How to make those bastards serve me?

Hi guys, I am playing with England at VH and have already crushed Scotland, France, Milan and Spain. My reputation is Deceitful but I dont really care. Me and the Pope are best friends since I keep feeding him with 200 florins every turn.
My only problem is that every time I try to make a faction become my vassal they just deny every time! Even when they just have one city, few units and 3 full stacks of longbows eagerly wait to butcher them!
The AI is just sucidal! I even tried to pay them but they always denied!
How can I make them become my vassals??

They have to be able to expand someplace. You have to be, (in my experience) pretty reliable. Sometimes you have to give money or territories.

Can I improve my reputation back again??
I am at turn 31 now...

Oh, and another thing: almost all of my generals are dreaded bastards, my King has 10 Dread points!!
I mean, my army is the most cruel ever!!:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:
I never take prisioners, only if I had catch the faction heir or something that can give me more than 6000 florins.
I utterly smash rebels and sack everyone. Sometimes I even exterminate them if their population is too high.

:skull: :skull: :skull:

In games where I've had a bad reputation I never managed to get vassalls. However, I got my reputation up in my Turkish campaign, and had both Egypt and Hungary as my vassalls, althought they soon backstabbed me.

You can get your reputation back up, if you can be bothered, I'm not sure its worth the trouble. Anyway, if you do hope to just:

Always occupy conquered settlements
Always release prisoners
Keep good relations with factions
Set low taxes
Get high chivalry Generals
Make alliances and keep them
Attack factions with bad reputations

EDIT: Also better change this thread title before a mod sees it...

WHAT are the benefits of having a vassal?

What exactly do you get in return that could possibly equal their actual territory?

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Originally Posted by askthepizzaguy

WHAT are the benefits of having a vassal?

What exactly do you get in return that could possibly equal their actual territory?

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Their territories are added to your total. Which means that if you are blitzing you can conquer regions without actually capturing them. And you get most of their money.

Pizzaguy no like. Bad Medicine.

Their "alliance" can be broken and you will be at war with them again. I've become a vassal before and backstabbed my lord.

Besides, what good is peace and prosperity when we can build a glorious new future on the broken bodies and charred corpses of the vanquished?

Perhaps one thing good is that you can get some unique buildings if you have enough patiance

Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?

No, seriously that's perhaps the best reason I've been given so far. Much like Rome, where you could get excellent Scipii temples if you conquered them late. Getting the best temples from each faction allowed diversity in construction.

A pity your empire needs to be one religion. I'd love to see Orthodox cathedrals, Catholic cathedrals, and Islamic Mosques as well, all coexisting in the same town and offering a religious tolerance public order bonus to offset the religious penalty for not having a state religion.

Yes, in Rome that was a good thing really. I usually awaited for maceddon to build temple of artemis at their cities to give my greek armies a good archer support.
In medieval I don't know all the unique buildings you can get, but scotland's castle library is a nice building.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caledonian Rhyfelwyr

In games where I've had a bad reputation I never managed to get vassalls. However, I got my reputation up in my Turkish campaign, and had both Egypt and Hungary as my vassalls, althought they soon backstabbed me.

You can get your reputation back up, if you can be bothered, I'm not sure its worth the trouble. Anyway, if you do hope to just:

Always occupy conquered settlements
Always release prisoners
Keep good relations with factions
Set low taxes
Get high chivalry Generals
Make alliances and keep them
Attack factions with bad reputations

EDIT: Also better change this thread title before a mod sees it...

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And don't use assassins - they take away chivalry and give you dread. This annoys me - I'm supposed to just sit there and watch a bunch of priests (or imams if I'm a Catholic faction) and other nasty guys running around my territories without knocking them off? No way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Procrustes

And don't use assassins - they take away chivalry and give you dread. This annoys me - I'm supposed to just sit there and watch a bunch of priests (or imams if I'm a Catholic faction) and other nasty guys running around my territories without knocking them off? No way.

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Then put them underneath your boot and STOMP them.

Surround the idiot agent in question with up to 8 little units on all sides. Then, once you're sure the agent cannot move (click the agent and look for yellow movement regions) STOMP HIM LIKE A BUG!!!

(move one unit into the middle of your donut of death)

Agghhh.... ughhh.....

Mmm... what a satisfying noise.

Cheating? Let's just say my soldiers 'captured' this foreign agent and held him on suspicion of espionage. Any non-spy or assassin isn't hidden anyway, and should my men choose to arrest this foreign mischief maker, that's my business.

Then, to the chopping block. I've no more space in my jails.

:skull:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by askthepizzaguy

Besides, what good is peace and prosperity when we can build a glorious new future on the broken bodies and charred corpses of the vanquished?

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In my sig now

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jkarinen

In my sig now

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I didn't know you had a sig. I thought you were an autonomous collective.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Monty Python and the Holy Grail

DENNIS:
You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN:
Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.
DENNIS:
That's what it's all about. If only people would hear of--
ARTHUR:
Please! Please, good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN:
No one lives there.
ARTHUR:
Then who is your lord?
WOMAN:
We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR:
What?
DENNIS:
I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,...
ARTHUR:
Yes.
DENNIS:
...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
ARTHUR:
Yes, I see.
DENNIS:
...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,...
ARTHUR:
Be quiet!
DENNIS:
...but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major--
ARTHUR:
Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!

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Honestly, that does sound like a good sig. Just be sure to quote the source.

IIRC sacking or even exterminating a city of a faction which is excommunicated doesn't cause a drop in diplomatic reputation; nor does assassinating opposing religious faction (or rebel) characters or sacking/exterm. their cities.

Try offering it as an alternat offer next time some ASKS YOU for a cease fire. That tends to be when you'll be able to get vassalage in my experience.

I like to keep other countries around, albeit often in smaller forms, because it helps with my trade economy, which allows me to maintain an expensive army.:bling: