What should I have done with my client states? I'm on the verge of uninstalling Attila because of them.

[Sassafrass]

I've played Total War games since M2:TW and I've never, ever taken client states or vassals, or anything like that. I always veni and vidi and vici the crap out of the maps. This time around, I decided to play the Sassanids, and it's more like veni, vidi, Vichy. I mean... I need to have 20 client states to get the Divine Victory, right? But I seems to be impossible to keep 20 client states. Late in the game, if someone with even a single province declares war on me, half to three quarters of my client states refuse the call and rise to attack me and they bankrupt me, throw me into civil war, and ruin everything in short order. The kicker? In the diplomacy screen, their masks remain green! Some of the kings are unreliable, rebellious, etc... which I don't seem to be able to do anything about. I can't assassinate them and I can't bribe them enough- despite dropping 30k on them every couple rounds. The Picts? Half of their damn family comes from my wives. Half of my family tree is Germanic! Yet when Markan declares war, the friendly Pict picks the strangers over me.

The whole situation makes no sense to me... Relations remain green, despite the war, and the plus/minus numbers remain well over 300 before the declaration of war... So I figure I am looking at this all wrong, that there is something immediately obvious I am just too dumb to get. Can anyone offer any advice for managing client states? I know this must be my fault, but even after reading through some diplomacy guides from other games and trying what they suggest, I'm not having a very good time. I am honestly thinking of uninstalling Attila and buying City Skylines just trying to get the taste of blood, sand, and tears out of my mouth.

If you have any suggestions regarding client states, please pass them along.

[Cope]

What you should have done with your client states is never take them in the first place. CA didn't bother to balance the game properly so they are useless.

[the_mango55]

Use this mod

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-Happy-Clients

[Sassafrass]

Use this mod

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-Happy-Clients

Thanks for that, but I was hoping to do it myself. Still, I'm probably going to try that mod out, just to get through this game without going mad.

[the_mango55]

Thanks for that, but I was hoping to do it myself. Still, I'm probably going to try that mod out, just to get through this game without going mad.

I can understand the appeal of playing the game "fairly" as intended, but if something frustrates me to the point I don't enjoy the game I will change it.

Like I have a mod that lowers the power of towers but also doubles the size of garrisons. Net result is taking a city is actually a little bit harder, but it's still less frustrating because all the men you lose actually fought for every inch of ground instead of being mown down by superpowered machine gun archers.

[skyishlone]

hello, may i ask how to edit the garrisons in ATW by using PFM? I know how to do it in RTW2 but ATW seems different.

[Aeratus]

Client states (vassals) are required for Sassanid victory conditions. Also, they give you a huge amount of income. At the end of my campaign, I was receiving 110k per turn from client states (direct tribute + trade).

I finished my Sassanid divine triumph campaign. It was only on hard, because my first attempt on VH resulted in all my client states chain-defecting and I got frustrated. In retrospect, my earlier VH attempt was poorly played, and I learned a lot playing on my second attempt how to deal with client states. Essentially, my campaign was total-diplomacy (rather than total war because I easily curb stomped everyone militarily). Every move on the campaign map must consider whether a vassal is defecting. If you have a vassal whose leader has both "rebellious" and "hates rival empires", you get slapped with a -310 in relations, which cannot be compensated easily.

There are several tricks to managing client states. I think the most important trick is that client states will defect only if a new war is instigated. So what do you do to preclude yourself from getting into new wars? Apparently, the solution is to simply be at war with nearly every non-allied faction on the map at all times (and never accept offers for peace treaties). If you are already at war with them, you will never enter into any new wars that could provoke client state defection. So eventually, I realized that I just had to declare war on every faction out there and that solved almost all of my problems.

[Sassafrass]

Client states (vassals) are required for Sassanid victory conditions. Also, they give you a huge amount of income. At the end of my campaign, I was receiving 110k per turn from client states (direct tribute + trade).

There are several tricks to managing client states. I think the most important trick is that client states will defect only if a new war is instigated. So what do you do to preclude yourself from getting into new wars? Apparently, the solution is to simply be at war with nearly every non-allied faction on the map at all times (and never accept offers for peace treaties). If you are already at war with them, you will never enter into any new wars that could provoke client state defection. So eventually, I realized that I just had to declare war on every faction out there and that solved almost all of my problems.

