I disagree with pretty much everything in that statement: firstly, the Vassal provides many benefits, which can be enough justification for "getting" him even without sufficient certainty that he's going to turn on you;
The culture and science bonuses are typically trivial. The gold from taxes can be rewarding but it's offset by vassal maintenance and if you've captured many cities and devastated a civ's economy in the course of vassalizing them, a 25% tax rate can sometimes barely cover the maintenance expense.
The WC and military levy bonuses are much more beneficial if you can expect that your vassal will remain your vassal, especially the votes (since all voting agreements are cancelled if war is declared). If you demanded GPT or resources from them, those are only beneficial while the vassal remains your vassal. Same goes for trade deals and trade routes.
The ability to control your vassal's war/peace affairs and have their military units defend you and act as a buffer in some situations is also far more useful if you can expect that they will remain so.
Some turns of gold and happiness and not being declared on are nice, but not nearly as beneficial.
secondly, even with how it works now you don't have that certainty, since he can, in fact, turn on you once he fulfills the conditions; if we implement the impossibility on Content status then you can create your sufficient certainty as well. Thirdly, if you're sanctioned and have no Vassals then you can only trade with City States (unless that is disallowed as well), which are much further apart and therefore even more dangerous to trade with...only with Vassals can you have a trading partner with "sufficient certainty". Fourth, it's not true that the alternative to vassalization is wiping a Civ out in most cases, even after reaching a Warscore of 100, particularly if you're playing Autocracy and thus get a bonus to your Warscore accumulation; I have managed to vassalize a Civ after capturing only one of their Cities, for example, while wiping them out would have taken a lot more effort so without a vassalage system I would have simply peaced out...often times you want to end the war and sometimes you actually have to, because someone else is attacking you, so you don't even have the time and resources to finish off the first Civ, because you need to bring your forces to the new enemy; here you would certainly vassalize even if wiping them out was the intention and you don't like the vassalage system. In fact, most wars where I win with a large Warscore are wars where I don't have any interest in wiping the Civ from the map, which would even be true if I couldn't vassalize them; for me a very successful war is one where I got what I wanted (e.g. strategic location, resource, vassalage, capital, holy city etc.), significantly weakened my opponent and did it with conquering as little as possible.
You have plenty of warning and you can actually
do something about vassals meeting the conditions for independence, most of the time. It's easy to monitor, and they're
rare. It takes a lot of effort for a vassal to meet the conditions for independence, or for other civilizations to liberate them via the World Congress.
Having your vassals be potentially removed from you by another civ's trade deal anytime they're discontent is not the same type of mechanic, it's unpredictable, has little to no warning, and can occur on a much shorter timeline. As noted above, sometimes high taxes are required just to break even on maintenance costs, which make the vassal angry and feel mistreated. Or another civ might kill your vassal's units before you have a chance to respond.
Your third point supports my argument - it's a benefit that is far more helpful if you can be confident the vassal will remain yours.
As for your fourth point - being able to achieve capitulation after capturing only a single city (with much work ahead required for conquest) sounds like a potential bug to me, not expected behavior. Capitulation is surrender - it makes the civilization unlikely to ever win the game - and they should not be willing to give in so easily.
I agree there are situations where vassalization is preferable to elimination for the master - I myself prefer it. What I was meaning to say was "vassalization is a surrender option where the civ agrees to stand down in exchange for not being eliminated". If capitulation functioned like a 50-turn peace treaty with unreliable future benefits, many players (including myself) would find this unfun and irritating, and proceed instead with elimination if they had the option - which is against the original intention of C4DF (this is relevant because Gazebo has stated he likes to respect the choices and intentions of the other modders, like Putmalk).
Wrong, as I already laid out above.
We have different opinions. I disagree with your opinion, but that does not make either of us objectively "wrong" - I think there are merits to both sides here. Personally, I like your general idea but I think the execution is not handled well. Maybe vassals do need to be nerfed in some way (I'm neutral on this), but I don't think this would be fun.
Humans also don't use the approach system or opinion system, yet we make it work. Furthermore, human vassalage is awfully rare. Lastly, the human still has the ability to decide if he wants to accept another Civ's "liberation war" offer, which will include an evaluation of how he's been treated by his Master and how powerful the offering Civ is (doesn't make sense to accept if you'll just lose the war and have to be revassalized for a minimum 50 turns again), which is, after all, what the AI would do. I personally don't care too much about Content status making liberation wars impossible or not, as long as it makes it far less likely, but given the rarity of humans being vassalized to AI at all, I'd say let's not die on this hill when trying to make humans be exactly like AI in their choices...after all, you concede in your diplomacy thread that it can make sense to deviate from this (admirable) goal in some cases.
