Vassalage makes domination too easy

[Pete2006]

I haven't played many Warlords games yet but I have formed a strong love/hate relationship with the Vassal system.

When the AI becomes a vassal to another AI, it looks like they freely share tech and both are better for the relationship. My vassals never give me free tech and usually refuse to trade their techs with me.

After a civ offers to be my doormat and if I accept I can never declare war on them again. The vassal is free to refuse my demands for their tech, open borders, resources, gold or to stop trading with another AI. I can never force them to do anything. The very definition of a vassal is a slave. They shouldn't be able to refuse anything. Capitulation should mean capitulation!

Then there are the benefits of vassalage. I can make one sided resource-gold trades. I've milked a civ for 150+ gpt. That's much more profitable than taking their last couple cities. I can direct where they'll send their units when I declare war on another civ and I can use their land/pop to score an easy domination voctory.

In my last game, I was clearly #2 in tech but #1 in everything else. Korea had a war free game and lots of land/pop. It was ~1550 AD and he had at least a 10 tech lead on me. He had ~20% and I had ~45% land so I attacked the other two civs left in the game. I took 3 cities from Ragnar (out of his 12+ cities) and he capitulated. Then I attacked Toku and took 2 of his cities (out of 10+) and he capitulated. Then I won. Way too easy. I'll bet I could play a Pangea map and win a domination ~1000 AD with this AI behavior.

I think the Domination victory condition needs to be updated to require 85% land/pop or count a smaller amount of the Vassal's land/pop towards the victory. It shouldn't be possible to win a domination without confronting the #1 AI. Also, I think that the AI should be recoded to be less likely to become a vassal to the civ that is attacking them. It would have been a much more exciting and challenging game if Ragnar and Toku had become vassals to Korea. I would be forced to call off the attack and go for a Space Race win or I would have lost to their superior combined armies.

 

[jimbob27]

I think it's a good thing though. Domination and conquest wins used to be considered more difficult than space or time wins, all the vassal system has done is bring the various victories more in line with each other.

I think the Domination victory condition needs to be updated to require 85% land/pop or count a smaller amount of the Vassal's land/pop towards the victory.

This really wouldn't work. You only get half their land/pop counted towards your victory, so to attain 85% you'd basically have to capitulate everybody, which would then give you a conquest win.

It shouldn't be possible to win a domination without confronting the #1 AI.

Why not? If you've done well enough in diplomacy to have the #1 AI still pleased with you after you've attacked all the weaker civs, then good for you. You've done a good job in avoiding a nasty war and deserve to be rewarded.

If you think things are too easy, then step up to the next difficulty level. I haven't seen anybody on these boards so far complaining deity is too easy.

 

[Tekee]

Lol I never got a vassal ever :/ How do you capitulate?

 

[voek]

Lol I never got a vassal ever :/ How do you capitulate?

You have to kill their women and children.

 

[Stuie]

If you think things are too easy, then step up to the next difficulty level.

You would think this would be obvious, but I guess it's not.

 

[kcbrett5]

It shouldn't be possible to win a domination without confronting the #1 AI.

Even with vanilla civ it was common for me to win domination victories without confronting the #1 AI. If I am winning, it is rare that any AI has more than 40% of the land they need to block my domination victory.

This is not new and has nothing to do with vassals.

And when the AI capitulates, he is nearly done with his ability to resist your invasion anyway, that is why they capitulate. So in a few additional turns, you can usually conquer them completely. So I fail to see why this makes vassals too easy. You are actually giving up half the land and population % for beating an AI by accepting capitulation when you can fairly easily finish them off.

 

[jkp1187]

If it's too easy, bump your difficulty level up a notch!

 

[Princip]

this is from the warlords patch suggestions thread,
somthing i'd like to see which was extended by "deer_coke"
uote:
Originally Posted by Princip
heres a crazy idea
how about being able to build your vassels UU so say you are Greece and Russia is your vassel you can build cossacks?
do you think this would be possible without upsetting the balance? there doesn't seem to be too many good positives to having a vassel state does there?

Deer_Coke
I like this idea, it extends the usefulness of actually having a vassal state.

I think the idea of vassal states was great, but the current implementation makes them basically useless. You only seem to get a vassal state if the empire is so weak that it begs you to help them in a time of war, or if you've almost destroyed another empire in a war so that it capitulates to you. The ability to produce the specialist unit from that empire would be a great boost to the whole vassal aspect in that game, making them more desirable and useful.

On top of that I'd like to see any tech developed by the vassal become yours as well, vassal states should be much more useful and desirable on the path to world domination.

I love the idea about arms sales, but I think that anyone moaning about the grammar in the game is being a bit too anal considering the other areas which require enhancement......

 

[yavoon]

this is from the warlords patch suggestions thread,
somthing i'd like to see which was extended by "deer_coke"
uote:
Originally Posted by Princip
heres a crazy idea
how about being able to build your vassels UU so say you are Greece and Russia is your vassel you can build cossacks?
do you think this would be possible without upsetting the balance? there doesn't seem to be too many good positives to having a vassel state does there?

Deer_Coke
I like this idea, it extends the usefulness of actually having a vassal state.

I think the idea of vassal states was great, but the current implementation makes them basically useless. You only seem to get a vassal state if the empire is so weak that it begs you to help them in a time of war, or if you've almost destroyed another empire in a war so that it capitulates to you. The ability to produce the specialist unit from that empire would be a great boost to the whole vassal aspect in that game, making them more desirable and useful.

On top of that I'd like to see any tech developed by the vassal become yours as well, vassal states should be much more useful and desirable on the path to world domination.

I love the idea about arms sales, but I think that anyone moaning about the grammar in the game is being a bit too anal considering the other areas which require enhancement......

I think thats actually a cool idea, but god if u were able to vassal rome w/ an axe rush, and then u'd have praetorians? ouch.

 

[Pogel]

I think thats actually a cool idea, but god if u were able to vassal rome w/ an axe rush, and then u'd have praetorians? ouch.

Or if you were Rome you could aim to vassall the English and promote your experienced Praets to Redcoats. It would add an extra bit of flavour but would probably be unbalancing.