i'm enjoying Warlords a lot, even tho the 'who should i be' internal debate is even more terrible given more civs, new traits, and UBs.

i still have a lot to learn about managing/exploiting to my own advantage diplomatic relations of my own with other civs, and how to play them against each other. add in vassals and my brain just kind of melts.

i did not see any threads in the War Academy that deal with vassals (at least in the title). i have read Crighton's "Explaining the Vassal System" thread, that's been useful for grasping the mechanics and some of the implications. i'm also reading or have read some of the SG games to see how vassals impacted gameplay there (both vassals of the player and civs that ran to another civ to volunteer as a vassal). i recently started reading "Berzerks01 - Be My Vassal (Part 2)". i remember the India/Asoka ALC where Mehmed vassaled himself to Ragnar after Sisuitil had mostly wiped Mehmed off the continent, and thinking that would drive me nuts if it had happened to me.

i play with vassal states off, i always have since i'd read about Warlords before i got it and could tell it would be too complex/frustrating for me at first. once when i forgot i forgot to turn it off, rammy and huayna were on my continent and rammy asked at least 4 times to be my vassal while i was kicking huayna's butt, i never did accept his offer.

of course turning off that option this leads to me completely missing a new feature in Warlords that for many makes the game more interesting and complex. does anyone have pointers to threads that would help me to learn more about the whole vassal thing, and how to use it to my advantage and/or how to deal with the implications/frustrations when a bad guy vassals himself to a more powerful bad guy? i'd appreciate that, thanks!

Check here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193747

i did not see any threads in the War Academy that deal with vassals (at least in the title). i have read Crighton's "Explaining the Vassal System" thread, that's been useful for grasping the mechanics and some of the implications. i'm also reading or have read some of the SG games to see how vassals impacted gameplay there (both vassals of the player and civs that ran to another civ to volunteer as a vassal). i recently started reading "Berzerks01 - Be My Vassal (Part 2)". i remember the India/Asoka ALC where Mehmed vassaled himself to Ragnar after Sisuitil had mostly wiped Mehmed off the continent, and thinking that would drive me nuts if it had happened to me.

Anyways, I think that with most things in cIV it's often better to just TRY it. Also, I think I saw a threat in which people were mainly saying to get a good relationship with your vassal (pleased) and they'll trade techs etc easily. One way this can be achieved by having the shared enemy bonus.

I've updated the article and will be including saved games for case studies tobe download later this week, just click my signature for now and read the revised portions if you like. Or just ask me or post a question in the forums about and somebody will genereally respond pretty quickly (try the quick question thread in the general discussion sections which is where the unbelevieably fanatical civ types tend to answer questions in depth).