Some gameplay questions

I'm playing as Seleucids and I have a few questions regarding game mechanics.

1) What do I need to do to be able to offer protectorate status? I am preparing for a final invasion of Ptolemaic Egypt, who controls only his Egyptian and Nubian possessions now (Coele-Syria is completely mine) in order to get rid myself of Ptolemaic pests for a while. I intend to use force diplomacy to make them my protectorate after I bring them to their knees. But, as I have been using FD a lot lately to get some years of peace, I noticed I don't even have the option to offer protectorate to them. Do I need to conquer some specific amount of their territory to make them protectorate or is there some other requirement?

2)Along with making them protectorate, I also want to establish my puppet state in Nubia. I was planning to use the Macedonians I kept alive on that island west of Asia Minor, by giving them two southern regions and afterward making them my protectorate. Can I make them protectorate without declaring war?

I want to give them those two settlements and transfer their army down there, to roleplay some minor Seleukid prince taking some hellenistic army with himself and then mixing it up with native forces. I assume this will work okay? The Makedonians can build only basic troops there, and if I switch one of their FM down with the army I can freely take their Asia Minor possesions, right?

3) Some time in the future I want to start a punitive expedition against Saka, burning their towns and letting them rebel to Eleutheroi, but leaving one their town to simulate later revival of steppe nomads and their new invasion. The problems here are how to make those towns rebel to Eleutheroi not Saka and how to stop Baktria from marching in and taking all those settlements?

4)How loyal protectorates are and can they declare war on their own? I expect Ptolemai to rebel once they rebuild their Kingdom from ashes, but I would like my client Nubian kingdom to remain fairly loyal.

You're hitting some limits of the engine here. It's pretty much impossible to mandate a rebellion to the Eleutheroi from the original faction, no matter how much damage you do to the infrastructure and espionage and sabotage.

Furthermore, if you destroy all the recruiting buildings of the Saka, all that will happen later is they spam armies of rubbish, since the AI never reliably builds up its barracks.

What if I add bunch of population to cities that I want to rebel from Saka? And when they rebel just remove it?

Protectorate factions go inert in my experience. However they are not necessarily loyal. If you make them a protectorate, you will get an automatic peace with all of their allies. If you then attack their allies again there's a chance they will break protectorate to stay with their ally. For this reason I haven't bothered with protectorates since vanilla 1.2.

Also the A.I. financial-aid script does not take into account protectorate status, so it will keep pouring money into the Ptolemid treasury, which the diplomacy engine then sluices to you. IIRC not using protectorates was one of the EB-team's houserules for the open beta, although I am not sure it's still an issue with newer money script.

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Originally Posted by Stark

What if I add bunch of population to cities that I want to rebel from Saka? And when they rebel just remove it?

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Again, it isn't reliable. They may just reduce taxes, increase the garrison, send a governor and/or build something that improves order.

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Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius

Again, it isn't reliable. They may just reduce taxes, increase the garrison, send a governor and/or build something that improves order.

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But it still could be done, however unlikely? My plan is to overrun all of their settlements besides one, then start rebellions one by one in cut of cities, adding population, raising all happiness buildings before that and swarming the area with spies and diplomats (I heard that helps also?), sabotaging any happiness building and stopping any army and FM they try to send there.

Ludens - Regarding money from protectorates, I doesn't matter much to me, as I already have a stable and rich empire with vast treasury. And I play on N/N, so it's already quite easy (I play to roleplay mostly). Do you ave any idea what determines when does the option to demand protectorate appears?

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Originally Posted by Stark

But it still could be done, however unlikely? My plan is to overrun all of their settlements besides one, then start rebellions one by one in cut of cities, adding population, raising all happiness buildings before that and swarming the area with spies and diplomats (I heard that helps also?), sabotaging any happiness building and stopping any army and FM they try to send there.

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I strongly suspect public order is bugged. We already know multiple spies add, rather than decrease order (regardless of what the number says). And even sabotaging stuff doesn't really seem to work - I say this from bitter experience of rebellions miraculously not happening even when order is kept below 50%, strangely enough there's no unrest unless its a settlement that's already been taken from its original owner.

I recall reading somewhere that the A.I. cheats: it's get lower thresholds for rioting and revolts. Of course, it might just be an unfixed bug, but the fact that it doesn't work this way for the player suggests that the developers created different rules for the A.I.

In my experience, a settlement is almost impossible to rebel when the governor's palace it's the same culture as the current owner faction.

the only way to create a rebellion is unfortunately via console command
"add_population X 5000" and I can confess that it is the only way to incite a rebellion.
I tested it many times a population over 50000 works great and after rebellion it is advisable to reduce the population as "add_population X -5000"

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Originally Posted by Atraphoenix

the only way to create a rebellion is unfortunately via console command
"add_population X 5000" and I can confess that it is the only way to incite a rebellion.
I tested it many times a population over 50000 works great and after rebellion it is advisable to reduce the population as "add_population X -5000"

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For clarity, the command is: add_population [settlementname], [number to add] - with a minus if you want to reduce it. I might try this out to see if I can get some places to rebel.