any tricks to getting techs out of vassals?

Is there some trick to this? I vassalized Asoka and he won't give me any of his techs Do I need to get him to pleased? Or do I have to tech something he doesn't have and trade?

Vassal's ought to trade you their techs/resources no problems once they're under your control, irrespective of their attitude to you.

You need to have a tech that they don't though to make a mutual trade, so make your Vassal(s) tech things that you aren't aiming for.

Other than that did you start the game with Tech Trading disabled as that *might* make a difference (I don't play with trading disabled so I'm not 100% sure how it works in that event)?

The AI won't just give you techs for free unless you Demand them, but that could lead to a further war so beware...!

>You need to have a tech that they don't though to make a mutual trade, so make your Vassal(s) tech things that you aren't aiming for.

He's way ahead of me in techs though... I just switched to police state and now all my cities are building knights. my tech per turn is like 32, lol. I think he's the tech leader.

Threatening him with destruction doesn't seem to work...

I should probably get around to fixing my economy at some point.

Heh, in scenario's like that I'd be tempted to send Asoka to Rifling/Military Tradition/Steel etc and then gift him all the knights (so he can upgrade them to Cavalry at his own cost). Get him to attack someone for you while you sit back and tech a bit.

If he's far ahead in tech try and get him aiming to military techs at least, you don't want him winning a Space / Culture victory.

How is everyone else doing in techs? Are they also far ahead of you? Medieval troops can still do a decent job up until the AI gets Rifling so maybe there's an opportunity to pick on someone weak?

Ironlungs76 said:

How is everyone else doing in techs? Are they also far ahead of you? Medieval troops can still do a decent job up until the AI gets Rifling so maybe there's an opportunity to pick on someone weak?

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Its Immortal diff standard pangaea 960ad... I'm actually the only one with guilds so far... Haven't traded it to asoka yet, I've got him teching engineering now and then i'll trade him guilds for it i guess? but then i'll be out of tech trades and he's got like philosophy + drama + theology + compass + civil service a bunch of other stuff I don't have and way more tech per turn.

remaining civs are:

Huayna Capac (me) 2164 points... going for conquest victory...
Tokugawa 1804 points (behind in tech but lots of land and production, this guy will be trouble. I'm saving him for last since toku is usually not a tech threat...)
Justinian I 1278 points (stuck in corner building wonders, has a few techs i don't have. not close to gunpowder. I should probably attack him but then my econ would go even more because i need his trade routes.)
sitting bull 889 points (currently at war with this guy and took half his cities, but getting bogged down cause he has an annoying amount of war elephants)


I don't think this game will be hard to win, I just was wondering if there's any way of convincing an AI vassal to gift you techs. Never really had this problem on emperor difficulty, lol.

Gift them to you? No, not that I know of.

Why don't you steal those techs from your vassal(s) ?
You don't want your vassal(s) trading military techs to future vassals.

Tatran said:

Why don't you steal those techs from your vassal(s) ?
You don't want your vassal(s) trading military techs to future vassals.

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hmmmm. I never use espionage that much. Might be a good idea. Although in this case, i'm not really worried about anyone trading with tokugawa (does this ever happen?)

also, is it even possible to vassalize sitting bull? i've never had a game where he capitulated, lol.

Sitting Bull and Genghis Khan have the highest resistance to capitulation.

as tartan says,they will capitulate though,especially if you have vassals.

Tech trade thing though is annoying.If they are that far ahead only thing you can do is influence their tech route to coincide with your own route,so you can trade from one civ to the next.Spys are cheap and another way of getting the techs.Using your vassals tech lead by gifting obsolete troops to it are a way to get those techs,depending on what techs the enemy has.

Unfortunately you still have to pay the market price when trading with your vassals.

Tatran said:

Sitting Bull and Genghis Khan have the highest resistance to capitulation.

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Any chance you could elaborate? As i've never seen anything about AI personalities directly interfering with capitulations. Indirectly however, several factors can affect how long it takes, for example the unit build probability and time spent Refusing To Talk.

The most important factors are that you must have beyond a certain amount of net war success, and the AI you are trying to capitulate must have below the worlds average power. The latter can be very problematic as even 1 city vassals with no units contribute to average power, and in doing so basically make it impossible to capitulate anyone else!

Ghpstage said:

Any chance you could elaborate?

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It's there, GHP. there is coding for it. Regardless, GK and SB can be capped...sometimes easily. there are a few factors in play.

As for vassal techs, just go into to Diplo screen and guide their teching. Keep them teching stuff you don't want to bother teching yourself and then trade for it. You should generally always excel your vassal tech wise soon after. Usually, I just gift them a bunch of techs and may bribe them from trading with certain enemies (although I think the mechanic behind stop trades for AIs is grossly imbalanced)

There's no advantage on tech trading with vassals. The only advantage really is that you can control what a vassal techs which allows you to basically control the trading with them. (In Warlords, it's much much worse.)

lymond said:

It's there, GHP. there is coding for it. Regardless, GK and SB can be capped...sometimes easily. there are a few factors in play.

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Thanks, and interesting.

Think i've found it now, iVassalPowerModifier. Which modifies the value of the potential capitulatee's power before comparing to the average power....

Interesting, I'd always assumed that SB and GK were the hardest of them all to Cap, they both seem to fight to the bitter end no matter what, but I always put this down to losses rather than an in-built game mechanic formula.

try researching something they don't have.

Finally won by domination. Toko had like 10 units per city and two different 20+ stacks... took forever to kill him >.< I hate games where you've clearly already won but you still have to spend 2 hours winning.

I ended up just moving back to representation and teching all of the stuff myself + some trading with asoka. Wasn't that hard to get up to 500+ tech per turn. Got all the way to cavalry before toku finally died.

I was hoping i could just not tech at all and then extort techs out of asoka all game, lol, but apparently that's impossible. threatening him doesn't work very well.

nate45 said:

Finally won by domination. Toko had like 10 units per city and two different 20+ stacks... took forever to kill him >.< I hate games where you've clearly already won but you still have to spend 2 hours winning.

I ended up just moving back to representation and teching all of the stuff myself + some trading with asoka. Wasn't that hard to get up to 500+ tech per turn. Got all the way to cavalry before toku finally died.

I was hoping i could just not tech at all and then extort techs out of asoka all game, lol, but apparently that's impossible. threatening him doesn't work very well.

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Yeah once they capitulate you're making an agreement with them that you'll stop kicking their butt with the condition that they will give you whatever resources you ask for and will willingly trade their techs. You also have the authority over them to dictate what techs they research, but they aren't required to give you techs after they've capitulated.

On a related topic, in my current game my vassal won't research what I ask her to research. I have not seen that before, usually they always tech whatever I ask them to tech, immediately. In this case, however, I ask Elizabeth to tech Steel, she says "I'll switch right away," and she keeps teching Steam Power. Is this normal behavior or just a quirk?