I'm playing a Prince level world map with Qin, and running away with it. The minute I got feudalism Mansa popped up begging to be my vassal (seems to happen a lot on world maps), and I accepted.

The problem is, apart from a very minor score boost he's been completely useless for me. I gifted him a load of techs but he's still rock bottom for score. After a flash on inspiration, I gifted him a settler so he could expand from his 1-city 2-pop existence.... and he sat it in his capital. Finally, a few hundred years later, he's settled it, altho the capital hasn't grown at all in that time.

Is the anything I can do to force him to wake up and start playing properly? There's a fair bit of Africa still uncolonised although Hatty and Saladin are ever encroaching, and it'd be nice for my vassal to get at least a few cities under his belt.

Demand all his resources.

I once had Frederick do basically the same thing, and on prince level, as well. He did actually send a few troops to help me in a war at one point, but mostly just sat there.

1-city 2-pop existence? There's no reason to accept a vassal like that. Just put the poor bugger out of his misery. Only take vassals that are powerful enough to contribute research, resources, or wartime aid, or take vassals to speed up victory. Your vassal will probably be useless for the remainder of your current game unless you can get him to break away and then conquer him.

My opinion on those vassals is that they are never worth it. Your bad enough where you come begging to me for help, your no use to me.

you might want to gift him a galley and an archer with the settler.

he's providing you by giving you one happiness in each city

Voluntary vassals normally aren't worth the effort. They are normally too weak/too stupid to be useful

The only exception that I had was in a Warlords game where Ragnar was fighting a war vs Bismark ( Fractal Standart map, I was in the middle of a big continent with 5 civs, Bismarck to my left , Ragnar to my right ). Bismark had smashed Ragnar SoD and he turned to me asking for protection. As I was preparing to cav rush bismark anyway I accepted and gave some obsolete units to Ragnar ( a Fin vassal is always useful for upgrades :p ). Together we smashed Bismark, then Liz and to end Ramesses ( the only one that gave some fight... ), leaving the whole continent to us ( he took the losses, I took the cities :devil: ).

As all of this kind of stories, it ended badly... I was some tiles away of a Dom win and then Ragnar decided that knowing Rifling was enough to protect him and decided to break free. He choosed unwisely.... :devil:

Netherless he was useful...

On this: let Mansa die, settle 2 cities in Madagascar, make a colony and gift him cities in S Africa.

Don't gift settlers and wait, instead found cities in bad terrain [close to vassal] yourself to claim needed resources, then liberate these cities and demand/trade for the bonuses.

Taking whatever kind of vassal has become rare for me. I want the 'we yearn to join our motherland'-:mad: to go away so I simply kill him off rather than capitulate. Once I think I'm made enough gains with the war, it's not worth to vassal him anymore.

Exception: he's got a huge sprawled empire over all kinds of crappy islands. In that case, I'll have him as a vassal because I'm NOT going to kick him out of every stupid little 1-tile island on the map, only to have them resettled by the next target.

Vassals on intercontinental forays are pretty useful. If it's a tiny voluntary one, you have somewhere you can shuttle troops for an attack (although I recommend attacking off boats or if you can't get amphibious just landing next to cities in most cases).

They can also capitulate after nasty wrap-around raids of every single naval city. You can hang onto these if giving them back gives the AI too much land or pop, but if you gift them back you basically have a potentially powerful ally on that land, not to mention a MAJOR distraction to any other targets on that continent.

They're pretty good on pangaea too as they'll spam troops and usually block off potential opponents with their cities and culture and distract enemy SoDs.

As has been mentioned though, voluntary vassals are rarely useful and tend to suck, although sometimes they can be useful (like, for diplo win votes or getting land/pop needed for domination when you're close effortlessly).

Cheers for all the input, guess he'll just be useless all game. I like the happiness bonus, so I'll leave things as they are, but I won't bother putting myself out if he gets attacked. I was hoping that with some prompting and gifts he could work on alternate research for me, but I guess that's not going to happen!