Vassals, how to make the most of them.Mostly I will talk about permanent vassals, obtained by capitulation.
Many people starting to play Warlords get very disappointed with Vassals. They expect them to give all their tech and gold to us. Well, it does not work this way.
It would be way too overpowering to give players automatic access to all of that.
Next thing we try is to make them fight for us. Well, a civilization that was just beaten into submission will not be much help. Some of us have had the pleasure of a vassal winning the game.
What you need to do to obtain a vassal.
You need to meet the following conditions:
1) Your population needs to be more than 2 times bigger than your prospective vassal.
2) Your land needs to be more than 2 times bigger than your prospective vassal.
3) You need to have more than 2 times the power of your prospective vassal (Demographic).
4) You need to be perceived as winning the war. The AI decides who is winning or loosing the war only on the basis of who killed more units. So, even if you take all his cities, but lose more power than him then he would still not surrender.
I think different AI’s have different thresholds on their limits of becoming a vassal. Mansa is rumored to be easiest to vassal. Some warmonger AIs are very hard to vassal.
Understanding vassals.
This is the key to understanding vassals. A vassal is a civ that still hopes to win. It surrenders or volunteers to become a vassal for military protection. In exchange it loses some of its independence.
What you can expect from a vassal:
1) It will always go to war together with you, make peace when you do.
2) You can ask your vassal one resource as a tribute.
3) A vassal will always agree on open borders.
4) A vassal always has all of his resources available for trade.
5) You can ask your vassal to adopt any of your civics even if he would not normally switch from them. This option is always available.
6) You can ask a vassal to adopt your religion. This option is always available if your vassal has a city of that religion.
7) You can direct your vassal’s research. I had one case when a vassal was ignoring my instructions. One of the AIs with representation as a favorite civic was refusing to research anything else until he finished researching Constitution. Otherwise vassals have always switched research to what I've asked them to.
Vassals follow the same tech trading rules as any other civ.
What you should do for your vassal and what your vassal will do for you.
There are 2 main uses of vassals.
1) A tech trading partner.
2) Military support.
Both of these uses let you exploit AI bonuses to your advantage.
If you want to use your vassal as tech trading partner you need to improve relationships to friendly or have a vassal with a high WFYABTA limit. Getting a vassal up to friendly is reasonably easy, if you did not alienate him too much with -9 you declared war on us and -6 you raised one of our cities. The default defense pact gives a boost. Trade/gift tech to your vassal for max +4 fair trade. Give into his demands. Open borders with him and go to war. That generally insures a fast friendly state.
By directing vassal research to tradable non military technologies you can insure you have a tech trading partner for this tech. That could make you and your vassal into a tech giant and let you catch other AI’s.
Military is a second good use of vassals. There are 2 general uses of a vassal’s military.
1) Passive. You raise your vassal’s power in order to discourage attacks by other AI. AI have big bonuses to unit maintenance and to upgrade costs. By gifting to him your obsolete units you insure that you pay minimum support costs and keep your military up to date. Vassals will upgrade units you gift him to the best he can, which will raise his military power rating. The AI looks at the sum of military power of the master/vassal block in order to decide if it will go to war or not. It could be a good deterrent from AI aggression.
2) Active. If you build units specifically to exploit your vassal’s AI upgrade bonus, gifting them to your vassal together with some cash can drastically raise his military power, to a degree where he will become the main force in wars. By declaring on a civ reasonably distant from your vassal you can wage war with a powerful civ with minimal military forces. You can take cities selectively, leaving your vassal to raise most of your opponents cities and suffer most of the war weariness. In that case you exploit AI bonuses to war weariness. This can be an effective strategy, as you can ignore the biggest limitation the human player has in SP and continue your technological development unimpeded in war time.
Some vassal problems.
Some of the vassal functionality is not logical and can surprise you and reduce your enjoyment. The biggest problem in my eyes is the mechanic of tech trading with vassals.
Every time you do a tech trade it goes by the team mechanic. The team mechanic was designed for permanent alliances and teams. In this scenario alliance members share research and tech.
It is logical that when the AI considers a trade with the team it takes the average relationship into account. This affects the AI trade threshold and friendly WFYABTA criteria.
In the vassal case you are still considered as being a team for tech trading, but do not share tech. So, the AI has to be in good relationships with both you and your vassals in order to tech trade. In case of an AI being in the WFYABTA state, it needs to be friendly with both you and your vassal.
But that is not all, the same rule applies to intrateam trades.
So, in order to trade within your team, your vassals need to be in good relationships with all of your other vassals. In case of WFYABTA it needs to be friendly with you and all of your other vassals, which is practically impossible to achieve.
An additional vassal problem is in order to get a second vassal you need to be winning the war. Even if your vassal has beaten the other civ into dust it would not think you are winning the war and refuse with the excuse “You must be joking”.
Some references:
Link to special variant SG games designed to investigate vassal uses.
This game mostly discusses how to get vassals and how to use vassals for research.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206341
This one is about how to use a vassal's military.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=213061
WFYABTA discussion.
