Bonus culture against vassal?

guermantes

Emperor wannabe
Joined
Oct 16, 2012
Messages
141
Hi, there are so many things I still don't know about this game.
Here's a new one, perhaps due to the fact that I recently have started turning on vassal states, so it is a slightly new mechanic to me. Anyway, I conquered two if Justinian's cities, actually more, but these are the two ones deepest into his territory and closest to his starting point and capital. I vassalized him and kept the cities although I expected that they would be culture-crushed from Constantinople and Adrianople. But I am pushing back his borders like crazy. 25 turns later my fat cross is even touching Adrianople. Both the red circles in the screenshot have 0% Roman culture and 99% Byzantine culture. What gives! Is it because he is my vassal that I am pushing back his culture like warm butter?

 
You push back his culture ONLY in the sense that your BFC will always be available to you (well, always available as long as the only thing blocking it is your vassal's culture). Weird things can happen, iirc, when there are 3 people vying for one tile and one is a vassal of the other.
BUT, when it comes to your city being "pressured" by culture (ie REVOLT), you still experience FULL pressure; those cities you took over can and will still revolt as if he wasn't your vassal! So be very wary of that.
 
In the case of a tile dispute, the master will always take precedence for control of the tile over the vassal, regardless of culture. This is why I love vassalizing my neighbors- I never need to worry about their culture swamping mine and cutting me off from my fat cross resources.
 
traius is exactly right. You will get all land in your BFC but will still receive revolt risk if the underlying present culture of the vassal is greater than like 50%...the higher the more revolt risk. You can see this info easily on the culture bar in the bottom left of the city screen.

Your culture will boost slowly so build a few culture buildings and maybe build culture for a while. Station some units in the city for a while to reduce revolt risk until your culture builds up to 50%. Stronger/newer units reduce risk more.

Honestly, if cities have a lot of revolt risk and don't have much going for them, it might be best to gift them back to your vassal. Treb and Thess look like fairly lame cities unless you don't have horses otherwise.
 
The advantage of this system is that you you don't have to worry about losing tiles to your vassal, the disadvantage is that your city can go into perpetual revolt preventing you from doing anything with those tiles.
 
One note--in Warlords, vassals don't cede control of BFC tiles to their masters. That mechanic was introduced in BtS.
 
One note--in Warlords, vassals don't cede control of BFC tiles to their masters. That mechanic was introduced in BtS.

Vassals also have the same tech trade thresholds as non-vassals in Warlords. Annoying as heck and I always forget each time I take one. ( I play WOTMs)
 
At the moment both cities can't revolt, because they are outside the culture radius of a Byzantine city. However, as soon as Constantinople or Adrianople pop their borders, you can get revolts again if you don't have enough troops in Thessalonica or Trebizond.
 
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