Protectorates - seeing double

[Carinus]

In my current game the Diplomacy screen lists Scythia as being a Protectorate of both Parthia and Dacia. How does this work then? Who gets the benefits, if any, of having a Protectorate and how is it that Scythia could have agreed to be a Protectorate a second time? I foolishly thought that if I was ever fortunate enough to acquire a Protectorate it would be all mine to gloat over and that I wouldn't have to share the experience.


Carinus

[Epistolary Richard]

You should have put a restrictive covenant clause in your Protectorate agreement, which would stop them signing up to any other budding world dominating empires. Yes, I see a lot of this with these informal, 'point-of-the-sword' contracts, it's all ravaging cities and pillaging women (?) and there's just no one looking through the fine print.

Seriously though, I don't know how it's happened. The point of these client kingdoms is that they're your client and no one else's. And if they're supposed to be giving you all their income they don't spend then what's happening now? Is it being split? Are you getting the full whack?

Maybe see if you can attack a Dacian/Parthian army next to a Scythian army, so that they’ll be drawn into the battle and be forced to declare war on the other side.

[lars573]

Your assuming that a client kingdom and a protectorate are the same thing. That's not the case. I can think of 2 instances when 2 competing large states both protecting a smaller one at the same time. Egypt is the first that springs to mind it was a protectorate of the Ottoman empire and Great Britain at the same time between 1882 and 1914. The second one is when Hungary and the Ottomans protected Wallachia and Moldova in the 15th century.

[Suladan]

That is quite interesting, Lars, but I don't think the historical references explain the in-game behavior in this particular case.

The way protectorates are implemented in the game does not lend itself well to joint custody. This sounds more like a bug than a feature working-as-designed. I would check your Financial tab for diplomacy income and try to determine if you are still actually receiving tribute from them. But my guess would be that the game is probably treating Scythia as a protectorate of whichever nation subjugated it most recently.

[lars573]

When you take on a protectoarte is gives you 4 things with the protectee. An alliance, military access (both ways), and the special status of protector (IE they give you massive tribute every turn). The first three things can be granted at any time. To any one in any combination. There is nothing in that would preclude one nation having 2 different protectors in so far as the games logic is concerned. All it means is that Dacia and Parthia aren't getting a very large cut of the Scythian coffers, as they have to split it.

[Epistolary Richard]

Well, we're trying to find out if that's happening. If your protectorates start signing on with other factions and sending them tribute then it impacts you financially and so you should have some form of reddress.

And what happens if Dacia and Parthia go to war? You can't be at war with an allies ally, so whose alliance gets broken and who makes the decision?

Considering how must effort has to go into to getting a Protectorate in the first place, I'd feel a bit hard done by if I lost it because a third faction declared war on me.