Warlords Expansion New Traits

[padillah]

Originally posted by axisworks
I absolutely love the Vassal States idea. That brings a really awesome element into the game, strategically.

I wonder what the criteria is for working your way out of it. Seems like a usable strategy is to meet a civ, offer to be a vassal, build up under their protection for 20 or 30 turns and then leave their protection and wipe everyone out.

Not that I would do something like that.

Tom P.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by tortillah
I wonder what the criteria is for working your way out of it. Seems like a usable strategy is to meet a civ, offer to be a vassal, build up under their protection for 20 or 30 turns and then leave their protection and wipe everyone out.

I guess if they're strong enough to protect you for 20-30 turns, they'd be strong enough to make sure that they can act on their frustration at your breaking away from them...

[Blake]

not to mention that during those 20-30 turns they're going to like, take your stuff?

[axisworks]

Yeah, I think the MO on being a vassal state is that you forefit a considerable portion of your gold intake or production or both for their use, and you get military protection as a result. That seemed to be the general theory, anyway.

[padillah]

Well, the article says it comes up for review every 10 turns so there's got to be a way out.

I just wonder if you can "use" the vassalage and it's escape clause to get ahead in a given situation.

Tom P.

[LordShiva]

Being a vassal is for hippies

[Blaupanzer]

You want to make vassals, not BE one.

[Yosho]

Charismatic sounds almost too strong.

Imperalistic...well, I guess that would depend on how good Great Generals are.

Protective seem almost absurdly weak. It would be useful against barbarians, or for a brief period right after you get longbows, but otherwise it seems almost irrelevent.

[Hellcat]

Re: Warlords Expansion New Traits

Originally posted by MikeH
Protective trait.
Artillery and archer have Drill I and Drill II promotions.
Double production walls and castles

By artillery, do they mean just the late industrial unit or cannons, trebs, and catapaults as well?

[Ijuin]

I would presume they mean all land bombard units as "artillery" in this context. Kind of sucky that the Drill promotions do not extend to your gunpowder units though.

[Martinus]

Does

25% reduction in the cost of unit promotions.

mean unit upgrading will cost less or that they will need less experience for promotions?

If the latter, Charismatic + Aggressive will absolutely rock battlefields.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by axisworks
Yeah, I think the MO on being a vassal state is that you forefit a considerable portion of your gold intake or production or both for their use, and you get military protection as a result. That seemed to be the general theory, anyway.

That's not how it works, at least according to what we heard so far.

Essentially, in some article it was described as an asymetric alliance, in that the vassal is automatically at war with whoever the sovereign is at war, but not the other way around. Also, your vassal states count towards your victory objectives (they mentioned specifically domination victory - not sure if it also works with other victory conditions).

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Yosho
Protective seem almost absurdly weak. It would be useful against barbarians, or for a brief period right after you get longbows, but otherwise it seems almost irrelevent.

Yeah I agree. I suppose it would be nicely rounded if the bonus also extended to machine guns which are the quintessential defense unit.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Yosho
Protective seem almost absurdly weak. It would be useful against barbarians, or for a brief period right after you get longbows, but otherwise it seems almost irrelevent.

The strength isn't so much in the fact that you have Drill II immediately, but more in the fact that you can upgrade to Drill III/Drill IV very quickly, and those are wickedly good promotions.

[TimeTraveler]

Does anyone else find it odd that all three of the new traits each have something to do with combat effectiveness?