Vassals: On or off?

I’ve turned off vassals in my last couple of games, and I’m really enjoying the dynamic of the game without them. Mid-game wars between AIs are conclusive, more often – I just witnessed a 13-city Suliaman get eliminated by Genghis (with a little help from Monty) over a few hundred years. You can make peace without worrying about your enemy peacevassaling to someone else, but the threat of an outside intervention if you redeclare war after 10 turns is still there.

My question is: does this change make the game easier or harder, overall? As I see it, the arguments are like this:

For “harder”:
- Domination victories are more difficult
- Conquest victories are much more difficult.
- “Diplomation” (winning Diplomacy due to vassals voting for you) victory is eliminated
- Possibility of runaway AI (due to conquering neighbours rather than vassaling them) is heightened.

For “easier”
- AIs can’t peacevassal to your ally when you’re at war with them
- AIs may overvalue Feudalism slightly
- Backdoor culture victories by vassals are eliminated
- “Diplomation” victories by AI also eliminated.
- AI tech pace slows, due to more AIs being eliminated as opposed to vassaled.
- AIs less likely to work together (due to lack of vassal/master arrangements, they're less likely to be 'forced' to).

Thoughts?

That isn't the most important question though is it? The question should be, which way do you prefer. It seems no vassals float your boat. For me I prefer to keep the vassaling option- vassalizing your enemy effectively puts their land and resources under your control without the burden of managing them and your vassals make a good target for corporations.

Kind of sitting on the fence on this one.....

For one, the economic (if properly leveraged) and political benefits are nice.....

On the other hand, you may find your expansion and war plans to be foiled by your vassals trying to `help` (i.e. your vassal is desperately trying to settle any piece of land that opens up..... even if it`s in the middle of your empire.... or your vassal`s SoD razing an AI city just before you capture it.... )

Similar to TH's statements above. Additionally, I usually play modded with a variety of map conditions as well as game options. TBH, vassels get kind of interesting if you have REV option checked and are playing on a 32+ civ GEM map.

Having tried it both ways, I long ago shut off Vassals and have enjoyed playing that way since then.

However, I have to add that the things you list under both harder and easier don't always apply. To a great extent they depend on the map. I just finished a marathon huge fractal game that was really close as to who would win right up to the end.

Twelve civs (me and eleven others): Shaka isolated on his own large island; Washington and me semi-isolated on our own large island; all the rest on the main land mass, far from both islands, which were far from one another.

As a result by the time of Astronomy, the three of us on islands were far behind in tech. Details left out, it was a game of trying to catch up in tech for nearly the entire time. Charlie looked like he was going to launch his spaceship while I was so far behind that I could not even start building. However he decided to go for domination and never researched fusion. Then as I was building Apollo, Frederick took the spaceship lead. Meanwhile, Charlie is eating up his neighbors. Finally, I am building all the parts but have most of them still unfinished, while Frederick only has one part to go. I got lucky, he must have been building it in a piss poor city because many turns later, I launched and he still hasn't finished it. By then Charlie has all the pop he needs for domination and is only 4% short on land. He has 30 turns to get that 4% before my starship arrives. He wipes out everyone else on the mainland, except Frederick and gets to where he only needs 1% more land and has a half dozen cities that he has taken which will soon come out of revolt and finish the 1%. So, each turn I'm in suspense… will he hit the 1% this time??? As it turns out, I get there first! Just luck really, but it sure made the game a cliff hanger.

s.bernbaum said:

-Snip-

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Could always nuke a couple coastal cities > send some marines to raze

Turned it off years ago and never looked back.
It was broken when they released it and it's still broken.

6K Man said:

My question is: does this change make the game easier or harder, overall? As I see it, the arguments are like this:

For “harder”:
- Domination victories are more difficult
- Conquest victories are much more difficult.
- “Diplomation” (winning Diplomacy due to vassals voting for you) victory is eliminated

Click to expand...

This explains very well why I always play with vassals on. Switching it off makes it harder to reach the victory conditions I am most likely to pursue.

