Vassalage: what prompts it?

[Vlad Tzepes]

I find it rather difficult not only to force a faction into vassalage, but also to understand the logic of the process.

When you beat the AI, when it has horrific losses, when it loses cities and castles and when it's obvious it's irrevocably engaged on the path to total annihilation, I think vassalage should be a realistic option.

What I get is "very demanding" demeanors and angry answers. It's like the AI religiously practices a before-its-time stalinistic theory of "all-the-people all-out-resistance-war". Only if loyalist rebellions would pop out in the newly conquered cities/castles, it would explain it.

I know that's how it's supposed to be - Total War, AI not interested in peace with you, but really... why have the option if it doesn't work in a logical manner?

[Burakius]

I find it rather difficult not only to force a faction into vassalage, but also to understand the logic of the process.

When you beat the AI, when it has horrific losses, when it loses cities and castles and when it's obvious it's irrevocably engaged on the path to total annihilation, I think vassalage should be a realistic option.

What I get is "very demanding" demeanors and angry answers. It's like the AI religiously practices a before-its-time stalinistic theory of "all-the-people all-out-resistance-war". Only if loyalist rebellions would pop out in the newly conquered cities/castles, it would explain it.

I know that's how it's supposed to be - Total War, AI not interested in peace with you, but really... why have the option if it doesn't work in a logical manner?

what actually happens when becoming vassal?>

[Vlad Tzepes]

If you make smbd a vassal - presumably you get all their profits, every turn, and it can't declare war on you. And that's about everything AFAIK. Didn't get a vassal yet - but in RTW that's how it worked, after a patch, in vanilla protectorates got rich from your treasury, that was really funny...

If you become a vassal - don't know.

[Faenaris]

As far as I know, when you become a vassal, you become allies with your new "boss", you give military acces AND you pay them a certain percentage of your income.

On the plus side, you have powerful ally that won't betray you (at least, not as much as the normal allies would) and you get acces to his lands.

[FesterShinetop]

Is it also possible for lands that became Vassal to "break free" again? Or is being a vassal permanent?

[Faenaris]

Is it also possible for lands that became Vassal to "break free" again? Or is being a vassal permanent?

You simply cancel the alliance and attack. No more paying taxes for the big boss , just make sure you are prepared. And breaking a vassalage is considered a bad act, so your reputation will lose a couple of points.

[Don Jacopo Caldora]

I won my second game playing Denmark with 3 vassel states. What is nice the territory of the vassel counts towards your victory conditions, so you dont have to take all 45 territories to win. This is good as I tend to play long, and wil be modding my next game to the 1 turn = 1 year ratio to give myself more time to develop my nation b efore going conquering.

I also found it is good to offer lots of cash with the vassilage offer to improve the chances of the ai accepting. Alternatly you could give them a territory back to sweeten the deal as well.

Current game as Sicily have one client state (Milan) and hopeing to add spain as I am whomping them. Biggest threat now to my empire is Mongolia (who made it all the way to frankfurt!, turn 170) and Venice and germany are being stuborn but not really a threat.

[Bob the Insane]

Is it not the same as the Protectorate in RTW?

That is Alliance, Trade Rights and Military Access plus (and this is the real big one) that factions provinces count as yours for victory purposes...

Is that not so?

To be honest I could never get anyone to agree to it in RTW...

[Shaun]

I find it rather difficult not only to force a faction into vassalage, but also to understand the logic of the process.

When you beat the AI, when it has horrific losses, when it loses cities and castles and when it's obvious it's irrevocably engaged on the path to total annihilation, I think vassalage should be a realistic option.

What I get is "very demanding" demeanors and angry answers. It's like the AI religiously practices a before-its-time stalinistic theory of "all-the-people all-out-resistance-war". Only if loyalist rebellions would pop out in the newly conquered cities/castles, it would explain it.

I know that's how it's supposed to be - Total War, AI not interested in peace with you, but really... why have the option if it doesn't work in a logical manner?

Well, you said it yourself - it aint Medieval total peace.
What difficulty do you play on? I play on Medium and the AI seems all too willing to offer me a ceasefire when they are getting badly beaten. Infact, as the Moors in my Portugal campaing, they were begging for a ceasefire. They even gave me Granada, the Turks have also gave me Trebizond as the Byzantines this way too.

[Oaty]

What I hated about vassals was that your vassal would break away from you 2 turns later because it's ally attacked you. All that work for nothing. Does this also occur in MTW2 or not. I can live if it occurs 30 plus turns down the road but it should be programmed to favour you if the faction wants to or not

[dopp]

I think its even worse now in that your vassal can break the agreement any time he feels strong enough.

