What to do with puppet cities? -> Vassals

[razor436]

I hate annexing cities because they have the courthouse/unhappiness penalty and usually built in a bad place or too close to other cities. If I want a new city, I would build my own. I also hate creating puppet cities, so I raze everything.

But what would make me keep puppet cities? If I can group up a couple of puppet cities and appoint one of their people to govern them in my stead, it would be like having my own vassal. If this vassal would have very good relations with me and pay me tribute of gold/food to capital, it would strengthen my empire without being burdened by puppets. And if I could direct my vassals to concentrate on military units vs infrastructure, the former puppets could actually aid me during war time.

Conditions for maintaining good relations with my vassal:

• Gifting to it all cities that I conquer that have the same nationality.
  e.g. I puppet 3 Egyptian cities, I appoint a new Egyptian to manage them for me, making him my vassal. Any future Egyptian cities that I capture I must turn them over to my vassal or it will ruin our relations.
• Razing any cities of same nationality.
  e.g. My vassal Cleopatra would be unhappy if I razed Egyptian cities under Ramesses rule.
• Demanding tribute above what is standard.
• The vassal civ becomes unhappy for 10 consecutive turns.

Conditions for declaring independence:

• Something similar to civ 4. Which would result in a peaceful independence.
• If vassal believes he has the military strength to fight for his independence.

Also, this would open up the way for creating colonies for cities on another continent.

One problem is that it would be hard to differentiate e.g. two Egyptian civilizations, but that could be alleviated by having two leaders per civ.

 

[filli_noctus]

I had a similar idea, but I would use the city-state mechanics instead of creating a new civ. Basically when a city is conquered instead of puppeting it you would get the option to create a client kingdom which would essentially act as a militaristic city-state with the unit gifting turned off. Further conquests that would have contiguous territory with an established client kingdom would be added to the existing kingdom.
Instead of influence a client would have loyalty (essentially the same mechanic). This will not drop every turn but will have other triggers, for instance having your units in their borders will increase loyalty (inverse of CS trespassing), turning on unit gifting WILL cause a decrease every turn, gifts of gold increase loyatly (as they currently do for influence) etc.
There would be an option to grant indepence at any time, turning the client into a CS with influence proportionate to the loyalty when you granted independence. If loyalty drops too low the client will rebel, declare independence and declare war on you.
Ideally trading with CS will eventually improve so trades can be made that will increase or decrease loyalty depending on how fair they are (ie changes in loyalty will be a trade option). I would also propose disabling unit gifting entirely and instead allow you to order them to build a unit for you, although this would cause a loyalty hit.

Pros of this suggestion:

• Can be easily expanded to colonies, either with a colonist unit or by specifying that all settling on a different continent to your capital (or greater than a certain distance from an existing city) becomes a colony
• Uses an existing mechanic
• Will reduce border tension from two allied civs who participate in a joint war with the same opponent

Cons:

• Quite complex, programming the AI is likely to be difficult
• To get the most out of it would require the city-state mechanics be improved significantly (not that that's a bad thing)
• Naming them, while a player could choose a name the AI doesn't have the imagination, I'd go with just naming them after the capital by default.
• Balance, as I understand it CS's are given a science multiplier to keep up with full civs with multiple cities. If a client kingdom gets this multiplier they'll almost certainly out-tech all regular civs.

 

[Camikaze]

I'm unsure about this. Forced razing is probably not really a good thing. Razing isn't really that large a part of the game. I'm personally quite happy with puppeting, but I can understand the desire to have some control over cities general production focus though. It would probably be a tad more realistic, as well. I personally would think it best to change what 'puppeting' means though, than bother coming up with an entirely new vassal system.

 

[awesome]

razing isn't forced according to the first idea (only read like the first line or two of the second one). if you raze an egyptian city, egypt won't like it, even if it's another egyptian ruler. that being said, this game doesn't seem like it needs more than one ruler per civilization.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm in favour of exploring a puppet -> colony/vassal type model. I'd have it work like this:

I'd make puppet cities as virtually useless. I would impose a fairly decent penalty to their gold, science, and culture, so that if you puppet too many cities, they become a drain on you. Maybe have it based on the proportion of your cities to puppet cities.

However, you can break off a group of puppet cities into a puppet state. This will eliminate the other penalties, and this new state will be somewhat loyal to you. I would then track their happiness, gold, and everything locally. As some of the options above state, they would basically become like an allied city-state. You would maybe get a certain tribute of luxuries, gold, culture, and so on. There could be a small happiness penalty for your empire, but if you break them off like this, they would tend to give you more than you get from them.

However, as stated above, they would have a certain loyalty ranking. They would have their own science, military, and everything. If you obey good relations with them (ie. give them enough land, keep them happy, and so on) then they will gain loyalty to you. Then, after a length of time of setting up the state, they would have a few options. Depending on their loyalty ranking and strength, one of the following could happen:
1. They would peacefully ask to join your empire. This would be a case of you pupetting states, and then being nice, you absorb them in.
2. They would peacefully ask to become their own empire. This would simulate Canada splitting from Great Britain, for example. The new state would become an entire new empire, but they would remain loyal to you afterwards. Depending on how you think about it, this could either become an allied city-state, or a new civ with lots of bonuses so they wouldn't turn against you. They would have automatic research pacts, gifted resources, and so on.
3. They would revolt against you (think: US revolting from GB). If they're strong enough, they could spawn some partisans and try to break free. You may either accede to their demands, and they basically go back to being a full empire on the board, or you can fight them.

Something like this could work. As you can see, a lot of this I modeled on the NA conquests/colonization. I'd ideally like it a bit fluid like how it was - basically, they become a full piece. So you could trace a puppet empire in a peace deal, they might decide to fight their own wars (you might even end up with 2 of your puppet states warring each other).

Of course, this would require some re-work in terms of some of the diplomacy. And this could be changed so the puppet states basically become a new city-state (or the city-state diplomacy could be changed to basically follow this model). But it'd definitely not be a bad idea to have a bit more excitement to puppetting.

 

[Camikaze]

razing isn't forced according to the first idea (only read like the first line or two of the second one). if you raze an egyptian city, egypt won't like it, even if it's another egyptian ruler. that being said, this game doesn't seem like it needs more than one ruler per civilization.

Ah, right, I see. Read that the wrong way 'round.

 

[awesome]

haha, no worries, bro