View Full Version : Hard mod: useful vassals


Yakk
Mar 20, 2007, 02:41 PM
What if vassals where useful?

To make vassals useful:
1> The vassal loses 2/3 of their excess gold, culture and science production. Half of this loss (1/3) is transferred to you, the other 1/3 is gone.

The culture taken is split into half: half is spread over your own cities, and boosts your cultural borders and deposits vassal culture and population near your cities, the other half is used to create empire-culture in their cities (creating empire-population within their cities).

2> Your vassal gains all technologies for which you have a child technology automatically. So if you have alphabet and writing, your vassals get writing automatically.
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3> Your vassal cannot trade technology away. Your vassal can buy technology with cash if it wants.

4> Your vassal must accept 1 resource for 1 resource trades so long as they are missing the 1 resource you are offering.

5> Your vassal must accept any technology trade where your value is at least as good as their value in raw cost.

6> You can choose to levy troops from your vassals. When doing so,
33% of the troops your vassal builds are spawned as your units instead of theirs. This is completely random.

7> You can kick a vassal out. Doing so is a 20 turn process, during which you gain none of the above advantages, and extra unhappiness is generated in any city based off of any vassal cultural influence.

...

This would make having a vassal empire very useful -- useful enough that finishing a war is probably silly, and becoming a vassal really painful.

Next, steal ideas from the revolution mod:
Occasionally, parts of your empire will request to splinter off and become a vassal state. Refusing this results in significant increased unhappiness in the region, and possibly some annoying rebels spawning.

Occasionally, Vassal states will spontaneously demand independance.

When a civilization offers capitulation, they will sometimes request cities back in exchange for the capitulation.

Vassals are willing to accept being given cities near their own cultural borders that they think they can defend, just like other AIs.

...

So now you can create a true empire, where you have capitulated states that fund your civilization's power and growth.

If you grow hugely, far away colonies can become vassal states of your empire. You don't mind all that much: it keeps the cost of your empire down, and you can always tax them.

Until, of course, a bunch of your overseas colonies decide to revolt.

Such a mod would be a grand project. I'll see if I can get withdraw, insane barbarians, and split-tech working fully, and then I might steal some revolution mod code and see what can be done.

Macmatt
Mar 20, 2007, 03:07 PM
This seems like a really good mod. If you can do it I will definitely download. :D

cotdamn
Mar 28, 2007, 03:54 AM
this is a really good idea, the vassal system needs to be improved. also, if you develop a good enough relationship with a vassal, they should be allowed to be incorporated into your empire, either by permenant alliances (you should be able to have more than one) or just becoming part of your empire. This should have diplomatic penalties because of the immense growth in power.

sarcastinator
Mar 28, 2007, 08:34 AM
I like this idea a lot.

Here's another suggestion: for the love of Bob, vassalage shouldn't depend on size and population. Were the British Isles bigger and more populous than India?

Yakk
Mar 28, 2007, 10:23 AM
The point of this is you wouldn't have a huge empire -- you would be a collection of states. The AI would manage most of your empire, and you could levy taxes on them for the central empire.

This allows "real world" scale civilizations, without the "real world" tediousness. :)

What if we counted 1/2 of your other vassals' population (or some other function: 1/2 of your largest, 1/3 of your next largest, 1/4 of your next, etc) and area as part of your area and population? That allows the British Isles to vassalize India.

Of course, if parts of your empire start breaking free, it can start a cascade...

cotdamn
Mar 28, 2007, 03:17 PM
how about allowing vassals to share resources? that would eliminate the need for all the 1 to 1 trading, and would provide an incentive to become a vassal if you are a weak power. Capitulation in war shouldn't be the only reason for becoming a vassal, especially for a human player.

also, mercantilist civs should be able to have trade routes with their vassals