Vassalization is a truly awesome feature

[Tanned]

I played my half-dozenth standard game of Warlords as Stalin. Although I had a pretty nice starting location with fresh-water grasslands, hills and fish, the land to the north was thick with jungle. Barbarians were a healthy challenge in this game. I captured a Celtic city in 700BCE with a large pop-rushed axemen army, which happened to be the Jewish holy city. For almost the whole of the game I was madly behind in GNP, and I desperately chopped away all the jungle and placed cottages and plantations everywhere.

Although I was technologically backward for the entire game, I managed to beeline to certain key techs. And so by 1600CE I managed to get a decent army of cossacks and musketmen ready. I conquered my most powerful rival, Germany, with the help of a voluntary vassal (the Celts).

Once I had pruned down the Germans to a sufficiently small size, I kindly offered them a capitulation in exchange for their continued existence. The benefits of capitulation are immeasurable. You get line-of-sight, access to all their resources, and open boders with the vanquished party. Not only that but half of their territory and population is yours for victory purposes. And they are not allowed to break the agreement unless they either exceed half your territory or they lose half of their remaining territory to enemy forces. What this means is that you can essentially leave your borders with them unguarded and make conquest elsewhere, because they can never declare war on you again.

The Celts later broke free from my tutelage and even changed to their own religion. They didn't get a chance to capitulate because they vassalized to the English.

But the most amazing thing was that I easily vassalized my entire continent simply through a number of impressive military successes. Using old-fashioned hordes I put nations with a GDP three or four times higher than mine under heel. Alexander, with his helicopters, capitulated to my cossacks and grenadiers after I took just two of his cities.

The end result was that this is a significantly different game to vanilla Civ4. In that version I would normally have to entirely conquer my whole continent and leave none of my enemies standing. But in this version, one can sweep up and down a continent while leaving a fairly significant proportion of one's enemy alive. They even can become useful partners in waging war against others.

So I got a score of 35,000, a victory in the 19th century on a standard fractal map at Prince difficulty. Considering my bad start and terrible economy, I am very proud to have vassalized a whole continent with my Russian hordes.

[0bsidi0n]

I have a simple question: when you have a vassal, does the open-borders 'agreement' work both ways?

My romans are clearing out my continent, and I want to have the Chinese to the north capitulate... but there is still plenty of land in the south. I hate when the AI fills in all the little cracks in my borders.

[Tanned]

Originally posted by 0bsidi0n
I have a simple question: when you have a vassal, does the open-borders 'agreement' work both ways?

My romans are clearing out my continent, and I want to have the Chinese to the north capitulate... but there is still plenty of land in the south. I hate when the AI fills in all the little cracks in my borders.

The 'open borders' diplomatic option remains active after a capitulation which suggests to me that only the master gets access to the vassal's territory by default. I certainly have not yet seen vassal troops moving through my territory without having signed open borders, however I will have to look out more closely next time.

[0bsidi0n]

Awesome, thanks!

[Herod]

Vassal states is very poorly implemented and I switch this option off when i play. For instance when you are 2 turns away from defeating an opponent, they vassal with another much stronger AI and BOOM... you get crippled by WW

[couerdelion]

I dislike vassalisation. I find I have no end of problems with vassal nations not least their cultural influence on my territory, the extra costs that go with having more cities but no income, and the unhappiness from cities formerly owned by my vassal. In some cases it might work but generally a late game tactic for quicker domination.

IMHO

[Arrian]

Sometimes I like having a vassal... but the trick is to get them to accept it while they are still strong enough to be a worthwhile vassal but yet weak enough that their culture isn't a bother.

It *is* irritating when you've knocked a civ down to 1-2 cities and are moving in for the kill and you hear the dreaded horns of war because some other AI decided to accept your enemy as a vassal and fight you.

-Arrian

[Tanned]

Originally posted by Arrian


It *is* irritating when you've knocked a civ down to 1-2 cities and are moving in for the kill and you hear the dreaded horns of war because some other AI decided to accept your enemy as a vassal and fight you.

-Arrian

I have tended to view it as no worse than an enemy bringing in an alliance against me. In those circumstances the nation would have to bribe the other one for a military alliance. In this case the civ offers itself as the bribe, i.e. protection in exchange for the extra territory counting towards victory.

Vassalization I believe is primarily a tool designed to make warmongering in the game more varied. That's all I see it as and to that extent I think it succeeds very well. Sophisticated levels of diplomacy rarely exist in my games, at least.

[Arrian]

It's slightly worse in one sense: now the new vassal cannot make peace independant of their new master (as opposed to an alliance situation). You can't make peace, wheel about, and face your new opponent.

But overall I like the feature.

I once got a peaceful vassal. That was cool, because I didn't have to threaten them or anything - they loved me. So asking them to research stuff actually had a point (because they really would trade it to me, instead of it being redded-out because they hate me).

-Arrian

[eris]

I have never gotten anything particularly useful from a peaceful vassal. There have been a few resource deals that may have not been agreed to before. The research a new tech deal didn't work. They refused to trade it to me!! I needed to change my attitude indicator from Pleased to Furious, but the game won't let me do that. The best thing I have found for a peaceful vassal to do is be a partner in a war against some larger civ I was planning on attacking anyway. "Oh, so you want my protection? How about a great big painful war instead?" One has to be wary of the vassal who takes enough cities to break away and become a powerful opponent. That is annoying.

And then there is the sudden win, which I have had twice. I attack a large Civ and take a couple cities while destroying handfuls of units. I get offered capitualation. Suddenly I am past the Domination limit and the game is over! I won!

There are so many possibilities with this vassal state thing. Many of them are downright infuriating; many of them are amazingly helpful. I like that combination. If I ever really figure out how it all works, I may like it even better.

[Tanned]

My most recent game was on continents as the Carthaginians. I secured my whole continent all to myself, but in the industrial age I realized I had no coal, and therefore no railroads, no production bonuses for mines, lumber mills etc. This could easily have turned into a disaster. (Imagine defending against an invasion force of tanks without railroads.)

So I looked about on the other continent and saw that the Aztecs had coal. In Civ4 vanilla I would have had to invade and take over all their territory and find some way to prevent the culturally-superior Russians overwhelming my presence on their continent.

But all I had to do was land an invasion force, raze a couple Aztec cities, and destroy their troops until they capitulated. Now I had access to a whole host of resources besides the coal. I traded the Aztecs' sole source of coal for one of my copper deposists. Consequently I railroaded my entire continent in short order!

This is a fantastic improvement. Since I didn't have to conquer all the Aztecs' land, my work was made considerably easier for me. Vassals, even if they are furious, will always trade one-for-one whatever resources they have. Even if that means they lose their only source of coal for a relatively less important resource like copper.

I can't think of any way to improve on this feature. It has made my games much more enjoyable, even a litle bit more strategic.

[Tanned]

I also found out you can airlift straight into a vassal's cities.

That a feature I've wished for for AGES.

This Carthaginian game has turned nasty. Stalin has turned his five-million man army against me to try and kick me off his continent. Shame the old darling has no uranium and I'm pumping out nukes at a rate of two or three every five turns.

However my vassal Montezuma might get overrun. Either that or he will have a new master. I am going to nuke Russia to smithereens and then land mop-up crews.

I love the late-game in Civ4. Warlords has made it even better.

[Tanned]

That swine Stalin has just built the SDI. His army is still twice as big as mine and because it's Prince difficulty more modern.

Looking at the demographics, at least I managed to kill about five million of his people and a million soldiers with nuclear bombs. It was good while it lasted. I may lose this game now.