Do you get a Rep hit if...?

So I have the King of Sicily trapped in his last castle. He'd been there like 30 odd turns under siege. I get down to the final turn before surrender, lift the seige, offer him vassalation, he rejects it, siege goes back up. He has about 75 troops left in sparse little 5-7 man teams. He rates as powerless. I rate as supreme, with 2 stacks outside his gates and his port blockaded. (Really, I think he should have a special trait to even be able to reject being a vassal at this point, under ANY terms.)

Anyway, looks like I'm going to have to get my hands dirty.

Do I get a rep hit if the faction is destroyed by:

1. Assassinating the last king and not being caught?

2. Letting the siege go so long the last king dies of old age? (He's 31, he inherited his kingdom in a castle under siege, and has no heirs... could take a while.)

Any other ways I can eliminate a faction too dumb for Darwin to ever let live?

Well, you're already taking a hit because you're invading him, might as well finish the job...

Faction destruction is a big rep hit. BTW, he started the conflict, when he had only one settlement. Tried to take Cagliari.

So there hasn't been any rep hit for me so far.

I have come to the conclusion that after a certain point in the game you have to quit worrying about your reputation. Once you reach the point where you can take on all your neighbors at the same time, there is no point. As the game goes on, nothing you can control will prevent you from taking SOME reputation hits, and it will go down. While you might be able to keep it from bottoming out by careful actions, you won't be able to maintain it at a very high level. Also, by this point, you are bordering many different factions, none of which will make peace with you as long as they share that border.

If you're not there, and don't want to take a hit for wiping out the Sicilians, then just go away. He's rather irrelevant at the moment. Just go back with an army every so often to wipe out any troops he starts building up and he won't be more than an inconvenience. If you are at that point, then take the city and put an end to his sorry ass.

I find that offering vassalage is pretty easy as long as you do it right...

To get an easy vassalage does require you to part with one province though.

Here are the steps that seem to work for me...

Move in with your diplomat, click on the vassalage option and see what it rates at.Usually, it's "very demanding", so you need to do some work:

1. Gift them a province (just gift it, without asking for peace or vassalage)

2. Check the rating for vassalage again...it *should* be "Balanced". No, don't offer it just yet. Bump it up with cash until it rates as "Very Generous" and THEN make the offer. They'll most likely come up with a counter-proposal for more money. Agree to that and voila: you got yourself a vassal.

So what are vassals good for, anyway? I take it their provinces count against your minimum to win the game (45 in most cases), but other than that? Do they pay you tribute? Are they automatically allied with you and not allowed to cancel the alliance? Do you see what they see?
I've never been a vassal, nor had one. Usually it seemed less trouble to just take all their lands instead of letting a tiny part of them live, gifting them insane amounts of money and keeping them around as vassals.

Vassals are awesome...

1. They do send you tribute if they can afford it, but you cant count on it every turn.

2. Sometimes they keep their pre-vassalage allies, and if you attack those allies, vassalage *will* be dissolved.

3. They become 100% passive and no longer try to conquer anything, *and* other factions seem to completely lose interest in them.

4. Usually vassalage comes with a full scale alliance/trade rights/military access (for both parties)

5. Your vassals will NEVER sneak attack you even though they might (and probably will) hate your guts.


In short, having vassals is fun.

Vassalating them is beyond just beating them up, it's completely dominating them. It's forcing them to admit your victory. You can win, and still have them around to rub their noses in it. Plus it doesn't hurt your rep.

And, after they've been trapped in there for so long, they have an "Extreme" amount of wealth built up. Vassals have to give up excess money, so it would mostly become mine.

Besides, destroying them is easy right now... making them a vassal is an accomplishment. :beam:

I finally found option 3 for getting rid of their faction without a hit:

After they have almost no troops, lift the siege! Watch civil unrest kick the king out of his last city! Let rebellion destroy him for you.

Hehehe. That's pretty sweet by itself. But France... they're turning vassal, no matter what!