advantage of having vassals?

[crazyunits]

Hi all, this is my first time on the forum and in my current game playing as the Byzantine on Noble difficulty I pushed the Mayans off the continent and made them my vassal in the process. What are the advantages of that? Thanks in advance!

 

[Mesix]

Welcome to CivFanatics forums.

When I first started playing BTS, I didn't like Vassals too much. The annoying popup that a city demanded to become par of my Vassal's empire was really annoying.

Now I often capitulate empires that I don't need to take all of. The vassal will fight on your side in wars. The vassal will vote for you in diplomatic elections. The vassal will generally give you fair trades...especially after you butter them up diplomatically to make up for the war that you declared on them.

If a civ offers to become you vassal via diplomacy while you are not at war (Gandi often does), make sure that they are not at war with anyone else. You will be dragged into war with their enemies since you are "protecting" them. This is one feature that I don't really like.

 

[say1988]

1 happiness in all your cities.
Half their territory and population towards your score.
For capitulation vassals (not sure whether this applies to voluntary vassals, I just don't get many) you can demand resources (IIRC the first resource is guaranteed, after that they can refuse, but you will be at war).
They go to war along with you, though after capitulation this often doesn't matter.
You can have trade routes with them under mercantilism.
You can enter their territory at will, and (I believe) it acts as your own for healing and such, and you can base aircraft in their cities.
Another great reason: if you are going for conquest, and the civ has a city on a far off island, you don't need to divert your attention to capture it.

While they are supposed to increase you maintenance cost, that can be easily offset by not paying maintenance on the vassal's cities (especially overseas).

There may be exceptions for colonies, but not that I know of.
There are also likely things I missed.

Keep in mind most of those advantages are minor and/or situational, so they aren't always the best thing, often a city is much better to hold yourself.

 

[DroopyTofu]

I play on the earth map scenario alot, and always build cities in the Americas.
Colonies decrease your score. Once, I was playing as Spain, killed Rome to get some room to expand, and controled all of S.America. If I had made S.A. a colony, my score would have plumeted. If you don't believe me, look at history. All of Spain's colonies revolted and they lost all of their power.(No offence if you're from Spain)

Note that this only works well if you have state propery. If you don't, the maintinance costs can criple you, and you'd be better off to take the decreased land area and population score.

Welcome to Civ Fanatics Center Crazyuntits!!!!!

 

[oranges]

Welcome to CivFanatics forums.

If a civ offers to become you vassal via diplomacy while you are not at war (Gandi often does), make sure that they are not at war with anyone else. You will be dragged into war with their enemies since you are "protecting" them. This is one feature that I don't really like.

I'll add another warning for peacetime vassal offers -- occasionally, they aim for you to protect them while they purse a cultural or (less often) space race victory. Capitulated vassals could theoretically pursue them too, but they are highly unlikely to have a shot at either.

 

[crazyunits]

approximately how many cities do I need to reduce a civ by in order to make them my vassal?

 

[oranges]

Depends on the leader, some yield easily, others take some serious crippling.

 

[Lord Meire]

there are disadvantages, having even 1 vassal can cripple your economy if your not ready for one, i once captolated every one< exept for ghandi> on the map. i did end up winning, but not before i lost the + 500 gp i was using to fund my war!!

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums crazyunits.

 

[Willem]

approximately how many cities do I need to reduce a civ by in order to make them my vassal?

I've had civs capitulate after only losing two cities, while others I've taken more than half a dozen and still not have them give in. It's very situational. All you can do is check each time you capture or raze a city to see if they're ready yet, and sometimes hope the war wearinesss doesn't kick in until they do.

 

[DroopyTofu]

Yesterday, I had Ghengis Khan down to one 2 pop city and a 1 pop city. It was macemen vs archers, but he wouldn't even discuss capitulation. He even wanted me to give him my best city to end the war

 

[PibbZ]

Yesterday, I had Ghengis Khan down to one 2 pop city and a 1 pop city. It was macemen vs archers, but he wouldn't even discuss capitulation. He even wanted me to give him my best city to end the war

My guess is that neither of you had researched feudalism

 

[Leto]

Yesterday, I had Ghengis Khan down to one 2 pop city and a 1 pop city. It was macemen vs archers, but he wouldn't even discuss capitulation. He even wanted me to give him my best city to end the war

did you raze any of his cities? if you do that they will hate you too much to capitulate to you.

 

[Dabur]

Hi all, this is my first time on the forum and in my current game playing as the Byzantine on Noble difficulty I pushed the Mayans off the continent and made them my vassal in the process. What are the advantages of that? Thanks in advance!

hi ,

demand resources , use them as allies , get to your enemies faster true them , ask them to switch research and trade it ( ! ) , in short to many advantages to not have them

Have a nice day

 

[omnimutant]

Vassals also count towards your own Population and owned land for the purposes of a Domination victory.

 

[Fezzik]

I pushed the Mayans off the continent and made them my vassal in the process. What are the advantages of that?

That's about the best use I've found. When you don't want to capture their little islands.

But taken to the extreme, check out LK142 SG to see how you can use them. They used colonies, not any vassals IIRC, but they sure had a bunch of them.

 

[Kesshi]

Vassals also count towards your own Population and owned land for the purposes of a Domination victory.

omnimutant,

I thought only half.

I don't vassal so I might be wrong though. I've had too many problems in the past with my vassals causing problems elsewhere in the world (usually diplomacy) so I just take the cities for myself.


Although this does bring up another question. I've know that you cannot propose an AP or UN victory vote if you have more than enough votes to vote yourself to victory, but can you propose the victory vote if you + your vassals have the votes?

 

[TotalPackage]

Favorite use for them is on the final push for domination/conquest victory taking them as vassals means that many fewer cities to actually capture. Especially on maps where they may have some useless cities spread out over a couple islands that are going to be a pain to capture, you can save many turns.

It is especially useful if you have a tech lead another civilizatoin you need to conquer. Say you are fighting foe 1, and still need to take out foe 2. By ending the war with foe 1 (that is basically over) sooner, you can move on to the next and take advantage of the tech lead on foe 2 for longer.

As a side note, I rarely have "useful" vassals though. They tend to be very small and insignificant in the larger context. Vassals of 2-3 cities when I have 20+ on pangea maps.

 

[Crowqueen]

Has anyone mentioned that if you vassalise everyone, you win a Conquest victory? It means you can capitulate AIs that are down to one or two cities, wipe others out and when you and your vassals are the last ones left, you win the Conquest.

 

[Gumbolt]

Has anyone mentioned that if you vassalise everyone, you win a Conquest victory? It means you can capitulate AIs that are down to one or two cities, wipe others out and when you and your vassals are the last ones left, you win the Conquest.

Did that on my last game. I did just enough to make last 2-3 civs capitulate. I mean why fight a AI civ longer than you have to when it comes to end game period.

If your lucky an AI civ that capitulates will have a good stack in one of his cities which if they are close enough will send into war. This is all and good but you have to be in a position to make them all capitulate in first place