Why accept vassals?

[St Jon]

I will never accept a voluntary Vassal again. I was shocked when playing at Immortal the Dutch suddenly asked the 'mighty' Byzantines to take them as Vassals. They were to my east and I was fighting my last major enemy to my west so I thought 'great a secure eastern front so more troops to kill Khmer'!

I wipe out the Khmer and am tidying up for a sweet little Domination Victory when the game just ends with the Dutch winning a Cultural Victory! I was displeased to say the least.

[joncnunn]

All I can say is next time monitor the culture scoreboard more closely.

[St Jon]

All I can say is next time monitor the culture scoreboard more closely.

True, but I still could not have stopped them once I had made the initial error. Unless corrected by the latest patch vassalage is a one-way deal. After 10 Turns they can break free but if they want to stay you are totally stuffed as you cannot drop them. Even though I ignored them as a lowly power who hadn't even got any Tech to demand I could not have declared war to stop them. I'm not even sure if you can commit espionage attacks against your own vassal?

Sloppy play on my part to just dismiss a near neighbour as unworthy of any serious attention but once they had played their trick they had me beaten. Very clever bit of AI and one I shall never forget.

[sorinache]

I will never accept a voluntary Vassal again. I was shocked when playing at Immortal the Dutch suddenly asked the 'mighty' Byzantines to take them as Vassals. They were to my east and I was fighting my last major enemy to my west so I thought 'great a secure eastern front so more troops to kill Khmer'!

I wipe out the Khmer and am tidying up for a sweet little Domination Victory when the game just ends with the Dutch winning a Cultural Victory! I was displeased to say the least.

Wow, that was shrewd of them ! Impressive AI programming ...

[Blaupanzer]

You could sabotage Dutch improvements. I'm not sure if you can blow up buildings, but you can mutilate tiles with your spies. Does seem odd that you can set your own cities free (as a "colony"), but you can't "free" a vassal.

[wodan11]

I've DOW'ed a neutral power before just to get them to lay the whammy on my vassal.

[rah]

Never done that, but I like it. I'd probably gift some advanced troops to help.

[joncnunn]

In most games, I check how close the leaders in all categories are to winning every time I earn a tech. Unless I see someone getting close; when I start monitoring it every single turn.

I also frequently check what the reason is each civ won't accept a war. "Too much on our hands already" is a dead giveaway they are mobilized against someone. If they are nearby, I usually assume it's me they are going to attack and counter-mobilize.

[bobbo008]

I love vassals, voluntary or capitulated. As noted above, the power of vassals contributes to your power (by a half, I believe), and the more vassals you have, the easier it is to get others to become your vassals.

A common (and favorite) occurrence in my games is that after I have a few vassals, I get some nation that is being taken over seeking to become my vassal for protection. I take it and wipe out the forces of the attacking nation, and vassalize that nation as well after taking a few cities.

Now not only is the first voluntary vassal quite pleased with me, if the capitulated vassal is too far away to have cities of value, I return those cities and now they like me even more than when the war began (usually -2 or -4 for declaring war and +4 or +6 for "liberating" their cities).

Before you know it you can declare war on a nation and within a few turns they'll happily become your vassal due to the huge power differential, which grows even more because of it.

[Blaupanzer]

Keeping the conquered capitol of a new vassal is a good idea, as well as any other valuable cities, mostly as measured by resources. Vassals are forced to give up the city radius on cities you own once the city border expands (only layers 1 and 2, the BFC). So the fact that you will never catch up to the last 5950 years of cultural laydown on those tiles in the next 100 years is meaningless.

If the Dutch left any room in their empire, building a city there or on the margins is well worth it to take his tiles. Creative civs, e.g., the Dutch seldom leave such holes.

[Blaupanzer]

Note that once the 10 turn mandatory treaty period has passed, voluntary vassals and civs with which you have defensive pacts can attack you as though the abrogated treaties never existed. Can be a nasty surprise, if you turned attention elsewhere.

In an SP game, has anyone gotten an AI to accept a permanent alliance. Such an option comes up with Fascism, but IIRC I may have seen one such AI/AI alliance. I've never had an AI offer or indicate a willingness to discuss that option. Is that really an MP thing?

[Ming]

I've had AI's in SP games offer permanent alliances... but I've never asked anybody for one so I can't answer your specific question.

[Blaupanzer]

I see. My question was really does the AI offer it to humans? The Civilopedia says this alliance is what its name says it is: permanent. Check out game concepts when in game in the civilopedia. You move your units, he moves his, but in all other ways the alliance is one country. Note the land of your ally counts for domination win but your ally is not "conquered" as a vassal would be.

[slnz]

In an SP game, has anyone gotten an AI to accept a permanent alliance. Such an option comes up with Fascism, but IIRC I may have seen one such AI/AI alliance. I've never had an AI offer or indicate a willingness to discuss that option. Is that really an MP thing?

You have to enable Permanent Alliances from the Custom Game options before they actually become available in-game. They can be formed between and proposed by any Civs, human or AI.

[Hauptman]

Yes the AI will offer it to you if they are friendly. Some civs will not offer or accept with a single negative on your relations, wheras others are quite a bit more lienient. If you want a permanent aliance, generally you need to plan it from the start of relations building. Ive had games where i curried favor with a civ that had a very good chunk of land all to them selves. been best pals with them the whole game, then 10 turns before fascism or communism something happenes to give that "-1 you declared war on our friend" kinda bullcrap and ruin centuries of work. Usually i only do it just to add another layer to the game, but generally speaking it's not worth the trouble most of the time.

Although it did save my bacon on a cultural game i played. Fell way behind in techs (due to focusing on culture first) but made lovey dovey faces at Brennus the whole game (because he got HUGE!) signed an alliance and i went from muskateers to infantry in 1 turn. Yippie.