Let me preface this by saying that the whole point to a game is to enjoy it. That's why they put the options there! I used play every game without barbarians or tech brokering because I enjoyed it more. Now, I enjoy the challenge of having them on. That being said....

IMO, without vassals, warmonger AI are more likely to either overextend wars to try to conquer (absolutely obliterating their tech pace) or continuously declare on a rival that they are unable to conquer. This polarizes AI diplomacy, kills tech pace, often causes multiple DoW where there wouldn't normally be (from degraded diplomacy), and also weakens the AI itself because it is programmed to the mindset that vassals are available (as mentioned in the comment about weighting Feudalism too heavily). I've noticed in games where I turned vassals off, the AI is usually slowed down in tech race unless there are ZERO warmongers on the landmass or if there is a religious lovefest (which means vassals/no vassals has no difference).

When vassals are on, I've noticed a decent percentage of my games see AI becoming friendly vassals (versus capitulates) and being able to do so increases the complexity of the entire political landscape. Future targets can, and often do, become friendly vassals of civs that I am unprepared to challenge (and are also often Pleased/Friendly with me which I worked to get them to!)

However, the conquest victory condition becomes nearly impossible to do with any efficiency when vassals are turned off. You basically have to take or raze every city on the map. Domination becomes a bit more difficult, too, but since vassals only 1/2 count towards your land & population, it may only slightly delay that victory. The peaceful victories become easier, though, because the AI has a lot more work to do in order to become violent enough to win the game.

blitzkrieg1980 said:

Domination becomes a bit more difficult, too, but since vassals only 1/2 count towards your land & population, it may only slightly delay that victory.

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Actually it delays it quite a lot. If you have a high power rating, which you usually have with a technologically superior army, then you can often vassal your opponent in the first few turns of a war, sometimes even the first turn. Gift them their cities back, you have half of their lands accounted for and your army can move towards the next target. Without vassals you'd have to conquer a lot of cities and wait for them to come out of revolt, and if you don't kill the AI off completely, you probably will be missing a lot of tiles because of their culture.

But as you said, it's all down to preferences and how you like to play the game. I'm mostly interested in the teching and economical part of the game, playing to reach my target tech for conquering the world as soon as possible. After this, the endgame is usually just a chore that has to be done to get to the victory screen.

elitetroops said:

After this, the endgame is usually just a chore that has to be done to get to the victory screen.

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Too too true. . And you are right about the domination victory. I just don't find it to be delayed nearly as much as conquest which is sooooo much longer without vassals

ThorHammerz said:

Could always nuke a couple coastal cities > send some marines to raze

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I don't like nukes so I have modded my game to make Manhattan project impossible to build. To achieve my launch, I had most of my cities building either gold or research. After the launch, I built carriers and marines and did raze a couple of his cities but, the influence of the inland cities only took away a handful of tiles from his total and by then it was only a turn or two from the end, one way or the other. But the point was that the game stayed unresolved until the last turn.

I personally choose vassaling. One of the most usable feature is that I can tell my vassals to "Prepare for war with X". This optimizes their build queue, and I can quickly destroy an enemy with his/her vassals.

(Not sure if it's standard BtS or due to K-Mod, though).

Never heard of that, must be K-Mod. That's a great feature btw, by the sound of it.

I keep Vassals off but turn Permanent Alliances on.

Mec AntiKythera said:

Never heard of that, must be K-Mod. That's a great feature btw, by the sound of it.

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Honestly, it's very helpful.

For instance: During one of my games, I'm next door to Huayna Capac. Washington is my peacevassal, he's next door to Suleyman, HC's vassal. Between me & HC and W & S, there's Justinian, IIRC. So, if I declare war, I didn't have to face Suley's army, and Wash didn't have to defend from HC.

I told Wash to prepare for war with Suleyman, while I prepare for war with HC.

About 12 turns later, neither HC nor Suley were on the map anymore. Suley got destroyed first, followed a couple of turns later by HC. We became the leading civs of the world. Understandably, Wash ended the vassal relationship, but I immediately offered Defensive Pact.

Our relation remained Friendly until my UN Victory