"You've grown too powerful for us"

Here's one I don't quite understand... In my current game, I've gotten a huge lead and rather than take forever to win via space, I've sent my stack o' death to conquer the other continent and leave my current continent in peace. The other continent is Charlemagne and Darius. Charlemagne is Darius' master, but after a the war starts for a bit Darius renounces. Charlemagne Capitulates to me. I ask Darius to be my vassal and he says: "you've grown too powerful for us." What a lame reason. Now I have to send mt stack and capture a couple cities. Likewise, the other civs on my continent that were friendly with me (until I made Charlemagne my b*tch; they all hate him) give me the same reason: you've grown too powerful for us. I just want to finish this game as quickly as possible.

If you take a civ's capital plus one or two other cities they'll usually capitulate. It shouldn't take you much longer to get domination if you're that far ahead in tech and power.

This problem used to exist in Civ III as well.

They don't want you to be bothered by them- they are modest little mice.

"Oh, I wouldn't want big ol' Gwynnja over there to get worried about lil' old us- he's got enough on his hands already"

star15389 said:

If you take a civ's capital plus one or two other cities they'll usually capitulate. It shouldn't take you much longer to get domination if you're that far ahead in tech and power.

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I realize that I CAN, it's just that it requires a bit more shuffling around of troops. "You've grown too powerful for us" seems like a bogus reason. Darius had already taken Charlemagne's protection, why not take mine? Lame.

The reasoning behind that excuse is that a civilization as powerful is yours is likely to go to war (with someone the civ does not want to wage war against), thus they don't want to be your vassal to avoid that...

Ahh... That makes sense. Thank you, Diamondeye

If you are the most powerful civ, you can't get voluntary vassals IIRC.

Nor can you sign a permanent alliance.

I doubt that "you've grown too powerful for us" makes any sense from the AI-civs point of view. It's probably just because of balance in game mechanics. Without restriction like this, it would be too easy to push for domination via voluntary vassals.

MkLh said:

I doubt that "you've grown too powerful for us" makes any sense from the AI-civs point of view. It's probably just because of balance in game mechanics. Without restriction like this, it would be too easy to push for domination via voluntary vassals.

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Or better yet, conquest wins via voluntary vassals.

It also works the other way: if you haven't established yourself as the 500 lb gorilla on the map yet, they'll refuse because "we fear your enemies".

They tend to vasselize more at a mid-range of power, when they think victory is likely but that war isn't a given.

Yes, AIs will deny voluntary vassalage with "You've grown too powerful for us." because otherwise the game would be over due to you winning a domination victory. This has nothing to do with your military power.