I had the same realization! So I went back to an older game and just DOW'd on everyone. I lost a couple client states, but I was in a better position to deal with them. Only... A couple turns later I had a state rebel and that took all my remaining states with them. Really frustrating, doubly so since the relations remained green and yellow. Maybe if I start over, I'll have a better run, but then all my play time for this game will be wasted... Maybe I'll just take a break.

[Aeratus]

I had the same realization! So I went back to an older game and just DOW'd on everyone. I lost a couple client states, but I was in a better position to deal with them. Only... A couple turns later I had a state rebel and that took all my remaining states with them. Really frustrating, doubly so since the relations remained green and yellow. Maybe if I start over, I'll have a better run, but then all my play time for this game will be wasted... Maybe I'll just take a break.

Maybe the state that rebelled did so because you were fighting against factions that were in good relations with them. If you're also playing on VH or legendary difficulty, the AI becomes more erratic.

The war-on-everyone method works best if done early on, so that you polarize the world into your factions against the opponent factions (think like the cold war east vs. west ordeal). It is also something that gives you more benefit as time goes on, because factions that are allied with each other build relations with each other. Also, being at war with everyone minimizes the chance that the other factions have good alliances with your vassals, since they will also be at war with your vassals.

Check the personalities of the client rulers. If they are opportunistic and/or rebellious: trouble is coming your way. If you can, try to assassinate those leaders.

How do you assassinate faction leaders that aren't generals on the campaign map? I haven't been able to figure this out, but maybe it's because I never played Rome 2.

Gifts, gifts and more gifts. Marry off your relatives' daughters and sons if you can spare the loss of influence (or simply adopt a non-family member then marry them off).

Gifts to one faction will lower relations to another faction by a little. So if you're managing 15+ client states, gifts are less efficient than if you're just dealing with one single ally. Marriage alliances help a little, but unfortunately the benefits are low compared to the negative relations from "rebellious" and "hates rival empires" traits.

[craziii]

holy , crazy ass solution. since you don't need to trade with anyone but your client states, you have zero money problems either

[Slaists]

Check the personalities of the client rulers. If they are opportunistic and/or rebellious: trouble is coming your way. If you can, try to assassinate those leaders.

[Y@$!N]

Gifts, gifts and more gifts. Marry off your relatives' daughters and sons if you can spare the loss of influence (or simply adopt a non-family member then marry them off).

[Butan]

Its nearly impossible to manage so many states and it should be IMO. Grow huge enough to deal with every possible rebellion cases: kill them when they rebel and make them your slaves.

[SharpEyed]

well interestingly when u have client/puppet states, or tributary ones, they will eventually betray u

but when u go to war with a faction that have one of these state types, they wont betray their overlord. like Sassanid empire's when u play as ERE

and about gifting them, guys seriously are they the ones are puppets, or we are theirs?

[Reist09]

At first sorry for my crappy English!!

Hi sir,
use a mod or make one. If there is no mod or you can`t make one cheat back by giving you an determined amount of
money. The progam called ArtMoney Vers. SE v 7.43 or higher. It`s easy and for free. Call your new campaign a
Trainingscampaign. But if you don`t like cheating because your an tactical adult player you surely know the proven rule
not to by TotalWarGames on or next to the relase date. In most cases this games are fixed/balanced after half to a year
and a lot cheaper.

I think you know this all and I don`t want to be arrogant. So may I ask you why you complain?

[Fanest]

Its obvious that this is designers flaw - its not supposed to be like that and one can imo rightfully expect that CA fixes this non-sense. Vassals like all others allies should still have a tick box when called to war and if they refused they shouldn't automatically just break this vassalage - instead they should just get a massive relationship drop towards u. In order for vassals to break from u they should always have to do this on their own and not because of some strange connections in diplomatic window.

The progam called ArtMoney Vers. SE v 7.43 or higher. It`s easy and for free.

3rd party program - no

[Riekopo]

How do you assassinate faction leaders that aren't generals on the campaign map? I haven't been able to figure this out, but maybe it's because I never played Rome 2.

I asked the same question on the forum recently and the answer is that you can't.