Horrible A.I vassal agreements

[Saurus]

I´m still only playing my first warlord-game. A very typical game for me (Pangea, Emperor, normal size, epic)

For the most part of the game, it went on rather peacefully though Hannibal attacked me a few times.
During the endgame Hannibal started to become more and more weakened by constant warmongering and was on the edge of beeing compleatly destroyed beeing caught in a 3-front war fighting all 3 superpowers in the world. (Me, Mansa & Churhill)

Desperately, Hannibal now offer to become a vassal state of Spain. Isabel accepts and thus declares war on all 3 superpowers in the world! (effectively comiting suicide)

2 turns later Hannibals last city is gone and weak Isabel is at war with the 3 superpowers. (spain already was at war against Bismarck so is now fighting against 4
nations at the same time)

Soon enough Spain is on the edge of beeing destroyed.
At that point she agrees to become a vassal state of the her neighbour, the Koreans.

Koreans decides to join the suicide club and accepts the vassal agreement and declares war against every nation spain is at war with. That is every nation in the world.
Isabel is wiped out of existence only one turn later.

The Koreans are not yet dead but that is only a matter of time.
I am not exactly sure how vassal states are supposed to work properly. In my game the result of vassal states was that both Spain and Korea utterly comited suicide by signing horrible vassal agreements.

I really hope someone has better experiences of A.I vassal states than I have so far as this first game did really not look promising in this regard.
It seems to me that the A.I did not really evaluate the agreement properly and thus ended up having himself easily killed.

[yin26]

That situation has been reported and will be fixed (one hopes, of course). Frankly over several games I've only rarely seen it. You should also consider that the AIs banding together when it looks like things are desperate anyway is as good a tactic as any. I'm not saying your game exactly fit the bill, but I have seen lagging AIs work together to make things more interesting.

[Tattila the Hun]

How about this. I had Stalin as my vassal, asked Asoka to declare war on him. He said yes, and consequently, I declared war on Asoka. Now, I'm still in the diploscreen with Asoka, so I promptly made a peace-offering, scoring some cash in the process. Normally, it would have taken many turns for him to even speak to me...

Oh, and how does the AI take into account vassals when declaring war, I wonder? Me and Washington had been buddies for few millenia, both eachothers biggest tradingpartners, and with defencive pact. Then, he declares war on Stalin, my vassal...

[MightyTiny]

Sounds very much like there needs to be a patch addressing these issues soon - what Saurus reported is bad enough, but being forced to war with an ally due to them not taking into account that a nation they are about to attack is your vassal... that's just plain awful.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
How about this. I had Stalin as my vassal, asked Asoka to declare war on him. He said yes, and consequently, I declared war on Asoka. Now, I'm still in the diploscreen with Asoka, so I promptly made a peace-offering, scoring some cash in the process. Normally, it would have taken many turns for him to even speak to me...

[Kuciwalker]

Can you vassal have its own vassal?

[greenday_234]

well, I'm playing a game of warlords and I too am quite disappointed with the Vassal Agreements. I won't go into detail because they are the same stories as posted above.

The thing I find most frustrating about this is that apparently no lessons were learned from the buggy release of CivIV vanilla. Especially considering the fact that Vassals are the major addition to the core game, without them the XP lacks any real substance what-so-ever.

P.S. I don't count scenarios as substance to a game, if I wanted scenarios I'd wait for the massive modding community to come up with them, not pay 30 bucks for it. In addition why would they put all their attention on something that the vast majority of people are only going to play a handful of times. I thought the big deal with Civ was its core game replayability. That being the case, why not focus on THAT. I expect a much better XP in the future. I'm tired of these canned XP's nowadays.

P.P.S. Thank you for letting me complain I feel better.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Can you vassal have its own vassal?

No. If a civ with vassals agrees to become a vassal, iirc it either must give up its vassals first, or its vassals follow it into vassalage; I forget which. You may be either a vassal or a master, but not both.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by MightyTiny
Sounds very much like there needs to be a patch addressing these issues soon - what Saurus reported is bad enough, but being forced to war with an ally due to them not taking into account that a nation they are about to attack is your vassal... that's just plain awful.

Obviously that ally doesn't care much for you then... the AI knows when it's attacking someone who's a vassal, believe you me.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
How about this. I had Stalin as my vassal, asked Asoka to declare war on him. He said yes, and consequently, I declared war on Asoka. Now, I'm still in the diploscreen with Asoka, so I promptly made a peace-offering, scoring some cash in the process. Normally, it would have taken many turns for him to even speak to me...

Oh, and how does the AI take into account vassals when declaring war, I wonder? Me and Washington had been buddies for few millenia, both eachothers biggest tradingpartners, and with defencive pact. Then, he declares war on Stalin, my vassal...

That perhaps is a bit of an issue

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by yin26
That situation has been reported and will be fixed (one hopes, of course). Frankly over several games I've only rarely seen it. You should also consider that the AIs banding together when it looks like things are desperate anyway is as good a tactic as any. I'm not saying your game exactly fit the bill, but I have seen lagging AIs work together to make things more interesting.

When I asked about a similar situation to this, you said, "No, peace is declared at that point"- does that only apply to capitulation?

[yin26]

Sorry for the confusion. Now that I think on it, I have pretty much fought on until I get Capitulation. The few times civs have asked me to protect them (as a Vassal), I have declined, realizing that I would be brought into all kinds of wars I didn't want at that point. This is the element the AI needs to consider more carefully, apparently.

So the peace that I mentioned earlier seems limited to Capitulation. This can be annoying in one sense...you and an ally both taking out a civ, but the civ capitulates to the other civ and not you. Suddenly you are forced into peace, and your units are pull out immediately to your closest owned tile. The only way now "to finish the job" is, of course, to declare war on that vassal, which would bring in your former ally against you.

I wish I had the Civilopedia here to see if it's explained thoroughly. I'll check that tonight.

[Gibsie]

Well your quick evaluation of the difference between the two is very easy to understand, thanks.

[Will9]

I just noticed a very strange vassal deal. Hatshepsut and Mehmed are both peaceful vassals of Brunnus. Hatshepsut is furious towards Brunnus and Mehmed is annoyed towards Brunnus. They each had Capitulated to Louis, but I defeated Louis. Afew turns before Hatshepsut became a vassal I went to Brunnus and he said "I would encourage you to stop trading with our bitter enemy Hatshepsut". To make this even stranger Brunnus is friendly towards Hatshepsut.

[Martinus]

I wonder if AIs offer peaceful vassalage to each other only if they are friendly, or are they also inclined to offer it to their enemies, if they see it as a way of gaining protection from a potential enemy? If it is the latter, it could explain why Hatshepsut offered vassalage to her enemy in your example.