I have a strategy to share that works particularly well with Alexander, or another philosophical leader, but also might be flexible enough to work with non-philosophical leaders including industrious leaders and more.

One of the best aspects about this strategy, is that since you go for capitulation, you don't have to waste your time completely eliminating neighbors. As a result, instead of focusing all your resources on finishing off one neighbor, you force capitulation and then send your remaining troops to a second or third pre-longbowman war. Plus, on top of that you end up with a lifetime vassal that can still get a pretty decent power ranking and that still likes you! Plus, you get the happiness vassal bonus early when it is still useful ;)


Basically, this strategy relies on getting feudalism as early as possible and then forcing a neighbor to capitulate while they still have time to recover and become a contributing vassal. They key to doing this is bull-rushing your opponents capital and one other decent city. If the opponent is a non-warmonger civ, he will be very likely to capitulate while he still has two or three other cities that he can use to recover.

I found two ways to get feudalism very early. The first way is very reliable on monarch, the second way is very iffy.
1) Build the great wall ASAP. This is where the philosophical leader comes in. You want to get your great engineer right away, and particularly, before getting pottery. Get iron working out of the way, and avoid pottery to ensure that your great engineer can pop feudalism immediately after you research monarchy and writing. I suppose that if you are industrious you could build the pyramids instead of the great wall to get the great engineer, which may be better as this strategy has lots of synergy with the specialist economy.
2) This is the iffy way that I have only gotten to work on monarch once. Build the oracle and stop one turn before completion. Rush your butt off to research writing and monarchy, and on the next turn use the oracle to pop feudalism. One way to improve your chances is to almost build the stonehenge and then fail, which gives you gold so you can deficit research towards monarchy+writing. Unless you skip a bunch of key early techs such as animal husbandry, wheel, you are likely to get beat to the oracle. Skipping those early techs is inadvisable, because you need to be strong for your war.

This strategy works really well if you have a fast moving unique unit, which allows you to turn two or even three neighbors into vassals. Remember, good vassals are leaders that typically trade tech. The last thing you want is a vassal that researches the tech according to your instructions, and then refuses to trade with you even though he is pleased! You should find that your vassals really like you because you probably only declared war once and never raised their cities. As you enter your second or third war you will start getting lots of diplomatic bonuses with your decently strong first vassal.


One last note. Some of you might be thinking, cool, early longbowman war! Not exactly, I recommend preparing a swordsman/axeman/chariot army while you are still researching monarchy and/or writing. That way, you can actually start your war before you have feudalism and time the discovery of feudalism to coincide with the taking of their second city. That way, you still have time to go for a second or third vassal before the AI starts building the hated longbowman.

In summary, this isn't the best strategy by any means, but it is decently strong and lots of fun! The one weakness in the strategy, is delaying pottery :( I love having vassals that can really contribute though, and with an SE economy its worth it if you ask me!

Great idea! Care to start a game so we can try this out? I'd love to see it in action!!!

You'd definitely want to run a SE with this strategy, since you're delaying pottery and therefore cottages. Even so, it definitely sounds viable, and Alexander sounds like the best leader for it, though you could probably make it work with any of the Philosophical leaders. None of them have an early, fast-moving unit, though--unless you count Gandhi's Fast Workers, but I don't think that's quite what you had in mind. ;)

I think there's lots of promise here. I think that because the game I'm currently playing as Alex, I wished I had Feudalism when I took three of Elizabeth's cities with Swords and Phalanxes. (She had me boxed in.) I offered peace before I went broke. Then she offered Open Borders and I realized that she was willing to be friendly!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I had Great Wall and Pyramids just as suggested and popped a couple GEs. Of course, this was before this thread, so I didn't know to avoid Pottery. Otherwise, I almost accidentally stumbled upon the OP's great idea.

Mansa is a good choice of victum . .. vassal I mean, that guy was Stockholm Syndrome written all over him.

at which point does a civ capitulate ? because some like Napoleon in one of my game had 3 citis left before he capitulated...yesterday Louis Capitulated pretty quickly...why?

Is there a concern that by fostering a strong vassal they will become independent again then be a pissed off neighbor again?

Is there a concern that by fostering a strong vassal they will become independent again then be a pissed off neighbor again?