{Need to find the link}
PS: Thanks to 50_dollar_bag be so kind and editing my writing, thsi is now second edition
Many people starting to play Warlords get very disappointed with Vassals. They expect them to give all their tech and gold to us. Well, it does not work this way.
It would be way too overpowering to give players automatic access to all of that.
Next thing we try is to make them fight for us. Well, a civilization that was just beaten into submission will not be much help. Some of us have had the pleasure of a vassal winning the game.
What you need to do to obtain a vassal.
You need to meet the following conditions:
1) Your population needs to be more than 2 times bigger than your prospective vassal.
2) Your land needs to be more than 2 times bigger than your prospective vassal.
3) You need to have more than 2 times the power of your prospective vassal (Demographic).
4) You need to be perceived as winning the war. The AI decides who is winning or loosing the war only on the basis of who killed more units. So, even if you take all his cities, but lose more power than him then he would still not surrender.
I think different AI’s have different thresholds on their limits of becoming a vassal. Mansa is rumored to be easiest to vassal. Some warmonger AIs are very hard to vassal.
Understanding vassals.
This is the key to understanding vassals. A vassal is a civ that still hopes to win. It surrenders or volunteers to become a vassal for military protection. In exchange it loses some of its independence.
What you can expect from a vassal:
1) It will always go to war together with you, make peace when you do.
2) You can ask your vassal one resource as a tribute.
3) A vassal will always agree on open borders.
4) A vassal always has all of his resources available for trade.
5) You can ask your vassal to adopt any of your civics even if he would not normally switch from them. This option is always available.
6) You can ask a vassal to adopt your religion. This option is always available if your vassal has a city of that religion.
7) You can direct your vassal’s research. I had one case when a vassal was ignoring my instructions. One of the AIs with representation as a favorite civic was refusing to research anything else until he finished researching Constitution. Otherwise vassals have always switched research to what I've asked them to.
Vassals follow the same tech trading rules as any other civ.
What you should do for your vassal and what your vassal will do for you.
There are 2 main uses of vassals.
1) A tech trading partner.
2) Military support.
Both of these uses let you exploit AI bonuses to your advantage.
If you want to use your vassal as tech trading partner you need to improve relationships to friendly or have a vassal with a high WFYABTA limit. Getting a vassal up to friendly is reasonably easy, if you did not alienate him too much with -9 you declared war on us and -6 you raised one of our cities. The default defense pact gives a boost. Trade/gift tech to your vassal for max +4 fair trade. Give into his demands. Open borders with him and go to war. That generally insures a fast friendly state.
By directing vassal research to tradable non military technologies you can insure you have a tech trading partner for this tech. That could make you and your vassal into a tech giant and let you catch other AI’s.
Military is a second good use of vassals. There are 2 general uses of a vassal’s military.
1) Passive. You raise your vassal’s power in order to discourage attacks by other AI. AI have big bonuses to unit maintenance and to upgrade costs. By gifting to him your obsolete units you insure that you pay minimum support costs and keep your military up to date. Vassals will upgrade units you gift him to the best he can, which will raise his military power rating. The AI looks at the sum of military power of the master/vassal block in order to decide if it will go to war or not. It could be a good deterrent from AI aggression.
2) Active. If you build units specifically to exploit your vassal’s AI upgrade bonus, gifting them to your vassal together with some cash can drastically raise his military power, to a degree where he will become the main force in wars. By declaring on a civ reasonably distant from your vassal you can wage war with a powerful civ with minimal military forces. You can take cities selectively, leaving your vassal to raise most of your opponents cities and suffer most of the war weariness. In that case you exploit AI bonuses to war weariness. This can be an effective strategy, as you can ignore the biggest limitation the human player has in SP and continue your technological development unimpeded in war time.
Some vassal problems.
Some of the vassal functionality is not logical and can surprise you and reduce your enjoyment. The biggest problem in my eyes is the mechanic of tech trading with vassals.
Every time you do a tech trade it goes by the team mechanic. The team mechanic was designed for permanent alliances and teams. In this scenario alliance members share research and tech.
It is logical that when the AI considers a trade with the team it takes the average relationship into account. This affects the AI trade threshold and friendly WFYABTA criteria.
In the vassal case you are still considered as being a team for tech trading, but do not share tech. So, the AI has to be in good relationships with both you and your vassals in order to tech trade. In case of an AI being in the WFYABTA state, it needs to be friendly with both you and your vassal.
But that is not all, the same rule applies to intrateam trades.
So, in order to trade within your team, your vassals need to be in good relationships with all of your other vassals. In case of WFYABTA it needs to be friendly with you and all of your other vassals, which is practically impossible to achieve.
An additional vassal problem is in order to get a second vassal you need to be winning the war. Even if your vassal has beaten the other civ into dust it would not think you are winning the war and refuse with the excuse “You must be joking”.
Some references:
Link to special variant SG games designed to investigate vassal uses.
This game mostly discusses how to get vassals and how to use vassals for research.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206341
This one is about how to use a vassal's military.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=213061
WFYABTA discussion.
{Need to find the link}
PS: Thanks to 50_dollar_bag be so kind and editing my writing, thsi is now second edition
