To take a vassal or not to take one..

[TheArchduke]

This situation occured in one of my games:

Playing as Hannibal I managed to get a sizeable economy, annex Monty early next to me.

I had an hyperteching Mansu Musa next to me and for the most obvious solution I dowed and began to take cities. Now after taking his capital I could vassalize him and for the first time even I am tempted to do this. But is it worth it or should I attack the rest.

Thanks for any input.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=8630

 

[mice]

He could be useful against youe next enemies if there are any in that you can gift him units and he will instantly upgrade them at the very cheap rate that AI can upgrade units.

It's a good way to get something out of your obsolete units. They dont cost you in maintenance, but they fight as upgraded units against your enemy.

Also Mansa's teching ability could be good to trade with if you can get him to cautious. He can tech well even after a beating. He's really the best leader to vassalize.

Also post patch you won't get your nearest city swamped with his culture

 

[HiroHito]

I dont know if taking a vassal is ever worth it really.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

mice said it well. Capitulate him, build lots of cheap units, research the latest military techs, gift him obsolete units. Then declare war on someone you don't like, is far away from you, and is close to him. Preferably a powerful one too, because if he becomes too successful, he will stop being a vassal and then attack you back.

Someone check one thing though: does a vassalized AI still get massive upgrade discounts? This could be a good way to beat deity.

 

[Kietharr]

Go into the foreign advisor and check everyone's feelings towards him, if nobody likes him (most cautious or below), go ahead and finish him off. If a lot of people like him (ESPECIALLY if not a lot of people like you), vassal him. I only tend to take vassals from large religious alliances, then use them to get maps and techs from the big alliance without having to convert to their religion. I like these vassals to be out on islands offshore because that way they're safe from attacks when you're warmongering.

 

[Shawnosaurus]

I dont know if taking a vassal is ever worth it really.

I disagree. I treat my vassals as weak allies and give them free techs and take care of them for the rest of the game. They are handy when chipping in on wars and defense. I like the extra land visibility and instead of my enemies walking freely over their land to attack me they have to avoid my vassals lands also.

 

[JoeBlade]

I didn't use to be all that fond of vassals either but the concept has sort of grown on me. Nowadays I tend to quite like them in a number of situations:
- Diplomatic victory. Vassals must vote for you, so when you've decided to aim for that goal and are pummeling another civ to shift the votes in your favour there's often good reason to accept.
- Voluntary vassalage. I've seen this happen more often since the latest patch - though that could be coincidence - and it's often worth the diplomatic penalty with other civs. I like to think of such civs as research partners: I'll research one route and direct them another, then we swap when we're both done. Voluntary vassals are typically on very good terms with you anyhow, so chances of them refusing such a trade are rare. This can be very helpful in achieving a mid-game research edge towards space race, for instance.
- War buddies. When the layout of the map is right this can be a huge advantage.
Example: your direct neighbour is a notorious warmonger (say, Alex) and is willing to submit to you after some beating. If there happens to be another, powerful civ you're not on good terms with on the other side of your potential vassal's border it's often a good idea to accept.
You can then wait for your vassal to amass troops again (something warmonger AIs are very fond of) and declare on the third civ. Since they'll typically try to go through your vassal's lands this usually leaves you with cleanup of damaged units (= easy xp), then takeover of an weakened civ. A win-win situation IMO.

From what I understand vassals also count as 'eleminated' towards a Conquest victory. I've only played large/huge maps anymore since I've started on warlords so I can't tell for sure; never encountered a proper opportunity for a conquest victory on such maps. But I can assume not having to fully eleminitate a civ before moving on to another would constitute a substantial benefit.

 

[HiroHito]

I disagree. I treat my vassals as weak allies and give them free techs and take care of them for the rest of the game. They are handy when chipping in on wars and defense. I like the extra land visibility and instead of my enemies walking freely over their land to attack me they have to avoid my vassals lands also.

What about the extra burden on your treasury in the form of more maint. ? If you're running CE and rolling on gold its okay but otherwise I find it too heavy a price only to have a couple extra units by your side. Btw can someone can shell out the formula for the maintenance cost as http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/warlords/#vassals doesnt say.

