Protectorate ?

[pmaura]

The protectorate option used to be bugged is it still. Also what exactly is it. Do I ever have to worry about a protectorate leaving the protection of my empire?

[AntiochusIII]

I'm not sure about the buggedness of the feature in 1.5. The purpose, however, is when you don't want to take control of the enemies' territories once you actually "defeat" them -- wanting that faction to live. The protectorates' territories count towards your own in the victory conditions, and they can't betray you directly (by attacking you or breaking treaties on their own) so you are "guaranteed" to have a safe border with a protectorate faction. Their forces also won't cause devastation in your realm when they (like the AI like to) march around. And a certain amount of tribute (I believe it's like half -- or all, after initial upkeep -- of their income) every turn.

The problem, however, is that protectorates can and almost always will break from you whenever you attack one of their allies or the other way around, and their diplomats can still make alliance on their own even after you "conquered" them. The AI also have this tendency to ally with your enemies and also attack you at the earliest possibility, therefore protectorates don't tend to last long if you're expansionist, or one of your neighbors is.

Strangely, I haven't been able to make a single protectorate out of the AI factions since I converted to 1.5. Those stubborn fools...

[sik1977]

The protectorate option used to be bugged is it still. Also what exactly is it. Do I ever have to worry about a protectorate leaving the protection of my empire?

You can find a discussion on the later part of your question here

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=59404

[Brutal DLX]

I think it's safe to say that the protectorate option is NOT working in any useful way for gameplay. Neither is the better part of diplomacy. This can't be intended, and it's one of the largest issues I have with RTW.

Surely, the game series has been centered on the war aspect, not on the diplomacy one, but since MTW, there have always been a ways for the less aggressive player to stay out of constant warring and focus more on stabilising the economy and expanding one's cities. In MTW, there used to be few alliances that were kept for the whole game, but at least one could manage to avoid hostilities in most cases (if intended so).
The diplomacy system introduced in RTW seemed to expand the possibilities even more, but as it is right now, I have to say that this potential has not been realised AT ALL.

Alliances are being negotiated, but the allies hardly ever cooperate, the only value of the alliance thus being to deny the opponent of one ally the chance of allying with other allies, who might not be at war with the same opponent yet.
By and large, it is always the human player who has to try to "convince" an AI ally (sometimes even with large sums of money) that it would really be quite helpful to them if they would accept military assistance of the human player to fend off an attack by their enemy, and that in order to do that, the granting of military access rights would be a most sensible thing that really shouldn't be denied because it would be the same as "an invitation to invade" (which would be the last thing a would-be invader would care about). AI allies hardly ever interact with the human player in a way that one could expect of an alliance.

The protectorate would have been a nice concept, but firstly, it is being treated by the AI just like some kind of alliance (as others already mentioned); the ability of the protectorate to still being able to negotiate valid alliances on its own behalf is turning it into a farce. Surely, after the negotiation of a protectorate, the protectorate should mirror immediately the alliances of its protector, any additional alliances it had prior to that should be cancelled, and additional enemies should become neutral for the moment. The protectorate then should be unable to negotiate ceasefires or alliances with other factions as well as start new wars. A protectorate can only lose its protectorate status if it surpasses its protector somehow, or if the protector falters or ceases to exist (could have been done by comparing the overall ratings of protector and protectorate in the background and setting a threshold akin to that of Roman civil war).

Secondly, the AI of the protector is also flawed in a way that protectorates are being negotiated, and several turns later (or even on the following one) the protector attacks its own protectorate. This could be related to an observation that I made recently in a BI game, where the provinces that my protectorate held DID NOT count towards my total, ie. I still had to own 18 provinces myself. (But that could be due to new conditions introduced for BI only, I'm referring to the RTW 1.5 Imperial Campaign mostly.)
Thirdly, also the conditions for negotiating a protectorate are even less transparent in 1.5 than in earlier versions, but apparently they have increased as I find it much more difficult to get protectorates. While I can understand this in some cases (like some Barbarian faction simply being too "proud" to submit), it happens apparently in the vast majority of them (appears to apply for other players too, judging from posts in the forum).

All of the above adds up to completely undermine the diplomatic aspect of the game and in turn the whole strategic layout, which I deem essential for the proper pursuit of the "Art of War".

[red comyn]

I really dont bother with any real effort at diplomacy anymore. It is pretty much pointless. So all I try and do is get trade rights and then bugger the rest will accept an alliance if there is some money I need at the time offered.

[Monarch]

I think the simplest way of fixing the 'he's allied with that guy, you just attacked that guy, so he's not going to be your protectorate any more' bug is just to automatically cancel the protectorate kingdoms alliances when they first become a client kingdom, they are basically owned by the faction, so perhaps they should inherit the owners enemies/allies automatically.

[Upxl]

good point Sovereign!