Protectorate option not working?

[Emperor Brett]

So im playing as Valens in the East, and sometimes im more of a peacefull guy to certain factions when they only have 1 city left and wanna make them part of my empire.

So i have around 300,000 in money to bribe Pocopius's Roman faction, but that didnt work.. and i had a lvl 5 diplomat and im persuading a normal army stack with no general.

Now i make a save, and just to check how much i 'would' need to get them as a vassal, using the console commands, i go all the way up to 16,000,000 and that still doesn't work....

Just wondering is the protectorate option broken? or have you guys made it so its impossible to make another Roman faction a protectorate?

[Baldwin of Jerusalem]

As far as Im aware, this has always worked in a very arbitrary manner. The forums of all mods are choked with complaints about broken diplomacy and it seems to be a major flaw in the games design. I dont think its broken as such but the rules governing all aspects of diplomacy in game have never been properly explained and seem to be somewhat illogical. This is not a problem with any specific mod but with the hardcoded vanilla structure.

In my opinion, for instance, one should not have to pay a defeated enemy to become a protectorate. Historically this was a condition imposed through force by victor onto vanquished and one that the defeated enemy was obliged to accept in order to stave off total destruction. That does not seem to be reflected in game at all.

[julianus heraclius]

Of course, you can always use the forced diplomacy option with I have included in Patch 4.