Do you guys typically play with Vassals enabled or disabled?

[dankok8]

I kind of want to disable it because the mechanic often doesn't work so well. I recall losing a few games in the past years because a bunch of weak AI's all decide to become peaceful vassals to a powerful civ who they don't even like. Other weird occurrences too especially with peace-vassaling.

Then again, disabling vassals hurts the AI's chances of snowballing. AI's are horribly inefficient at war and tend to make peace too early anyway when they can eat someone alive.

 

[lymond]

always on

 

[Tobiyogi]

There is at least something you can influence. You may have watched several of Lain's playthroughs where he puts a lot of attention to who could vassal to who, who to attack, who better not to attack, who to bribe off, etc... So when I feel like minimizing the settings, I would rather click off trading / or tech brokering, instead of disabling vassals, the former leaves me much more powerless.

 

[Nick723]

I agree - vassals can be incredibly frustrating at times! However also agree that once you understand more about how and when it happens, you can take more proactive steps to prevent some of the most annoying ones (typically peace vassals when you have done all the hard work on conquest)!

However I think having vassals on also massively helps the human to secure a quick conquest / domination victory (by being able to eliminate several rivals in quick succession with a temporary military advantage) and I’m not convinced that turning them off makes things easier.

 

[dankok8]

I agree - vassals can be incredibly frustrating at times! However also agree that once you understand more about how and when it happens, you can take more proactive steps to prevent some of the most annoying ones (typically peace vassals when you have done all the hard work on conquest)!

However I think having vassals on also massively helps the human to secure a quick conquest / domination victory (by being able to eliminate several rivals in quick succession with a temporary military advantage) and I’m not convinced that turning them off makes things easier.

Turning off vassals makes military victories slower but I suspect increase the overall win rate dramatically. I think the AI is severely handicapped with no vassals because it's much harder for powerful AI's to snowball. With no vassals they fight wars that become long slogs or they get peace anyways coming away with little benefit.

Anyways I haven't turned it off. I still play with it on and I'm one a 3-game winning streak on Immortal so I shouldn't complain!

 

[Lexicus]

I experimented with a few games without vassals and the world just felt very dull without them. Tributary/puppet state relationships are such an important part of real history. The game doesn't feel right without them. That said they can certainly lead to some annoying circumstances particularly with peacevassaling. I've lost a few games because of AI peacevassaling.

 

[Lennier]

I play with them on. Means I don’t have to conquer every last city of a civ before moving to the next.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

typically on, but sometimes (often?) regretting it. They just make the game more complex/rich. It depends on what you want to do, how you like to play. They can make conquest faster - but you also have to careful not to accept a vassal than cam be a problem/burden later on. I had two problems with them: maintenance goes up considerably, also sometimes they would have a cool wonder or a really nice city - once they are you vassal you cannot DoW them anymore, requesting resources does not work to get rid of them, in my (limited) experience they never refuse. Another, maybe most annoying thing is that on a higher difficulty, when you could conquer a weak civ, but not a top dog, whom you cannot affor to antoginize at a time, this weak civ would peace vassal to a very powerful one, thus complicating your conquest plans. It is also a bit more trickier not to accidentally pass the domination limit when you have vassals. Hth.

 

[jmas]

maintenance goes up considerably

Really? I have limited experience with vassals (though I've read a *lot* on this forum). I'm guessing you mean city maintenance? So city maintenance goes up when you take a vassal?

 

[Fine_Distinction]

Really? I have limited experience with vassals (though I've read a *lot* on this forum). I'm guessing you mean city maintenance? So city maintenance goes up when you take a vassal?

Yep. I do not remember the exact formula, but in a manner similar that vassals contribute to your score (i.e. half land and population) having a vassal increases your city number used for calculating city maintenance. Less than if you had all of vassal's cities, but in some games it crippled my economy a bit. Situational, like everything in civ but worth keeping in mind.

 

[jmas]

^^ @Fine_Distinction Thank you for the info!

 

[reflec]

Off, I don't like how it snowballs out of control for the ai, it feels cheap for the ai to capture a couple enemy cities and then basically gain control of their whole army

 

[6K Man]

Yep. I do not remember the exact formula, but in a manner similar that vassals contribute to your score (i.e. half land and population) having a vassal increases your city number used for calculating city maintenance. Less than if you had all of vassal's cities, but in some games it crippled my economy a bit. Situational, like everything in civ but worth keeping in mind.

That's interesting. I had always thought that a major selling point of vassals was the ability to create a colony out of a conquered island, to alleviate maintenance costs. I didn't realize the maintenance relief was only partial.

I turned Vassals off and turned Permanent Alliances on, a long time ago. The settings I play, conquest wins are virtually impossible, so vassals being on/off doesn't impact that. And I was always somewhat disappointed when a 12 city AI was stomping a 10 city AI and instead of taking all the loser's cities and becoming a 20+ city powerhouse, the victor would take 2 or 3 cities and then accept a vassal. It's more fun for me to fight a 20 city AI than a 14 city AI and vassal, because in my experience, the AI and vassal can't (or won't) fight in a coordinated fashion.

Permanent Alliances provide a different type of diplomatic challenge - the trick is to watch for hostile AIs that are getting close to qualifying to have a PA with one another, and finding a way to counter that.

 

[ArchGhost]

Usually have the setting on unless watching the AI play against itself or if I want to force total conquest games where Domination is also turned off. I just kinda wish the mechanic wash pushed back a little further than Feudalism, which isn't hard for the AI to get to in a decent timeframe in higher difficulty games.

Vassal mechanic can be...frustrating, to say the least. It isn't hard to understand IMO, it's just there is often little you can do to intervene in AI-AI behavior short of bribing wars, and it isn't always worthwhile to take capitulates depending on how stubborn/still useful they are and the stage of the game unless you just want to take a rival off the table ASAP.

It also does a lot of things that don't really make sense, like bringing in war allies for nothing, circumventing previous peace treaties or enforcing new ones that weren't made with the party in question, and the incredible boost it gives to an AI evaluating its own power rating which can lead to crazy stuff like a 1 city master with a 4 city vassal refusing peace terms as you run them both over, forcing you to kill them off.

It definitely makes the game a lot easier with vassals on if you know how to abuse it yourself, though, and there are often flip sides to all the cheeky crap the AI pulls with it. Chain capitulating, buffer states, intercontinental footholds, gaining a permanent vassal through diplo when building up for war without lifting a finger, capping a vassal without ever attacking them by capping the master same turn, etc. all make it worthwhile to deal with the headaches. And hey, they might even help you tech and trade too.