[Whacker]

What I hated about vassals was that your vassal would break away from you 2 turns later because it's ally attacked you. All that work for nothing. Does this also occur in MTW2 or not. I can live if it occurs 30 plus turns down the road but it should be programmed to favour you if the faction wants to or not

Completely agree. If YOU'VE made someone a vassal, then YOU should pretty much dictate their diplomatic answers on big decisions such as that, such as who they ally with, etc. If a vassal chooses to break away, then they can regain that control, but it should come at a very big price in terms of public reputation, and repercussions from the former lord faction.

[dopp]

Perhaps what should happen is this: a faction that becomes a vassal automatically loses all other allies and cannot make alliances while it remains a vassal. The main reason why vassals suddenly turn on you is because you go to war with their allies, even if it was the allies who attacked you.

[Oaty]

If a vassal chooses to break away, then they can regain that control, but it should come at a very big price in terms of public reputation, and repercussions from the former lord faction.

What would be better if some would rebel to the vassal owner fearing the repercussions, this would be a nice feature as both the human and the AI could take a huge hit instead of it being an exploit.

[mor dan]

Well, you said it yourself - it ain't Medieval total peace.
What difficulty do you play on? I play on Medium and the AI seems all too willing to offer me a ceasefire when they are getting badly beaten. In fact, as the Moors in my Portugal campaign, they were begging for a ceasefire. They even gave me Granada, the Turks have also gave me Trebizond as the Byzantines this way too.

shoot, not for me. i can be kicking HRE's butt across the continent and they still won't ceasefire until THEY send a dip my way.

[Werner]

How do you guys get the AI to agree to this kind of stuff? Everytime I ask for ceasefire or vassalage, even if its there last city that I'm besiegeing, I always get a "How dare you!" answer with "Very Demanding". And that was on medium difficulty. My new campaign as the scots I am playing H/H so it will be even harder this time around, right?

I think the AI is broken.

[Musashi]

Dude, use some logic... You're the invading evil empire... why would they agree to become your vassal? They're more likely to tell you to eat... stuff... and fight to the death. You've been killing their people and taking their land. If you want them to agree to something like that you have to give them something in return so they can save face. Give them back one of the territories you've taken, or a huge sum of money for rebuilding their nation.

[Werner]

Or....just kill their last city and reap the rewards? See the AI doesnt lend itself to being nice because you don't get anything out of it. In 5 turns or less their going to declare war against you in one back stabbing way or another, so whats the point?

The AI doesn't work

[Musashi]

It's just being realistic. No noble family worth their salt would ever have agreed to become a vassal under those circumstances.

[Whacker]

It's just being realistic. No noble family worth their salt would ever have agreed to become a vassal under those circumstances.

Not necessarily a safe assumption Musashi. People will do extraordinary things to protect their loved ones, and there were often ruling nobles and individuals who honestly did have their people's best interests and livelihood in mind. It sometimes makes sense to compromise or give into a much larger force, with the agreement that they won't harm you (too much at least), your loved ones, or your people, in exchange for coming under their rule. The most notable example of this I can think of was the Mongols. Supposedly they allowed cities and towns to surrender to them, in exchange for sparing the populace and the city by and large. Not surrendering essentially equaled annihilation. Faced with those prospects, what would you do? Just something to consider.

Cheers!

[dopp]

Part of the problem is that your reputation and relations with the faction influences the decision. If you expand aggressively then your rep is always near rock bottom and nobody will trust you. It's nearly impossible to improve your rep, but one war with someone and it plummets. I attacked the hated Moors as Spain and my rep and relationship with all the CATHOLIC factions went down one or two levels across the board. I'm fighting the official, sanctioned 'bad guys' of the western world and suddenly nobody likes me. Same thing with relations. England and I are so-so. England attacks me and relations become poor. I defeat his invading stack and relations become terrible. I defeat his reinforcing stack and relations become abysmal. So-so to abysmal in 2 turns, but 50 turns and dozens of gifts later I'm still terrible with them.

The diplomacy AI is a little better than RTW. I have managed to gain regions from enemies in return for peace, trade rights and a little cash. Just make sure they are the ones who ask for peace first, it usually means they're desperate enough to listen to your unreasonable demands. Also, unlike in RTW where the settlement handed over is completely emptied and vulnerable to recapture by every roaming stack of peasants, M2TW gives you some free defenders to hold the place until you get your real garrisons in place.

[Musashi]

Part of the problem is that your reputation and relations with the faction influences the decision. If you expand aggressively then your rep is always near rock bottom and nobody will trust you. It's nearly impossible to improve your rep, but one war with someone and it plummets. I attacked the hated Moors as Spain and my rep and relationship with all the CATHOLIC factions went down one or two levels across the board. I'm fighting the official, sanctioned 'bad guys' of the western world and suddenly nobody likes me. Same thing with relations. England and I are so-so. England attacks me and relations become poor. I defeat his invading stack and relations become terrible. I defeat his reinforcing stack and relations become abysmal. So-so to abysmal in 2 turns, but 50 turns and dozens of gifts later I'm still terrible with them.