I dont think so...if they are a vassal of you its because you are bigger. They can be more advanced like in my last game but they will trade you tech to you rather than anyone else because they seem to forget all the bad things you did to them as soon as you open borders with them and give them like a fish ressource

If you take a six city example, you and everybody else have six cities, then no you don't have to really worry about the guy ever breaking free:

You - Him - Other guy's Cities
6 - 6 - 6 @ start of wars
9 - 3 - 6 @ after acquiring 1st Vassal
12 - 3 - 3 @ after acquiring 2nd Vassal

If you assume all population growth to be equal it's going to be exceedingly dfficult for the vassal to get both Land AND Population to be greater than 50% of the Master's, short of the Master getting the crap beat out of him in war.

Some leaders (particularly the Aggressive ones) tend to hold out the longest against capitulating, others (Wang Kong, Ramses) just seem to be begging all the time to become Vassals.

Some leaders (particularly the Aggressive ones) tend to hold out the longest against capitulating, others (Wang Kong, Ramses) just seem to be begging all the time to become Vassals.

anyone can look in the xml to tell us what makes them love being vassal ?

Alright - I figured out a way to work this with a non-philosopical leader. You don't have to avoid pottery with this approach (instead avoid masonry). This way requires skipping meditation for quite a while, so it cuts against a religious strategy to some degree. In fact, this way may be slower than just straight up building your economy and researching slowly towards feudalism. For what its worth...


EDIT - in my haste I misread the tech preferences from great artists and the below won't work as well as I had thought. I rewrote it more correctly, and although it certainly won't work as well as using a great engineer, some of you might be able to work it.



1) Treechop the the parthanon after your second city or so to get an early great artist.
2) Avoid researching masonry so that your great artist will not light bulb monotheism. Also avoid meditation so that your great artist will pop feudalism and not philosopy.
3) Prioritize the alphabet. You need to have this tech out of the way when your artist comes so that you can lightbulb feudalism. This is a strong move anyway, as it lets you pick up a bunch of techs you may have skipped.
4) After Alphabet, research drama and trade for or research monarchy and horseback riding. This is where things get attenuated. If you have to research horseback riding you are probably better off skipping the light bulb effort.
5A) If you don't have mathematics, your great artist should now be able to light bulb feudalism.
5B) f you do have mathematics, your great artist will light bulb music. As long as you are the first to music, which you probably will with this research path, your will immediately receive a free great artist which you can use to light bulb feudalism.
6) Hopefully you were already taking your neighbor over so that they can capitulate the minute you get feudalism :)
7) Onto the next neighbor before anyone else gets those dreaded longbowman :lol:

Ragnar sure doesn't :(


I am trying this strategy with Churchill (Prince, Large Fractal, 13 AI). I decided that if you are going to beeline for Feudalism, why not use a leader that can get the most out of that tech? Churchy's Longbows built under Vassalage should be fun, right? Especially when they upgrade to Redcoats :)


I draw a Jungle start with two clams, wheat, some hills but not nearly enough forest. Ocean to my west and south; Jungle to the north, Ragnar to my east. Marble is near a good second city site, pinched by more jungle. I actually ended up using the Oracle to get Feudalism @ 500 BC.

Started building an assault force of Longbows, Axes and Swords (Ragnar had no horses and is defending with a mix of melee troops, very few Archers). His capitol was the second city I captured, but he was not ready to capitulate. I eventually captured 6 more of his remaining 10 cities (including 3 of his "new" capitols ), Shaka declares war on him and he still wouldn't capitulate so I accepted peace. My economy was at a standstill, science rate at zero.

When Shaka had him down to one city he asks to be my vassal (which would have forced me into war with Shaka). When Shaka asked me for "help" I was only too glad to absorb Ragnar's last city. Shaka already wiped out Monty and someone erased Brennus. It's shaping up to be an interesting game, and I do have many, many Drill IV Longbows hanging around waiting for Rifling.

Not a true test of the "early vassal" strategy as one of my neighbors disappeared before I was able to hack through the jungle belt to get to him (Monty), and the other (Ragnar) refused to buckle.

Ah, well. . .

Just shows that some leaders are more willing to capitulate than others...

yeah, Ragnar is an ass most of the time. I vassaled him once with about 5 cities left, he never actually recovered (did take some punches for me in the next war with Mansa). Mansa on the other hand vassaled with 5 marginal cities and turned them around quite well in my last game (right up until he actually started outperforming my expectations and actually winning against Quin).