 

[JoeBlade]

It doesn't say because there is none. Vassals still pay support for their own cities as any independent civ would; there is no cost whatsoever for the master other than the -1 relations modifier with third parties.

So in fact it's sometimes better to take on a civ as a vassal rather than conquer their cities for that precisely reason (when conquering you will be the one to pay the upkeep)

 

[mice]

That changed with the patch then? because when warlords was first released there was a maintenance bill added to your own cities for vassal cities

 

[JoeBlade]

That changed with the patch then? because when warlords was first released there was a maintenance bill added to your own cities for vassal cities

My bad , I must admit I find this aspect quite confusing. According to the manual (had to look it up once again) there is indeed an additional maintenance cost/upkeep for one's own cities when accepting a vassal, but the vassal (rather than the master) does still fully pay the upkeep of its own cities. Both are explicitly mentioned, and the latter is what I was referring to.

Note however that I've never noticed a difference in my economy after having accepted a vassal, so I suspect it's more of a token value. And yes, Hiro is right, the increased maintenance formula seems to be somewhat of a mystery.

Sorry for the mixup (though I still blame the very vague explanation in the manual)

 

[Shawnosaurus]

I really haven't noticed any $ impact. I will watch closely next time and see if I can gauge the amount.

 

[mice]

(though I still blame the very vague explanation in the manual)

Yes,the info we get is pretty bad most of the time considering how deeply players like to go into the game.

I guess it's a case of testing it out. I hope as you said that the cost is token because I've started to like playing around with vassals and finding the benefits

 

[Quagga]

I hated Vassal States for a long time, because it always worked against me. I enabled it again after 2.08 came out and tried to learn how to use it better. This is what I've found works.

Get Capitulation as soon as you can. With the 2.08 fix to cultural borders, you can have functional cities near strong vassal cities. Yes, they may go into revolt now and then, but at least they don't starve.

Be sure you don't leave your prospective vassal enough to win a Space Race. If you're playing with the Better AI mod, you also must be wary of Cultural Victory. You can't directly stop either of these once a civ becomes your vassal. You can hinder Space Race by repeatedly switching their research choice to something unhelpful. You might be able to slow them down by declaring lots of wars.

The sooner you make another civ a vassal, the stronger an ally it will be. You don't want to devastate them. You do want to ensure that they don't get strong enough to break away. That's very important because you should...

Give all of your techs to your vassals. This makes them stronger and so makes you stronger. If they are at the same tech level as you, they can build the same units. They can research techs that you are not researching. True, they may not trade it to you, but their researching it makes it cheaper for you to do so later. Gifting them techs might make them Pleased or Friendly, which may cause them to trade you new techs.

Give them Copper, Horses, Iron, Oil as needed.

Open your borders to your vassals. This allows them to fight any invaders on your territory or engage in a war on your far side.

Use your vassals as buffers. Declare war on civs on the other side of a vassal, or even better, on a civ that is bordered by more than one vassal. You can run with a smaller military and still be successful.

If anybody builds the UN, you're in Phat City.

All of the above applies to capitulated vassals. Voluntary vassals should not be trusted. Do not give them techs. They usually volunteer just to get you into a war, so watch out. However, keep in mind that if you turn down an offer of vassalage, the civ will probably become a vassal of somebody else.

In fact, that's the strongest reason of all to create/accept vassals. If you don't do it, somebody else will. You really don't want another civ in the game with two or three vassals.

 

[JoeBlade]

Voluntary vassals should not be trusted. Do not give them techs. They usually volunteer just to get you into a war, so watch out. However, keep in mind that if you turn down an offer of vassalage, the civ will probably become a vassal of somebody else.

Huh? I'm not sure I understand this part... I thought vassals couldn't declare war on their own? (manual says so at least) And even if they're at war when asking for vassalage, shouldn't they immediately cease hostilities unless you're already at war with the 3rd party too? IIRC that's precisely one of the changes in patch v2.08, no?

So I don't understand in what way vassals could 'abuse' their master for war purposes.

 

[Elandal]

I'm not sure about giving my vassalls ALL techs. I try to weigh the possibilities of them techtrading my new monopolytechs away, and usually end up keeping them at just below myself, trying to still keep them at tech parity in key areas. They don't need to have my latest sweet monopolytech to be able to research something that's going to be useful to me. They can actually get excellent tech deals from me when that happens

On voluntary vassalls.. Well, they're easy come, easy go. They're guys looking for someone, ANYONE, to take care of them. The break the vassallage as soon as they find someone else to vassall themselves to. Completely unreliable guys.

