three, I have refused all subsequent offers. Vassal #1 refused to talk, so I could make no demands at all; vassal #2 was way behind on techs and would have needed massive gifts to be able to research anything remotely useful (very slowly) and was dismally poor; vassal #3, also behind on techs, had a bit of cash but I had no spare resources I could force upon him. No benefits to me, and a cash drain getting worse as I built more cities.
And the other offers of vassalage made to me have all been from civs on the verge of elimination - I think the largest had three cities, with populations of 4, 3 and 3 compared with 6 in my smallest arctic outpost. Thanks, but definitely no.

I take vassals through capitulation whenever possible and use them solely as a source of exhorbitantly beneficial trades. In one game, I vassalized Carthage, who still had about 6 useful cities, and thanks to their heavily cottaged nature, he was able to provide me with over 120 gpt from about 6 resource trades that no one else was interested in, and on top of that, I forced him to hand over the only resource that he had and I didn't. It was really nice. I don't care what he researches because he is way behind me and I've bankrupted him. His location was also ideal, being close to my GP city, which was not my capital and which had Versailles in it.

On Prince and Noble difficulties they are great to use for momentum domination victories. havn't gotten this to work yet for monarch.

The game I was describing was on Prince, and will be my last game on that difficulty. I already have a vassal on my first monarch game, but I saved right after that and haven't revisited it, so I'll let you know how that pans out (sometime in the next busy busy month!)

I'm starting to feel like a pimp. I love bleeding these guys dry. Another thing I've noticed is spreading you're religion into the vassals teritory if it's not already there can be a big help both monitarily and diplomatically, coupled with some pity techs and maybe a strategic resource as a gift can go a long way to harmonious master vassal relationship.

I think they said that bleeding vassals dry will be fixed in the patch.

sigh, guess there really aint nothing that can't be broke by fixing it.

there is a certain ammount of logic towards not fixing this, a capitulated vassal should be taking direction from it's master i.e. research this, pay your tributary burden, subsidize me by purchasing inflated resource prices, etc. Currently, though I doubt intentionally, this current setup does mirror real life very well, at least IMHO.

Though, I would think that in capitulation status all the unknown techs of the vassal would automatically be given to the master.

sigh, guess there really aint nothing that can't be broke by fixing it.

there is a certain ammount of logic towards not fixing this, a capitulated vassal should be taking direction from it's master i.e. research this, pay your tributary burden, subsidize me by purchasing inflated resource prices, etc. Currently, though I doubt intentionally, this current setup does mirror real life very well, at least IMHO.

Though, I would think that in capitulation status all the unknown techs of the vassal would automatically be given to the master.

As has been posted elsewhere, they need to sacrifice realism for game balance, particularly in regards to the why-won't-my-vassal-give-me-tech issue that rankles so many people. the patch, being a patch, will just nerf the amount you can extort from yr vassals. It would be better if firaxis could program a more creative solution.
Like how about you can be as repressive and expropriate as much out of yr vassals as you want, including tech, but the more you do the more likely it is you get instances of insurgancy/terrorism throughout your empire. Every turn you get a chance one or more of the following could happen (off the top of my head)

destruction of a tile improvement on a resource in master's territory (or in vassal's territory if master has demanded the resource)
destruction of buildings/construction in master's cities
assasination of great people/generals warlords (warlord is eliminated from unit)
damage/destruction of units (greater likelihood in vassal territory)
kidnap of master's workers
poisoning of master city water supply (+ x unhealthy for x turns)

think French resistance (or French occupation of algeria), or Vietnam, of (hot potato!) Iraq.

plus you could get extra unhappiness in cities that have suffered a terrorist attack

how to protect -police state/jails. (How about a guantanomo bay "wonder"? :mischief:) garrison troops over resources. protect troops by garrisoning in cities with barracks. spies for counter-terrorism

these are all pipe dreams of course, beyond the scope of a patch.
but it would be good if you were given the choice to be as repressive as you like to your vassals (for cash/tech gain) which is realistic, but with a realistic penalty i.e. resistance and insurgancy, as demonstrated countless times throughout history

I just had a game where Shaka urged me to stop trading with his own vassal... :lol:

I just got my first Vassal. I was the first to be able to traverse ocean squares so I found the other continent where the other 6 Civs were hiding. One of those Civs immediately offered to Vassal with me And they were number 3 in over all points. Strange.

2 Things I noticed:
I had no drop in money. (I do have most building built in most cities)
Even with no penalty, this 'relationship' has not given me anything other than some happiness.

The vassal even quit being a vassal for several turns, then voulunteered to become a vassal again. Each time thier was no change in my empire.