Vassalage as an option for builders?

[Martinus]

For people who have played the game, would you say a builder tactics (aiming at cultural or spaceship victory) involving becoming a vassal of an aggressive neighbour (such as Montezuma or Shaka) is workable/sensible?

It seems to me that for a relatively cheap price of 1 unhappy citizen in each city, you get rid of a potential aggressor and also saddle him with increased upkeep costs - and unlike capitulation, you can easily leave the arrangement if your "master" draws you into unnecessary wars or is on a verge of being conquered by another, stronger civilization.

Are there any significant cons to this tactics that I am not seeing?

Also, on a bit unrelated note, could anyone confirm whether a master is able to demand the vassal's resource (with the refusal meaning war) in all vassalage arrangements or only in capitulation ones?

[Saurus]

If I remember correctly, the human player cannot become a vassal state to an A.I.

A.I may become a vassal to humans or to another A.I.

[gdgrimm]

I do think there would some decent strategies associated with being able to do that.

But currently, you're not allowed to do it, so it doesn't matter.

[MasterDave]

In a recent multiplayer game, one of my neighbors watched me aggressively go after other players on either side of him and decided that he wanted to be my vassal. I had not invented feudalism yet, but he offered to help me in the meantime by gifting me a few units to help finish off the English in the north.

When I did get Fuedalism, he became my vassal, and he promptly announced that we were going to conquer the world (I was in first place at the time, he was toward the bottom of the pack). Anyhow, a few turns later we were at war with all four of the other players!! Two of them were also a vassal/liege combo Nothing like a loudmouth ally to get one in trouble.

Anyhow we did win the war eventually in one of the most fun and tense world wars I have had to date. There was lots of good-natured trash talking, and in this case, vassalage really enhanced the political aspect of the game and caused an Axis and Allies type situation without the artificialness and tech trading of a team game.

So I guess the point is, that while you cannot not capitulate to an AI, a few human players will use the mechanism to protect themselves from other aggressive and powerful human players, or just to have a shot at a victory in a losing game.

[Martinus]

Yeah, I think it can be a good way to grab a "stealth" cultural victory, as long as you watch the score chart, so that you do not accidentally catapult the "master" into a domination victory. You can sweeten the deal by offering them some cultural tech every now and then and leach the non-cultural techs off your master, too. While a very cool and collected player will see a ruse in that, many will fall into a trap of accepting you as a vassal, thinking it will advance their chance of winning the game (and you can always break vassalage if they get too close to the domination victory).

[MasterDave]

I think that the idea in the case above, was not for the German player to win a cultural victory (multiplayer games very rarely get that far), but rather to share in the victory if we could induce the other players to quit. This is precisely what happened after a huge world war, so it was a good idea for the Germans. Had he not been friendly to me, he probably would have been my next victim after the English in the northern deserts went down.