Yes, but the approach and opinion systems are only used to help the AI make other decisions - it's part of the AI, not the game's mechanics. There's no
game mechanic that for instance, only works if the AI's approach towards another player is not FRIENDLY. While the AI will not agree to be bribed into war against someone they're FRIENDLY towards, that's the AI's choice, not the game's mechanics making it impossible - a human offered the same choice could choose as they wanted. So it's not the same thing. I suppose you can argue that the AI is a game mechanic, but in principle the AI players are supposed to behave like other humans and have the exact same decision-making options available to them (the exceptions being their difficulty bonuses and a handful of small restrictions, like the random nuke roll and not allowing the AI to declare war on their City-State allies).
Human vassalage is likely more common in multiplayer, and allowing humans to escape vassalage anytime they want but making it only possible for AIs to do so if not content according to a point system is not a balanced mechanic. Additionally, humans are far more capable at warfare (being able to defend with a smaller number of forces, and by exploiting chokepoints and wars on multiple fronts) and could take advantage of this far more easily than an AI could, particularly since the AI is never hostile towards its own vassals outside of a very few select circumstances.
On the other hand, if the AI can leave their vassalage anytime they want just by trading, then how is capitulation anything more than a 50-turn peace treaty? It isn't truly surrender with the master taking over the vassal's political affairs if you can just leave at your leisure after 50 turns with no work to become stronger and more independent - and for this reason, players would probably opt for elimination far more often.
Given the choice between being a capitulated vassal of one civ and a voluntary vassal of another civ, most players would probably choose the latter as soon as they could regardless of how they're treated - when you're a vassal of the new master you can't be revassalized by your old master.
In regards to the > 25 war score thing, I've already mentioned humans could exploit that very easily if they're able to handle the war weariness; AIs could also become "liberated" by someone on the other side of a Pangaea or across the ocean, making it very difficult to get that high a warscore against the new master.
Apart from the repeated hyperbole of "Civs swooping in to take your Vassals every 50 turns", which I've addressed above, the current system is actually far worse in this regard, because the AI, unlike the human, can't make deals with other players to prepare for the "Great Liberation" after the conditions are met. If I was a human and had to submit for vassalage with an AI, I would absolutely make a deal with another human (or AI if I can) to engage in temporary vassalage with them (if that's what they want in exchange) on the same turn that I declare independence if he will help me kick my old master's butt. The AI doesn't know how to do that, because it can't pre-agree on future deals and can't plan ahead this well, so this deal system is likely more AI-friendly from the (anthropomorphized) perspective of the Vassal AI, because it at least gains a powerful ally to make sure the liberation attempt doesn't just end in a pointless, suicidal rebellion with the world watching, but has an actual powerful ally to help it.
This is only (slightly) hyperbolic
now because Firaxis's deal AI and diplo AI interaction logic is hot steaming garbage. Firaxis apparently decided that AI players would be just as bothered by spam as human players would be (or wasn't capable enough to avoid the AI making stupid decisions), and therefore implemented the same cooldown system between diplo messages, including trade offers, for AI players as for human players. The Firaxis deal AI is also so hopelessly stupid and exploitable that VP has needed to make numerous adjustments and patch out many exploits by making them "IMPOSSIBLE!", not wanting to go through the enormous headaches of completely rewriting the whole system with all the complicated UI work involved.
However, throughout this year I plan on fixing all those issues (which will be quite an extensive project). Among other improvements, I aim to make the AI perform its interaction checks
every turn and be able to do more than one diplo message or trade deal on the same turn, at least during AI-to-AI communication; it can do so far more efficiently between AIs because it's simply comparing the results of functions, rather than popping up and talking to the human player. No UI work is involved.
Some work will be needed to make sure the system isn't unfair to humans with the AI trading everything away between themselves before the human has any chance to make an offer, but aside from that, it should be far more intelligent when I'm through with it.
And as a result, if it would be smart for the AI to be liberated every 50 turns and another AI is willing to do so for a good reason (say, to weaken the master), then it would indeed happen every 50 turns. Remember that any of the other civilizations in the game that isn't vassalized could make the offer, under your proposed system; there's probably at least one that'd want to do so, and there are many reasons why a vassal might want to be the voluntary vassal of another civ rather than the capitulated vassal of someone who conquered them.
