Making Protectorships

[Rilder]

Ahh, so you want that cute little empire you’ve decimated through years of epic warfare to be your protectorate, well you’ve come to the right place. Making your enemies your protectors isn’t as hard as its cracked up to be; but there’s a few things you gotta do before you can even think about making them yours:

1.) Know them, send out spies amongst there empire so you know there military, cities and well the spies get lotta info on this, women =P

2.)Decimate there army, after all they cant resist you if they have no army, as the Romans due to your fancy speeches you can easily tell when you hear something in a pre battle speech about the enemy army being about a fourth of there total military strength this is a good sign that if you win there weak beyond might

3.) take a settlement from your enemy but make sure no matter what they have about 2 or 3 settlements and you don’t surround there empire, even client kingdoms want to have a tiny option of expanding

4.) a good treasury full of Denarii, You would anyways for good measure,

So after you’ve taken one of there settlements and decimated one of there armies (making sure you decimate there army on the turn you propose the deal(easier then it sounds) ) open up negotiations and offer them: A province or 2 you took from them, nearly all of your Denarii at most 50,000 which I usually throw at them, map information and a satisfaction guaranty all for the low, low price of being your protectorate, now make sure you do this with a good diplomat to if you can so they can throw the sales pitch better. Now if you did all I told you everything should go well. In my Brutus campaign its about 200 BC or something and I have the Julii, Pontus, Dacia, and Thracia all under my rule, (Julii because of an early civil war if your wondering) In total because Protectorate provinces count as your own I have 40 provinces… 15 owned by protectorates.

Any Questions, Comments or bowing to my greatness feel free to post

[Majikos]

What exactly are the advantages of having client kingdoms? Surely you would just want to take them over.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Senate missions - negotiating a protectorate
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[Rilder]

1 like posted above they count to your Total province count, 2 i believe they pay you like most of there turns profits and 3 it creates a buffer zone between any possible enemies and can allow you to focus your troups in wars better or even better take an army thru your protectorates lands and hit the rear of your enemy who doesnt think of your protectorates being a problem and often face you were your provinces lay...

[Majikos]

Oh cool. I have never really used protectorates and so have never actually seen any benefits to it. But if it means that they give you money every turn and it counts towards your province total then i am going to do it more often. Thanks!

[PseRamesses]

Oh cool. I have never really used protectorates and so have never actually seen any benefits to it. But if it means that they give you money every turn and it counts towards your province total then i am going to do it more often. Thanks!

There´s one annoying feat with protectorates though. If two of your protectorates declare war on each other you have to choose sides thus loosing one protectorate. This is why I usually make protectorates of factions that don´t border eachother. Also if you´re at war your enemy can ally with your proectorate and suddenly your war with them ends!!!?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I find the entire protectorate system, along with tributes, obsolete and left half unprogrammed. In my recent RB campaign the Huns, with their anachronic Austrasia, attacked me. I could've beaten them albeit pyrrhically but they offered protectorateship and I accepted after demanding and taking back the city which they had -quite pyrrhically- taken from me the turn before. No more than two years later they attacked (and are now gradually becoming a page in history ).
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[Rilder]

well i have no probs with my protectorates... even tho dacia borders thrace usualy they dont have enof military to do anything

[Upxl]

take a settlement from your enemy but make sure no matter what they have about 2 or 3 settlements and you don’t surround there empire, even client kingdoms want to have a tiny option of expanding

Not surrounding them isn’t necessary.
You can completely surround them and still get them as a protect.

I mostly do it like this:

Block all harbours (non stop).
Get a “full” stack army in their last region.
Make sure they have almost nothing of army left and only 2 to 3 governors.
Siege the f…ers without pausing.
Before the end of the last turn (surrender) you lift the siege and then siege them again.
Little bye little their land will get totally pillaged (with more stacks this will go faster).
Get a good diplo offer them some money etc… and “propose” to protectorate.
Sooner ore later they’re bound to accept.
(I once saved and loaded, saved and loaded to see how much I had to offer before they accepted. It was about 20000.But this probably depends on the nation etc.).

