when would you not want a vassal?

[civvver]

I had a game in which I was zara, on a continent with mansa and jao. We had no religion so I founded conf. and we all became best buds, mansa trading a lot of tech to me. Eventually he offers himself as a vassal. I didn't see any reason to take him as my vassal though, he was going to trade me his tech anyway, I didn't need half of his land for a victory condition, we had the same resources, and later I might want some of his cities. So I turned him down, finished the game without ever going to war with him. I won by space.

So really I don't get how a vassal vs a good friend like mansa helps you much, other than perhaps not being threatened by his culture. All it does is give me the same stuff I already had plus remove the possibility of taking his lands later. Thoughts?

 

[Kadazzle]

I only ever vassal civs in two situations;

1. The AI and I are best buds, but he is nowhere near me (I like to play Large/Huge Pangaea games)

2. We were at war and he offered to capitulate. I only do this once I take out all of their core cities, and if their remaining cities are on islands. Otherwise, bye bye!

In your case it didn't really matter if you vassalized him or not, but you might have got negative diplo points from Joao if you did.

 

[brianb1974]

In that situation, it doesn't do much for you.

But sometimes it can help.

Obviously, it helps you towards a domination of conquest victory. If you've already taken a city or 2 from a vassal, it helps a lot to have the culture pressure eased on your captured city. Extra resources to trade away can't hurt. It gives your people a +1 happy for "we influence other civs" or something like that.

The downside is mostly diplomatic--it makes others more suspicious of you, and if your vassal is not well liked, that hurts you even more, since others will treat you based on their average like for you and the vassal.

Another thing to consider is that a civ that's willing to be your vassal might also be willing to become a vassal to another strong civ if you turn them down. That alone might make it worth considering.

 

[civvver]

actually funny part about that, mansa was the 2nd in score (probably from nice trades with me) and ended up peacefully vassalizing jao a few turns later. Weird huh

 

[mirthadir]

You gain bonus happiness, not much but enough to be useful for an early rep economy.

You can *direct* his research; thus ensuring that you say win lid, or communism, or physics ... or keep him from unlocking detrimental techs (democracy, MM, Fission).

Your power rating gets boosted, allowing you to skimp on unit count without appearing weak.

You can FAR more easily dominate the UN/AP.

You keep him from vassalizing to some one else; giving them resources or acquiring vassals himself (and making it more annoying to win elections).

On the flip side you have diplomacy issues, the inability to take his land, and should have taken any of his cities the constant need to get past motherland issues.

 

[Loui]

I sometimes get offers from Civs on the losing side of wars with others. In those cases you have to decide if you want to war those other Civ(s) after accepting the proposal. Your vassal will still be at war and you will have declared on the Civs he is at war with.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Remember, the AIs will average their disposition towards you with that of their vassal...you can often compensate by forcing your vassal into religion/civics, but pay attention or you'll get burned....

There's also something I call a bugged mechanic, that fireaxis calls appropriate programming. If you have a tiny island vassal, it serves as a major factor in blocking other capitulations. Nobody will capitulate until their power is below the average of all civs. That includes tiny crap vassals, even if they belong to you. You can be at war with someone, have them not willing to capitulate, go into world builder, delete your own vassal, and THEN have the target capitulate without doing anything else.

Does that feel right to anyone? Really? The best part is when you have 4x their power and are stomping all over them with some crazy 8-1 kill ratio.

"we're doing fine on our own because that other civ you beat the bejeesus out of and bent over is your vassal".

Right.

So be careful when taking vassals. If you don't know the (vastly flawed) mechanics very, very well, you're set to get scr00d by them eventually.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

when you're short on time; otherwise, mop the floor with them

 

[Skallagrimson]

If they're on my land mass and I'm not going for dom or diplomilation, all their cities are belong to us.

If they snuck out some settlers to colonize islands, okay fine, screw it, I'll let them be a vassal.

If they're on another land mass and I *am* going for dom or diplo, it kinda depends. When they're a culture threat they're annoying as hell, and must die, but otherwise I often consider vassaling them.