The diplomacy AI is a little better than RTW. I have managed to gain regions from enemies in return for peace, trade rights and a little cash. Just make sure they are the ones who ask for peace first, it usually means they're desperate enough to listen to your unreasonable demands. Also, unlike in RTW where the settlement handed over is completely emptied and vulnerable to recapture by every roaming stack of peasants, M2TW gives you some free defenders to hold the place until you get your real garrisons in place.

The thing is it's not hard to maintain a good reputation. Just don't be aggressively expansionist. If you think about it for a while, it should be obvious that in real life people don't like aggressive people.

[FactionHeir]

The diplomacy AI is a little better than RTW. I have managed to gain regions from enemies in return for peace, trade rights and a little cash. Just make sure they are the ones who ask for peace first, it usually means they're desperate enough to listen to your unreasonable demands. Also, unlike in RTW where the settlement handed over is completely emptied and vulnerable to recapture by every roaming stack of peasants, M2TW gives you some free defenders to hold the place until you get your real garrisons in place.

Only works some of the time. Once I had the turks approach me for a ceasefire and they demanded I pay them 1350 florins over 17 turns! Outrageous!
I counterproposed to have them pay me 600 florins over 6 turns (verge of generous to balanced) and they declined and told me they want 1250 florins over 15 turns now.
So I just said pay me 1000 florins or i'll attack and they firmly rejected :D

Well, they are currently losing a lot of land to me ;)

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Not easy to win the game without being pretty aggressive IMO. One area that is lacking...and is a bit of a let down to me...is the lack of MTW's great achievement....option.

Now all you have is war pretty much. This is a real shame and limits things IMHO.

The AI is very mixed in this area also..diplomacy sometimes works ok, but other times is very lacking and slightly pathetic. I mean why declare war on a major power and then send in some feeble army? Worse still knowing that your small state would get squashed pretty quick. That isnt smart IMHO.

[Musashi]

If you play on timescale 0.5 you're almost guaranteed to win as long as you don't die. So there's no need to be aggressive. It's nice to have 900 turns in the campaign, I can play it in a more realistic manner.

[crpcarrot]

As far as I know, when you become a vassal, you become allies with your new "boss", you give military acces AND you pay them a certain percentage of your income.

On the plus side, you have powerful ally that won't betray you (at least, not as much as the normal allies would) and you get acces to his lands.

Actually it didnt work like this on M2TW

in my campaign as england france declared war on me then the pope asked em to cease hostilities. then france demanded that i become a vassal. i counter offerd for a tribute of 1000 per turn. and they accepted.

it lasted for about 10-15 turns and then france sent in a spy and tthat broke the alliance.

havent yet managed to get anyone t be my vassal yet.

[dopp]

If you play on timescale 0.5 you're almost guaranteed to win as long as you don't die. So there's no need to be aggressive. It's nice to have 900 turns in the campaign, I can play it in a more realistic manner.

You're playing a modded game. Reputation takes way too long to repair when you only have 225 turns to win. In my current campaign I only attacked the Moors. My reputation dropped to dubious. 125 turns along and my reputation is still dubious. Talk about long memories. And it's funny how the Catholic factions should take offense at me defending the western world by pushing back the Muslim invaders.

[Musashi]

*shrug* the stock timescale is silly.

[Vanya]

*shrug* the stock timescale is silly.

GAH!

Vanya would prefer a logarithmic time scale.

Let early years proceed at 2. 1400-1500 proceed at 1. 1500-1530 wrap up at 0.5.

This way, li'l bastards can run amok with guns and shoot their eyes out to amuse Vanya more!

Otherwise, youz have no choice but to go out on a bum rush!

GAH!

[Whacker]

GAH!

Vanya would prefer a logarithmic time scale.

Let early years proceed at 2. 1400-1500 proceed at 1. 1500-1530 wrap up at 0.5.

This way, li'l bastards can run amok with guns and shoot their eyes out to amuse Vanya more!

Otherwise, youz have no choice but to go out on a bum rush!

GAH!

I personally don't necessarily like this idea, BUT there was a hidden one in there that's great. I frequently wanted the ability to change variables in the game that one can only set at the start of a campaign, like the brigand_spawn_value, etc. Being able to change those settings directly through command-line options that take affect immediately and are saved in the savegames would be great. Yes, I do know about the script to turn on and off rebels and whatnaught in a province, I'd still prefer the ability to muck with those variables directly though.

Gah! Cheers!