The alternative would be to make the AI deliberately stupid - which I have a personal distaste for, and it's against the spirit of the mod.
No, what I propose, as I have stated before, is a new kind of trade deal, which would be very similar to the existing "Voluntary Vassalage" deal; the resulting Voluntary Vassalage would just be a normal Voluntary Vassalage, so there is no third type of vassalage involved here. If
@Gazebo likes this idea but doesn't have time for implementation I could even take a look at implementing it myself, since it's really similar to the Voluntary Vassalage deal anyway.
It's not just about making them more interesting but also about making them less OP for warmongers, which they currently are; I simply want to "nerf" Vassals in a more interesting way. I think the fact that I and many others haven't seen revolts in a long time is a good testament that this would be an area where things could be improved.
I understand what your proposition is - but how about this: have AIs that are able to revolt reach out to another civilization to be their "guarantor" if their master refuses to give them independence. If the master refuses, the vassal switches to a voluntary vassalage with the new master, with no conditional reversion back to the previous master based on war score.
This would require far less new code, risks no shenanigans with the trade system, isn't unbalanced between humans and AIs, isn't exploitable by never making peace, could be done even if the vassal is sanctioned by the World Congress thanks to the master's bullying, and doesn't require the implementation of a "hybrid vassalage". All it would require is a new type of leader message, some UI work, new lines of dialogue, perhaps a new notification, some code to handle the AI's decision-making, and some code to handle the transition, which could use existing functions. It would also conflict less (or perhaps not at all) with Putmalk's original intentions when creating the mod.
And yes, it is "hybrid vassalage": a voluntary vassal can leave after 10 turns; if it can't leave and is auto-reverted back to the master upon winning a war as you propose, it's not a voluntary vassal, but it isn't a capitulated vassal either - and this would be relevant to a number of code sections; for instance, when the AI gains a new capitulated vassal this resets all non-permanent diplomacy penalties, and voluntary vassals are handled differently for certain diplomacy behavior. Easier to handle it in a way like this.
Except the AI doesn't do that...it theoretically can, btw., as Voluntary Vassalge is already an existing feature, but this would require the AI to be extremely lucky, as it can't "feel out the waters" beforehand and just has to hope that a closeby AI wants war with their old master anyway and has been preparing for it just in the last turns...my proposal eliminates this problem because it implicitly coordinates the two AIs, especially with regards to the bigger, deal-offering AI. Regarding the second point...I've already addressed that, but a quick summary: in my experience it's definitely possible to have your vassals take the friendly approach, which means they often won't spy on you at all (at least until the game is close to be concluded) or if they do you can successfully ask them to stop; if you push them around, on the other hand, they will eventually be able to demand freedom anyway, so all my proposal would do is introduce some more risk before that point; why only "some more risk"? Because getting 25 Warscore as a warmonger isn't usually that hard against the AI and neither is keeping your Vassal Content. Moreover, it's simply completely unrealistic that the Vassal would just sit there and take your mistreatment for centuries if there are Civs willing to aid him free himself...ending it all in a possible pointless rebellion a millennium later is just sad. I have no problem with players going the more "sadistic" route and torturing their Vassals (though I typically don't) but if they do then there should be more risk to it; the main motivation for all of this, however, is to apply a bit of a nerf warmongering in a more interesting manner.
The AI doesn't do that - yet. I plan to improve it, and I suggested an alternative just above. I don't think my idea is perfect, and I'm open to changing it, but if a solution can be found through smarter AI and tweaking existing mechanics, I'd rather do that.
Not at all, just the regular (You have a different religion, we don't like that you expanded, you picked the wrong social policy tree) along with the occasional 'You built a wonder we wanted' and 'how dare you complete a quest for that citystate that is half a map away from me and I have no claims or stakes in?!'
And no, no warmonger penalty either, just a ton of war weariness from being stuck in war with the entire map.
If you have the "They believe we are expanding our empire too aggressively" modifier it means you have a lot of cities compared to the global average and the AI considers itself to be stronger than you militarily, meaning you're a "reckless expander". The AI is programmed to punish aggressive expansion without corresponding military strength very heavily to prevent snowballing (although I do think some adjustment to the AI's military strength evaluation would be a good idea).
and others give +4
. So, which one would you prefer? Of course the one with hammers, cause 4
