No Vassal States.....

[LEMD]

So I recently realized that I abused the vassal state setting for easy domination victories. Also, I realized that taking on two super powers on a 10 player map by yourself is a huge challenge and fun. However, I realized that Vassals can be just as cheesy as AP cheesing. It's basically a mechanic in the game that can be easily exploited with little to no effort honestly for extremely easy domination victories and kinda takes away from other aspects of the game. So I decided to turn them off and play a game. Well, to my surprise I actually liked it a lot. Diplomacy meant way more and more long term allies could be built without the fear of losing them because they became a vassal to your enemy or you just attack them because they are your neighbor and you wanted to vassal them to make them an ally to start the ball rolling on domination. Also, now getting war allies is work and not a "given" due to vassal mechanics. To me it added so much more to diplomacy and strategy. Domination is still a very viable option so it didn't take it away. Just made it more of a challenge to get and needs a bit more attention to detail and planning. Not just DoW on everyone starting with your neighbor and vassal them all until Domination victory. Plus, AI vassal too easy and there really isn't many strategic wars between them because they are so quick to do it. Trading is also better in my opinion because diplomacy means way more over time. Any thoughts from anybody about it?

 

[elmurcis]

I like this option for 3 reasons - no colonial maintenance (if it is important, it is very very importante - if have seen 40+ gold/turn/city maintenance, will understand), 2nd - wars gotta finish entire empire (including 1-tile island cities - did somebody mentioned famous amphibious Elephants, ho ho ho? ) or gonna be stuck with some home-land unhappiness in new "core" cities even if AI is technically "history". 3rd is that empire won't get happiness benefits from vassal (I know, I know, it is not "a big deal") but still - I like happiness raw).
Together with no-tech-trading it can make diplo world a bit of "what I'm supposed to do here? Screw all now or few turns later?" since it can be almost impossible to get some AI's into "safe zone", thus favoring more war (even if one can't handle more warfare - it only kills my economy, I can't take 17th city so early ) and/or making some early city gifts only true option to survive. On bright side I added Permanent Alliances option to "counter" diplo side where one (un)lucky Friendly AI might get PA with me and rule da world. Or just use AI's ridicululous late game production boost and let it build Space ship for me for free
Love these options to make game more "personal"

 

[s.bernbaum]

I never liked the vassals. I turned it off many years ago and have enjoyed the game much more since then. It makes the AIs more like rivals than merely victims that I have not gotten to yet.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Vassal states are good if you like the intrigue and the trolling that comes along with it. I usually play with them on, and rarely will I turn them off unless trying out some new strategies or want to see some brutal AI behavior where they refuse to quit. Sometimes enabling vassals makes for a good story with their wackiness, but more "serious" games can easily be ruined by vassalage when the AI basically just gives up trying to win the game at all.

 

[Jivilov]

Sorry for the OT but just wanted to ask if vassals can refuse Open Borders and free passage through their territory. This happened in a game with Mansa Musa vassaled but he wouldn't agree to OB and whenever I tried to go through his territory the game wouldn't allow it, just like after a peace agreement and before 10 turns had expired. This was extremely annoying since he was between Elizabeth---who was rapidly approaching three Legendary Cities---and me. The only other way to get at her was by water and there wasn't enough time to build a navy. Was this possible or was there some kind of bug? Thanks in advance and Happy New Year everybody!

 

[LEMD]

Sorry for the OT but just wanted to ask if vassals can refuse Open Borders and free passage through their territory. This happened in a game with Mansa Musa vassaled but he wouldn't agree to OB and whenever I tried to go through his territory the game wouldn't allow it, just like after a peace agreement and before 10 turns had expired. This was extremely annoying since he was between Elizabeth---who was rapidly approaching three Legendary Cities---and me. The only other way to get at her was by water and there wasn't enough time to build a navy. Was this possible or was there some kind of bug? Thanks in advance and Happy New Year everybody!

If they are your Vassal I'm pretty sure you can go through their territory no matter what even without open borders. Honestly I haven't played in months though so I'm not 100% sure

 

[Jivilov]

If they are your Vassal I'm pretty sure you can go through their territory no matter what even without open borders. Honestly I haven't played in months though so I'm not 100% sure

Thanks. Perhaps this case was exceptional in that I'd fought three or four aggressive wars against Mansa and he was furious. That was about a year ago, although a couple days ago (on Monarch as Mehmet) I'd vassaled Justinian, Brennus and Ramses without any problems with passage, even without OB.

 

[Lennier]

I don't think I've ever had a vassal refuse an OB. But you can move your troops through a vassal's land even without an OB. When a civ capitulates, your troops in their territory don't teleport like they do when you sign a peace treaty.

 

[Jivilov]

I don't think I've ever had a vassal refuse an OB. But you can move your troops through a vassal's land even without an OB. When a civ capitulates, your troops in their territory don't teleport like they do when you sign a peace treaty.

Well this time they couldn't. Game wouldn't let them. Unfortunately don't have a save for it. Anyway play on, play on.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Well this time they couldn't. Game wouldn't let them. Unfortunately don't have a save for it. Anyway play on, play on.

Are you 100% sure you accepted them as a vassal and didn't just take peace? It would be interesting to see a screenshot of it if you took one where it says he is your vassal but won't open borders.

 

[Jivilov]

Are you 100% sure you accepted them as a vassal and didn't just take peace? It would be interesting to see a screenshot of it if you took one where it says he is your vassal but won't open borders.

Actually can't be totally sure of that. The opportunity for a screenshot has been lost. My bad. If it ever happens again though I won't forget to take one (I hope anyway, haw!). Thanks and Happy New Year everybody!

 

[6K Man]

I stopped playing with vassals a while ago. It's fun for me to watch the occasional AI snowball into a huge 40+ city monster that poses an actual late game challenge. With vassals on, AI wars often end with the victor taking 2 cities and the loser vassaling with 10 cities left. And you never see large empires as a result.

 

[ArchGhost]

Plus, AI vassal too easy and there really isn't many strategic wars between them because they are so quick to do it

This was always my major issue with the vassal mechanics. Combined with the fact that Peace-vassaling can trigger wars (which is both conceptually dumb and defeats the purpose of a small player wanting to attach to a powerful suzerain to deter war in the first place...), it's just so broken in the AI's favor because they will attach themselves readily to whoever they don't hate...and that's it. YOU can't do that to avoid Monty bulldozing you in ~T70 with 20 Jaguars, or a massive Ragnar who hit rifles+cannons by 800AD, why should they be able to?

The rest of it is as easily abusable by you as the AI, whether it's chain capitulations, bouncing techs off each other, using borders as a buffer against invasion squads, etc. But peace vassals exist simply to give AIs that have no feasible chance of winning a continued existence in the game, and is only useful to who takes them as a vassal -- something they very much do freely with each other and snub the human player for. It reminds me so much of the city-states in Civ5/6 (which I always turned off becuase this stuff annoyed me to no end) except you don't have a fair shot to do the same in Civ4 even if you wanted to. It's as much fake difficulty as the diplo demand maluses that AIs only accrue with the human, and refusing to offer bribes to the human player to join wars do anything at all.