I tried something with my game i'm playing...I was in advance and had maybe 15 ICBM and was the only to have them...I nuked all the +10 pop cities in the world and bombarded every tiles of all the countries without taking any cities really. No one would capitulate even if they would receive an ICBM per 4-5 turn. they didnt even had the tech to scrub the fallout...SO i guess it really has something to do with the number of cities...

Alright - I figured out a way to work this with a non-philosopical leader. You don't have to avoid pottery with this approach (instead avoid masonry).

1) Treechop the the parthanon after your second city or so to get an early great artist.
2) Avoid researching archery and masonry. Avoid code of laws.
3) Prioritize the alphabet. You need to have this tech out of the way when your artist comes so that you can lightbulb feudalism. This is a strong move anyway, as it lets you pick up a bunch of techs you may have skipped.
4) After the alphabet, trade for or research monarcy. You should also be getting ready to attack your target neighbor just before attaining monarchy.
5) Your great artist will likely be born about the same time you finish monarchy (or maybe even earlier). You should be able to lightbulb feudalism.
6) Hopefully you were already taking your neighbor over so that they can capitulate the minute you get feudalism :)
7) Onto the next neighbor before anyone else gets those dreaded longbowman :lol:

You have to get Drama and Lit first though, correct? Polytheism (assuming Parthenon) opens Lit, Alphabet open Drama. If I'm reading tech preferences correctly, you would also need to avoid Math (not hard at this stage). Drama and Lit would probably be researched as they are not high priorities for AIs.

Just curious... hadn't noticed Artists pop Feudalism b4...

You are correct on all accounts. I came up with that after a long day and wasn't reading carefully ;) I edited my post accordingly.

Also, to make this tactic viable using a great engineer, it is become apparent to me that I have to figure out how to make an AI capitulate with more than one city! I had some luck the first few times I tried this with the great engineer trick, and now suddenly they aren't capitulating. Something must be different. Maybe I am not defending my own cities enough (which I rarely do when I have the great wall and a nice offensive stack).

That's the easy part, if there's six cities take the capital and the next best two, and more often than not the guy will capitulate (maybe raze some scrub city too while you're at it).

Getting the vassal is easy, judging wheter or not he'll be of use later on is the part that takes thought and is dependant highly upon the geography of where ye and he be.

I gave the Great Engineer approach a shot.

Using Alex and Pyramids, I got Feudalism early, but no good candidate neighbors: Julius Caesar, Isabella and Ramses. Also, finances became difficult fast with no gold, silver or gems to make up for the lack of Pottery. Because of that, I held off too long on building my army. By time I strolled into Ramses territory (thinking he'd make the best vassal), he had culture built up. Also, I see now that I was stupid to trade off the Feudalism to Isabella for a bunch of techs. I think she traded it to Ramses, since he suddenly grew longbows. Basically, I botched it.

This makes an interesting start, but I didn't play it right. Attention to timing is critical. Some gems wouldn't hurt. And next time I won't trade Feudalism!

we poped faudalism from oracle on imortal i remember.

I did notice one very interesting item when I tried this a few times.

Even though you are missing the pottery tech, you can use (and grow) cottages built by your neighbors. So, the good enemy cities you take over should pay for themselves if you have the citizens work the existing cottages, which should net 2-4 commerce per tile by this point.

Trying this a second time. BTW I'm playing Prince/Epic/Pangea with the 12-12 Better AI build. This time, I managed to Vassal my nearest neighbor, who happened to be Shaka.

It took two wars with him to get this to happen. I took a couple cities in the first war and got Feudalism with just about the right timing. I actually used my second GE to get Feudalism, the first I used to complete the Pyramids (already had Great Wall).

But Shaka wouldn't Capitulate. Worse, he had a big stack of stuff in the third city; I wasn't going to beat it and it threatened to wipe my invaders. I sued for peace. I came for the second war when I had a few catapults rolling. Took the third city. He wouldn't Capitulate until I was standing outside city number four.

Since then, I've been trying to get him Pleased with me. He's on the good side of Cautious right now, but I have to overcome -6 for declaring war on him twice. As you might guess, he won't trade techs with me, but I'm working on it.

Sounds like it might be better to start the first war post-construction ending it with feudalism and capitulation?

Your main bonus with Shaka being your vassal is that perpencity to develope large volumes of units, particularly if he's acting as a buffer state for you.

I haven't had a problem using this strategy without construction. In fact, I wouldn't delay that long because then you might be facing longbowmen.