 

[civvver]

Remember, the AIs will average their disposition towards you with that of their vassal...you can often compensate by forcing your vassal into religion/civics, but pay attention or you'll get burned....

There's also something I call a bugged mechanic, that fireaxis calls appropriate programming. If you have a tiny island vassal, it serves as a major factor in blocking other capitulations. Nobody will capitulate until their power is below the average of all civs. That includes tiny crap vassals, even if they belong to you. You can be at war with someone, have them not willing to capitulate, go into world builder, delete your own vassal, and THEN have the target capitulate without doing anything else.

Does that feel right to anyone? Really? The best part is when you have 4x their power and are stomping all over them with some crazy 8-1 kill ratio.

"we're doing fine on our own because that other civ you beat the bejeesus out of and bent over is your vassal".

Right.

So be careful when taking vassals. If you don't know the (vastly flawed) mechanics very, very well, you're set to get scr00d by them eventually.

Below the average? Hmm that sounds weird. I had a game with sury, 4 continents. I was huge, took half of jao and ham on my continent before vassalazing them, then one city from degualle and he vassalized too. So I went to the other continent to smack down monty, but I had to capture all but 3 of his cities before he would captitulate. The next vassal though was on another continent, sulieman. I took instanbul and two other good size cities and had probably 20 rifles on his main land, but he still had probably 12 left, quite an empire. But he capitulated immediately.

So I really don't get the capitulation. Sometimes you can just look at a civ funny and then seem to give in, other times it's like you have to bomb them back to the stone age or a one city challenge before they will. There's the obvious reasons like for instance, sulieman wouldn't captitulate to me until I made peace with peter who was on his island and huge. Make sense, he doesn't want the closer enemy to lay the smack down, but other times it takes forever to get a capitulation for seemingly no reason.

 

[FidelZandro]

Well since you only get a -1 diplo if you have multiple vassals, it's worth it for diplo victory or dom.
Mansa can tech for me, Isabella can war for me, all of them give me their resources (which can crucial if lacking for oil, alu or horse etc.)
Also you can demand their excess resources and sell them for your own profit
And the powerrating going up is nice, saves a few defenders...

In wars, i don't know. It seems harder to make an AI cap if you've got vassals. You know, having to sack their capital, while they only have 3 cities.. Ask TMIT for details

 

[Killroyan]

I will only take vassals if I want to end the game fast. Vassal somebody then turn to the next victim. Or if they have a lot of island cities (hate those things).

PS Fidelzandro, your sig should say also: The Dutch, proud owners of the dikes, rulers of archilopegea

 

[Bostock]

I have taken vassals before in situations where

a) they had techs I wanted, and
b) I was not able to beat the techs out of them easily/not willing to waste time on multiple declarations, and
c) the "we influence other civs" being useful for fighting upcoming WW when moving on to the next target

I was at pleased/friendly with my religious allies at the time, too, so i could handily eat the diplo penalty.

 

[UncleJJ]

The major reason not to take a vassal I've found is if you have several cities with his culture in. The motherland unhappiness can be a major problem in future and so wiping out the civ is the best approach for the long term development. If you take him as a vassal you will need to build all the culture giving buildings and these captured cities will be tied up for a long time doing things that are less productive than they otherwise would be.

Sometimes vassals will try to put cultural pressure on their old cities and that can be particularly annoying as the city will revolt unless a large garrison is kept there. It is hard to get rid of motherland when the AI has build Hermitage and has a wonder or two projecting culture into a captured city. Sometimes it is better to gift the city under pressure back to the vassal, sometimes it is better to not accept the vassal and go for a wipe out at a later time.

So before I take a vassal I look very carefully at the cultural situation and whether I can handle it without too much trouble.

 

[Norvin_Green]

i lost a game recently to mansa via culture. he voluntarily became my vassal because i was kicking butt on our continent and wanted my protection. at the time i figured what the heck as i never had a voluntary vassal before . . . and never will again!!

 

[6K Man]

Almost all the time (since the question was phrased as a negative). Vassaling is sort of a last resort for me now.