 

[HiroHito]

Huh? I'm not sure I understand this part... I thought vassals couldn't declare war on their own? (manual says so at least) And even if they're at war when asking for vassalage, shouldn't they immediately cease hostilities unless you're already at war with the 3rd party too? IIRC that's precisely one of the changes in patch v2.08, no?

So I don't understand in what way vassals could 'abuse' their master for war purposes.

Vassals cant declare war on their own, true, but if they are in war or are about to be dowed they may try to vassalize themselves to you or another civ.

Btw in response to your earlier post, I just did a test and vassalized Alex, here is the numbers:

Before/After Vassalization

Units cost 16/16
units supply 0/0
Units main. 0/0
city maintenance 126/145
doctrinal maint. 111/111
Inflation 280/301
Total expenses 533/575

I'm playing emperor level, vanilla ai, Total Realism beta 3, french language, i translated the entries as best as possible.

Also please note that Alex has a 12 cities empire, with some being quite far from my country and his main landmass, if that matters.

Oddly enough I also lost a single gpt from my cities income, going from 627 to 626...

Anyway the costs are much more marginal than I thought, IIRC I already took a much smaller vassal (he had like 2 cities) before the patch and it made me swear I would never take another one cuz of the high costs versus getting a useless backward vassal. Can anyone confirm that it has changed and maybe bring the exact formula please ?

 

[JoeBlade]

I'm generally surprised about the negativity concerning voluntary vassals. My experiences are in fact the the exact opposite of those mentioned by the other posters here. Capitulated civs tend to be of little direct use to me, bar the exceptions mentioned in my first post of this thread. I'm typically at war with them because I need their cities so the last thing I want to let them keep those.
A war vassal tends to apply a lot of cultural pressure as well, which I would prefer to be rid of by eleminating the civ alltogether (either in the current war or in the next)
Finally, former victims/enemies are typically on very bad terms with you making any form of trade quite difficult.

All of these are problems I rarely encounter with voluntary vassals. They tend to be far better trade partners and can often field a more substantial army (and up-to-date too, thanks to mutual tech trading)

I'm yet to see a voluntary vassal break their agreement, unless I'm performing very poorly or they're doing much better than expected. This is pretty much the same as with a capitulated civ though; they'll auto-break the agreement when they grow too big compared to you. I therefore don't consider it this much of a factor too be honest.

Perhaps I've simply been very lucky with my voluntary vassals and less so with the capitulated civs though

 

[Quagga]

I'm yet to see a voluntary vassal break their agreement, unless I'm performing very poorly or they're doing much better than expected. This is pretty much the same as with a capitulated civ though; they'll auto-break the agreement when they grow too big compared to you. I therefore don't consider it this much of a factor too be honest.

One time I had Isabella as a voluntary vassal. When I switched from her religion to Free Religion, she had enough and went over to my biggest adversary.

This cannot happen with capitulated vassals.

 

[cabert]

I'm a vassal addict.
My favourite move isn't to vassalize one AI.
It's to vassalize loads of them

Why so?
1) Because when you go to war after vassalizing an AI, he's at war on your side.
You earn "mutual struggle" relations modifiers from this. So in the end a capitulated vassal is also a friend.
2) You get a happiness bonus for each vassal.
So you have a penalty on their captured city from "motherland" but the bonus from more than 1 vassal makes it a non-problem.
3) with many allies on your back you have the power to capitulate the next one very easily. First war is hard (you're alone), second war is easier (you have 1 ally), third is even easier (you have 2 allies), fourth is a joke (they see you coming and vassalize after the first shot )...
4) with this you can aim for conquest, domination or diplomacy easily. Beware of space and culture though (vassals won't help).

About the cost of the vassals, it's very easy.
You pay city maintenance in your cities as if all your vassals cities were yours.
= you pay more for "number of cities" in your cities.
It's level dependant, but often when you have a big empire already, you won't even feel it.
+ you can extort a bit of money/turn from them in the peace treaty to cover this.