I think the key is to scout your target's entire territory to identify all his resource. If you have an enemy without horses or metal, go for him first. Archers don't stand a chance against city raider swordsmen. If your enemy does have the resources, position groups of chariots before declaring war to eliminate those strategic resources immediately once you declare war. Also, start with the capital if at all possible to eliminate their highest product city.

I had great success last night on monarch playing as Rams. I had stone so I built the pyramids planning on getting feudalism that way, but suddenly I noticed that nobody built the oracle and I was about to finish with monarchy. So I tree chopped the oracle on the same turn I finished monarchy and got feudalism.

I was a little late starting my war because I ended up building both wonders. My capital was up to 11 at this point, so I whipped a swordsman every other turn until my capital was down to five. Combining those with my other troops, I geared up to get some vassals!

I positioned my chariots to pillage Carthage's only strategic resources. I noticed his cities were weakly defending with 2-3 archers per, so I positioned my melee troops to take his 2nd and 3rd largest cities right away, then to combine those and take his capital.

I took his top three cities quickly, leaving him with three scrubs. He capitulated. Sadly, and coincidently for him, he got longbowmen the turn or so after he lost his capital and capitulated. This shows that the delay in my war almost made me miss out as he would have ruined me had he gotten longbowmen. Plus, this shows that if I would not have had feudalism to vassalize him, I would have had a bit of a tough time finishing him off.

Next, I made the same preparations against Cyress. Fortunately, I was able to take his capital first due to the shape of his empire, which really knocked the wind out of him. Plus, almost at the same time I took his second largest production city. The next two I took sequentially as I was wearing a little thinner by this time (some of my troops hadn't even fully healed from my first war).

I took his top four cities quickly (including his capital of course), leaving him with four scrubs. He capitulated.

Now I have two vassals with seven cities between them and lots of so-so extra land for them to grow back. They still have a bunch of tech I don't have, and they are willing to trade with me. This is great as compared to wiping them out (where you can't get their tech). This is also great as compared to not finishing them off and only suing for a couple techs and then having them not trade with you. Plus, I now have happiness bonuses in all my cities which address war weariness for my next war.

I noticed that Spain and America still don't have feudalism so I am going to move my troops out and try to make one of them vassals, or at the minimum raze some of their cities and pillage everywhere :)

By the way, I was last in score before I attacked Carthage and first in score with a 20% lead after I finished with Persia :) So chalk this one up as a success.

How much gold does having vassals cost?

Still playing the same game I wrote about above. Have now vassal'd Kublai Kahn and Mansa Musa. At war with Ramses now, who is bordered by me and two of my three client civs.

I'm still having trouble getting techs from my vassals. Had them all convert to the same religion, and had Shaka friendly for a while, but I did something to drop him back to Pleased. Monty is in this game and he's Pleased. Brennus is annoyed and will be my next target after Ramses is finished.

If I vassal the whole world, do I win? I don't think so. I might have to wait for someone to build the UN and get Diplomatic victory.

If you vassal the whole world you will certainly win, probably before that. I believe 50% of vassalized empire size counts towards domination victory.

And if you vassal everybody but don't reach that limit it counts as a conquest victory. Interesting thread. :goodjob:

Huh, seems like another Warlords strategy. I have to get the money to buy Warlords quite quikly:)

Tulx

Okay, to follow up my post where I had cyress as a vassal with four cities and carthage as a vassal with four cities...

I noticed that spain (2nd in score) still didn't have longbow, so I launched my attack on two of her larger cities. At the same time, I bribed alexander to declare war on her other side, and both of my vassals declared war on her. A nice four way war.

I quickly took the two cities, then I congregated my forces to take her second largest city (size 12). Then, a razed a size three city and started towards her capital.

Just as I was preparing to take down her size 17 capital, she got feudalism and upgraded to longbowmen :sad: I decided I had better sue for peace to avoid heavy losses...

BUT!!!

Much to my suprize, when I went to talk to her she was willing to capitulate!!! Yes, she still had a size 17 capital, a size 7 commerce city, another size 5 city and a size 1 city. So basically, she had eight cities before the war and I took the 2nd, 3rd and 4th largest and burned down one scrub and she capitulated.

Now I have three vassals :king:

Also, both cyress and carthage will trade their tech with me, but like all civs, they won't share it for a while (until it is more commonly known). E.g. after they keep the monopoly the tech turns from red to white indicating that they will trade.