The problem with vassals is that they are irrevocable (short of giving away a bunch of cities so they can break free, I suppose) and that you can't always get techs from them. They can also put cultural pressure on your cities (even though you always get at least the BFC to work, they can still force your cities into revolt, requiring you to heavily garrison them). You get the we yearn to join the motherland unhappiness, and incessant nags to gift cities.

So nowadays, I only vassal people when I have to. If I can, I'll try to get a peace treaty, reload, and declare later (unless the diplo repercussions from repeated declarations would be too onerous, or my victim might vassal to someone else). If on a different landmass, it seems to work better to create a colony (which will like you) than to vassal my former enemy.

edit: Not to mention, vassals can win via culture or space sometimes, and the fact that they are a vassal of yours means you have fewer options for stopping them.

 

[Skallagrimson]

i lost a game recently to mansa via culture. he voluntarily became my vassal because i was kicking butt on our continent and wanted my protection. at the time i figured what the heck as i never had a voluntary vassal before . . . and never will again!!

Mansa has a habit of doing that. If I'm playing a warmongering game (which is about 9/10 of my games because I suck at peacemongering and culture vics are boring) I'll accept for the tech-trading partnership and warmonger like crazing, hoping my enemies will kill him. If they don't I just build Hermitage in the place most under culture attack by him.

 

[Woodreaux]

I've observed Mansa Musa tends to do exactly what Skallagrimson describes as well when I'm warmongering. What's his angle? Is he going for a victory?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i lost a game recently to mansa via culture. he voluntarily became my vassal because i was kicking butt on our continent and wanted my protection. at the time i figured what the heck as i never had a voluntary vassal before . . . and never will again!!

Spy all his health buildings (granary/grocer/harbor/etc) away, then poison his water. Do this a couple times until the city is at pop 1. No culture win anytime soon.

Capitulate vassals depend on the "land target" mechanic too, and some of the AIs are weighted to give in faster or slower.

It's the averaging rule that really bugs me, and how they get to count their own vassals but you don't get to count your own, in fact your own almost invariably hurt you.

 

[mirthadir]

Keeping down a voluntary vassal is rather easy for most cultural/space attempts:
1. This cannot be emphasized enough direct his research. Keep him far, far away from Radio, MM, Medicine, and perhaps even combustion for culture. For space, just don't let them research fiber op or fusion; it will take them forever to trade for them and hey you always wanted Future Tech 20.
2. Take their resources. If they have culture corps, take everything they have, if they defy you, guess which cities you get to raze? Even if they don't; it is amazing how quickly a culture threat goes away when it has no health. Very few buildings give health outright, so who cares if they have a doubling building when they are forced to give you all of their resources. Note this is also highly effective for the popular "Get the bastard killed in war" option. Take their Al, Oil, U, and Coal this pits them with infantry/ATs/SAMs vs Modern Armor, Gunships, and all manner of air. Best to keep them away from robotics if you intend to go this route.
3. Help the enemy. If you have an enemy who borders your vassl, but not you, then you can get really strong mileage out of gifting a few extremely strong units to this third AI and then declaring on him. He attacks through your vassal (who has no late game strategic resources) with a few strong units; you direct your vassals SoD towards some city far away from the inbound SoD. For bonus points you can just get the bastard nuked. Gifting Tac Nukes is hilarious; just be sure you have SDI and good early warning against naval incursions.
4. Steal land peacefully. If you can settle remotely close to AI BFC any overlap eventually becomes yours. I have tried this ever, but I believe you should be able to work simultaneous revolts to settle 3 squares away from the AI and then steal half the BFC.
5. Spies. In addition to TMIT's rules you can go far by torching their culture buildings (particularly ancient ones and cathedrals), and mucking around with their civics (the UN can also be EXTREMELY handy here to starve down a SP based culture shot).
6. Replace their corps; giving the AI mining and SE work pretty well. The latter is useless if you keep their research away from cultural aids.

Unless this is a late vassal, you should be able to keep most AIs away from cultural victories without expending resources most of the time; AIs just need the high end cultural techs to compete. You can nerf those without doing a single active thing.