This will all take time, be patience.
And don’t use you’re best armies for the siege, you’ll probably need them elsewhere.

Voila this was getting protectorates by and for dummies.

[Reenk Roink]

What exactly are the advantages of having client kingdoms? Surely you would just want to take them over.

I've noticed that having one protecterate actually helps, as you dont have to manage their cities, and worry about rebellions. I like to get protecterates without paying anything (which is very difficult) that are far away from your territory or in the opposite direction of where you wish to expand. They can be good buffers too...

I do agree that the protecterate was underdeveloped by CA though, and most of the time it is too hard to get. I had one campaign, where I was lucky enough to get an early Greek protecterate (I was Carthage) and they did a nice job expanding and annoying the Romans, leaving me free to focus on Spain and Gaul. That was my most succesful protecterate (free too )

[Upxl]

Didn’t they rebel then at the end?
I was wondering about that.
Do protecs ever rebel?

[Ludens]

Do protecs ever rebel?

No, but if you attack an ally of them they will resign protectorate status. This is quite annoying if they are allied to an enemy of yours: if they accept protectorate status, you get an automatic cease-fire with their ally. To resume hostilities with said ally without losing your protectorate, you have to make them attack you.

Incidentally, factions tend to be less ammendable to any diplomatic offer if you have troops inside their borders, and from my observation this may apply to protectorate offers as well. If you have taken their cities, they always want them back, so you must give them at least one. Also offer them trade rights and map information, and perhaps some cash (not to much, just a starting offer). The A.I. seems to value the former two quite highly, but seldom asks for them unles you offer them. Be prepared to lose a great deal of cash despite haggling, as they are often bankrupt. All-in-all, it's an awful lot of work so I tend not to bother unles they are really far away.

Off course, most of my experiences with protectorates comes from 1.2, but I think diplomacy hasn't changed since then.

[SomeNick]

Got my first protectorate the other evening as I tend to just conquer them all usually but I worked out that protectorates add to the total number of provinces for campaign win :S

They wanted 3 provinces returned and 18,000 Denarii. Instead of giving them back provinces they accepted 30,000 Denarii. Haven't seen this mentioned in particular before so thought I'd post about it.

They will accept more Denarii in lieu of returning their provinces :)

Unfortunately I didn't examine who they were allied to and it was an enemy that attacked me a few turns later. So I lost the protectorate. Possibly another thing to look at before handing over your riches.

There should be a way to look at alliances whilst in diplomacy window.

And as for the income received from protectorates where is it actually stated in the game? Or do you have to demand tribute from them with the protectorate demand in diplomacy or after? for that to occur?

[Garvanko]

Not surrounding them isn’t necessary.
You can completely surround them and still get them as a protect.

I mostly do it like this:

Block all harbours (non stop).
Get a “full” stack army in their last region.
Make sure they have almost nothing of army left and only 2 to 3 governors.
Siege the f…ers without pausing.
Before the end of the last turn (surrender) you lift the siege and then siege them again.
Little bye little their land will get totally pillaged (with more stacks this will go faster).
Get a good diplo offer them some money etc… and “propose” to protectorate.
Sooner ore later they’re bound to accept.
(I once saved and loaded, saved and loaded to see how much I had to offer before they accepted. It was about 20000.But this probably depends on the nation etc.).

This will all take time, be patience.
And don’t use you’re best armies for the siege, you’ll probably need them elsewhere.

Voila this was getting protectorates by and for dummies.

So basically, commit massive troop numbers for ten to twenty turns against a faction with with hardly any money, any family members, only one or two cities, and no chance of survival. Madness.

Just kill them.

[Ciaran]

Ah, but then you have to govern all the cities yourself, deal with the unrest and all the other less-than-enjoyable parts. I rather let them do that themselves. What I miss, however, and recently more than ever, is a diplomatic option to tell them to break their relations, or to stop their wars.
In my first game, as the Julii, I had like five protectorates, Gaul and Egypt among them.
As it seems to me, it´s easier to get protectorates when playing a Roman faction, but that might be just a subjective impression.