I have cyress researching paper (60 turns), carthage researching compass (18 turns), and my strongest vassal spain researching civil service (15 turns or so).


Greece and america remain. At this point, I could just consolidate my empire and let my vassals fill in all the spaces. I have a decently healthy SE economy where my research is at 0% due to maintance costs but the scientists in each city are netting me a new tech every 10 turns or so on epic.

Maybe I'll just build catipults and vassalize greece and america too despite their longbowmen. They are pretty small as they were the weakest civs before I started my wars. Should only need to take 2-3 cities for each to get them to capitulate.

I've been testing this strategy on Monarch with a few different leaders. I must say that the oracle/feudalism slingshot on Monarch is pretty unreliable (I'm getting it about 1 in 5 tries with the oracle built around 1200 BC). Even if I do manage the slingshot the effort will lead to me being underpowered and hence by the time I've built up an army capable of wiping my nearest opponent there is a good risk that they will get feudalism during the war (of course, twice my target was Mansa Musa and he techs like crazy).

Hence I'd say that on Monarch the best strategy is indeed the philosophical/great wall/engineer slingshot, and since one is avoiding pottery the pyramids should be the wonder of choice to get those GE points (its faster anyway with double the GP points)...

I'm working on rushing the pyramids in my capital while expanding as fast as I can and then starting the war as quickly as possible well before I have feudalism, getting it towards the end of the war and then vassalizing my opponent. Unfortunately this strategy is pretty much stone dependent...

On prince this strategy is very nice indeed, though.. the oracle slingshot is almost 100% reliable with the added bonus that bureaucracy is much cheaper if one has both code of laws AND feudalism...

Without wonders/slingshots this whole thing is kind of iffy (since the whole map will be filled under normal circumstances, giving the vassal no room to recover). Perhaps a modification to whole thing is expanding as normal, then take a vassal and then declare war on a neighbor to you and your vassal, razing all small cities close by to the vassal, giving them room to expand...

Just to conclude my saga... Had intended to go after Brennus once I finished Ramses, but Monty got unfriendly and attacked as soon as he had Infantry. He got pretty far ahead of me in tech, my vassals not being amenable to trading techs with me.

I held him off, got some nice GG points (due to Great Wall), got peace and worked on Assembly Line and Artillery. That was a bit of a pause in the game, one where Mansa started going toward Space Race. I redirected him along a line that would get him to Mass Media/UN, while I started a city on Apollo, just in case.

My vassals and I wiped out Monty in a few turns, though by then he had Marines, but no Tanks. Meanwhile, I realized that Brennus was going for a Cultural Victory as his cultural boundaries were getting huge. Check of the graph confirmed he was way off the chart. Declared war on him as soon as Monty went to zero. Took a couple of cities and got a Domination Victory in 1914.

The vassals were pretty helpful. Shaka lagged way behind in tech. I kept feeding him some, but not all, in the hopes he'd trade when he got one I didn't have, but that never worked. Mansa and Kublai were more powerful, being able to nearly keep pace tech-wise. They built units like Frigates and Destroyers that I wouldn't have bothered with, then softened up some coastal cities just in time for my forces to arrive. So friendly.

Maybe Vassal States isn't so bad after all. ;)

I have cyress researching paper (60 turns), carthage researching compass (18 turns), and my strongest vassal spain researching civil service (15 turns or so).

This is what aggravates me, I can pull off the war effort etc etc but when I read statements like that, it just shows me I could be doing way way more. Could you post a save of this? I'd like to examine how you have the specialists set up and so forth.

Regardless of how, very nice.

Greece and america remain. At this point, I could just consolidate my empire and let my vassals fill in all the spaces. I have a decently healthy SE economy where my research is at 0% due to maintance costs but the scientists in each city are netting me a new tech every 10 turns or so on epic.

Maybe I'll just build catipults and vassalize greece and america too despite their longbowmen. They are pretty small as they were the weakest civs before I started my wars. Should only need to take 2-3 cities for each to get them to capitulate.

It's my belief that it's easier to capitulate a civ when you already have 1 or 2 vassals. I have the feeling that your power and your vassals power add to frighten your opponent. Since you already have 3, it should be easy to finish the weaklings.

I too believe Cabert is correct, that your's and your vassals relative strengths are considerred as one in the equation.