peaceful vassal? why bother

Does anyone ever accept a peaceful vassalage offer? I cant seem to find any possible reason to ever accept one.

I've accepted them twice just to check it out & the 1st time Manu Masa offered to become my vassal, we were on very friendly terms ( like +15 or so ) but he broke away when Monty declared war on me.

The 2nd time was last night, I was preparing to invade China & had massed a huge invasion force on their border when Churchill offered to become my vassal the turn before I was going to declare on China. I thought, hey why not he can help me mop up China, so I accept & I'm immediately forced to declare war on Mongolia! Woops this is my own stupid fault since I should of checked to see if he was at war. So Mongolia is on my border on the other side of my empire & I now have stacks of his UU pillaging my precious towns!
I'm forced to give up my China invasion to deal with the Mongolians. I eventually repel the mongols & capture a city & raze 2 more & call a truce. Now I regroup & prepare to take on China again, the wasted time has allowed China to tech up so now its going to be a much tougher war.

I declare war on China, 1 turn later I get a message that Churchill has broken free as my vassal!

Also does anyone else HATE protective civs? If I'm surrounded by them early I simply give up the idea of an early war. In my China invasion I had 2 city raider 3 macemen attack with 70%+ odds & die to the same longbowman twice in a row, not only that but that longbowman lost zero health in the 2 battles!

I haven't tried vassalage yet, but:

tuckerthecat said:

In my China invasion I had 2 city raider 3 macemen attack with 70%+ odds & die to the same longbowman twice in a row, not only that but that longbowman lost zero health in the 2 battles!

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I believe that there is STILL a bug in the combat odds... it does not take first strikes into account. So those odds for you were really a lot less than 70%.

It's nice to be on the flip side though... last night I was playing as a protective Civ (Japan), and I took a city guarded by 4 regular archers with 4 Drill II crossbowmen (each with a combat odds showing less than 30%).

I really wish Firaxis would fix that bug!

jray said:

I believe that there is STILL a bug in the combat odds... it does not take first strikes into account. So those odds for you were really a lot less than 70%.

It's nice to be on the flip side though... last night I was playing as a protective Civ (Japan), and I took a city guarded by 4 regular archers with 4 Drill II crossbowmen (each with a combat odds showing less than 30%).

I really wish Firaxis would fix that bug!

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Actual experiments in worldbuilder indicate that (as of patch 1.61) displayed combat odds are correct, including those involving first strikes. Testing with large numbers of combats produce results that fit the presented odds very well, and so far there has been no evidence (which anecdotes are not) that there is still a problem in the combat odds calculator.

tuckerthecat said:

Does anyone ever accept a peaceful vassalage offer? I cant seem to find any possible reason to ever accept one.

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1. The vassal could have some resources I do not that would prove beneficial.
2. Going for Domination or conquest and desiring to save units and focus on a stronger civ.
3. When the potential vassal is in between me and a strong civ, they take the first shock wave of attacks during a war with the stronger civ.


Those are 3 reasons why I have sometimes acccepted a peacetime vassal.


Part Deux: I believe the combat odds to be accurate.

Or trading all your resources for gold to slow their tech rate down. They usually keep the deals when they leave too.

I found it really useful. I was Russia on Rhye's 24 civ map. I convinced the Vikings and Mali to peacefully join me. This gave me a HUGE empire. Mali had all of East Africa, the Vikings had all of Scandinavia + other various colonies. Also, they gave me a nice sphere of influence to counter the Egyptians.

BTW-Also, I like playing historically. SO I just like the feel when I have vassals.

Odds are +-1% in my experience. I have an excel spreadsheet on my laptop that I track them with and i've had over 2400 battles. actually, it's 78.8% has been my average odds of winning. I have won 78.09%.

I dont like the combat odds at all. I was fooling around with worldbuilder and gave myself a tank just to see if the game was realistic in the sense that it wouldnt get destroyed by a warrior or archer. I sent it to attack a city with an archer in it and the tank lost. I dont know about you but arrows cant exactly kill a tank in real life.

I wouldve also liked to see a unit upgrade like armor peircing bullets so gun units could do a little more damage to tanks.

RussianRoulette said:

I dont like the combat odds at all. I was fooling around with worldbuilder and gave myself a tank just to see if the game was realistic in the sense that it wouldnt get destroyed by a warrior or archer. I sent it to attack a city with an archer in it and the tank lost. I dont know about you but arrows cant exactly kill a tank in real life.

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In real-life, a tank isn't just going to waltz up to a city, see some archers standing there waving flags that read "Enemy", shoot them, and declare victory over the city. In real life, the archers can hide, and when the tank crew gets out to have lunch, take a leak, stretch, or go to sleep, the archers can ambush them. It's not very likely, but it could happen.

RussianRoulette said:

I wouldve also liked to see a unit upgrade like armor peircing bullets so gun units could do a little more damage to tanks.

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There is. It's called ambush, and it gives a 25% bonus against armored units.

Well whatever i just dont see how that would work out. I just dont like how its called ambush when armor peircing would be more effective in real life.