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Thread: What is the point of vassals?

  1. #1

    Default What is the point of vassals?

    You figure, hey might be nice to have a vassal at my border, I'll spare them.

    next turn:
    "Aaaaaaaah come help me in this war which is totally not needed, or practical, else I'm no longer your vassal!"


    That's my vassal all the way in the west.

    Asking to declare war on a guy next to Kong Rong.

    What a joke >.<

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    images still not working so.. here's the link instead:
    https://ibb.co/QDJLQMQ

    Last edited by Abdülmecid I; June 15, 2019 at 06:02 AM. Reason: Image fixed. First click "View Image" and then copy-paste the link inside the image brackets: e.g. [img]****[/img]

  2. #2
    LestaT's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Vassals helped me win my Gongsun Zan campaign, defending my capital and fighting on eartern front while I take down Kingdom of Wu down south. Given autonomy to vassal is dangerous as they might be trigger happy to start a war.

    There are times that I may let a vassal declare independance if they may drag me into unnecessary war.

  3. #3

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by LestaT View Post
    Given autonomy to vassal is dangerous as they might be trigger happy to start a war.
    She dragged me into 3 more wars without me having given her autonomy, I annexed her and married her to my faction leader >.<

    problem solved, in the end.

  4. #4
    LestaT's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by ABullishBear View Post
    She dragged me into 3 more wars without me having given her autonomy, I annexed her and married her to my faction leader >.<

    problem solved, in the end.
    I had at a point have Yuan Shu as my vassal. He somehow decides to declare independance and declare war on me at the same time, probably instigated by Cao Cao.

    I just reload the previous save and annex him instead. 😁

  5. #5
    z3n's Avatar State of Mind
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    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Vassals in TW are decorative.

    However, once in a while they manage to wander around into the right area.
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  6. #6

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    If your vassal keeps declaring war then you need to vassalize the right type of lord. If I recall correctly, Liu Bei is a good vassal if you are significantly more powerful than him, and AI factions with the Underdog personality are way less likely to betray you than the likes of "dishonorable" lords such as Yuan Shu or Cao Cao.

  7. #7

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZhongBoy View Post
    If your vassal keeps declaring war then you need to vassalize the right type of lord. If I recall correctly,
    I usually don't vassalize, so I usually only do so when THEY offer it(not much choice that way) ^^


    Quote Originally Posted by ZhongBoy View Post
    and AI factions with the Underdog personality are way less likely to betray you than the likes of "dishonorable" lords such as Yuan Shu or Cao Cao.
    This particular one had the underdog personality, I'd say offering to be a vassal, dragging me into a war that has no point every turn or so and not moving the troops to the war coordination target, rather just sitting back in her own settlement is pretty dishonorable ^^

    But I hear ya: "less likely"

    She didn't betray me so to speak either, more so undermined

  8. #8

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    I was wondering about vassals as well. I played Kong Rong in my first playthrough and people constantly declared war on me even if I had treaties and decent relations with them (even 'trusting', or 'honourable' personalities).

    So I thought I would try again and try to make use of vassals instead but I never had much luck, the decay on positive relations is extremely fast, I went from about 200+ in one case down to about 30 in probably 10-15 turns, and then of course they rebelled (can't say I blame them though).

    Which of course leads to the other comical thing about the game is the vassal blob that the AI accomplishes. I went out of my wei to take out Yuan Shao since I thought he was the vassal master but another AI faction just picks up the slack:

    Sun Jian and Sun Ce both died off (I guess scripted events) and so Lady Wu took over and start vassalising everyone (resistance is futile) just like before, even Liu Bei who was strength ranked 3 (Lady Wu was 2, and I was 1 and I was in a coalition with Liu Bei, which just doesn't matter apparently):
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    so there is a huge plus for 'treaties with friends' not sure about the benefits. Even Yuan Shu who didn't have good relations to begin with shot up to massive relations in a short period of time
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    The embedded spy shows that she seems to pretty weak overall, so where is this power to vassalise coming from? Is it an anti-player effect or just a bug?:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    I say that because for me, it seems difficult to get them to agree to it and then even harder to keep them from not going solo again:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  9. #9

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    I took another stab at a vassal/tall style of campaign and I was able to have more success this time. The vassals were actually fairly useful though I believe the playable faction vassals did more than the others but I'm not sure if that is coincidence or not. I started off trying to do a coalition and it worked ok until they all voted me out which was uncalled for. But I was able to pick up a couple of vassals and then from there I picked up more and more. I did a fair bit of region trading to bring them on board and had to keep that up to keep their relation with me fairly high, not sure if that is necessary or not though.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    Only 2 vassals rebelled and I never had problems with the rest.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    I never really fought that many battles either
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    One tricky part I had to deal with was I didn't want to expand too fast because I think that is what drives other factions to become vassals under another faction against you, so I had to parcel out land to get people to become vassals. The only factions, I took out were Huang Shao and Cao Cao I think. Cao Cao's territories were important because they generated so much food which I needed since I had to build up a core set of regions to push my prestige over the limit to become a king. I then tried to maximise income as best I could while keeping public order under control.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    I'm not sure how repeatable it is but it is possible to turn the vassal swarm against the AI

  10. #10

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Fest View Post
    I started off trying to do a coalition and it worked ok until they all voted me out which was uncalled for.
    This part made me laugh so hard ^^

    "Guys... That's like... Totally uncalled for!!!"



    Well done on turning it into feudalism simulator though: "Here you go, have some land, now fight for me!"

    I'm going to try that some more, though I did an awesome thing too.

    Gave away a settlement besieged without hope in exchange for a trade agreement and regular payments, now he is under siege and I'm making more money ^^

    Unfortunately the 2nd stack the besieging army had roaming around ran into my ambush.
    After that the besieging army didn't manage to take the settlement, so I couldn't take it back without being treacherous.

    Then again I'm Dong Zhuo so no one likes me anyway -20 treacherous, - 50 treacherous, all the same.


    P.S, I'm pretty sure you can do this in vanilla, I don't remember changing anything that would enable this behaviour, so perhaps it's an oversight on CA's part.

    I did enable




    diplomacy_can_trade_regions_to_recipient_regardless_of_adjacency_and_traversability though.

    P.P.S, another oversight: you can recall retinues out of a city under siege?
    Last edited by ABullishBear; June 20, 2019 at 04:49 AM.

  11. #11

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by ABullishBear View Post
    I usually don't vassalize, so I usually only do so when THEY offer it(not much choice that way) ^^




    This particular one had the underdog personality, I'd say offering to be a vassal, dragging me into a war that has no point every turn or so and not moving the troops to the war coordination target, rather just sitting back in her own settlement is pretty dishonorable ^^

    But I hear ya: "less likely"

    She didn't betray me so to speak either, more so undermined
    So they’re offering to become your vassal and then dragging you into wars once you accept? I’ve had this happen to me when I accepted Cao Cao’s vassalage request, but it seems like the AI in general has gotten a whole lot sneakier and underhanded in Three Kingdoms.

  12. #12

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Yeah, getting kicked out of the coalition was a surprise and not once but twice, damn ingrates.

    I think the land for political support is probably a fairly general principle but it was effective in keeping relations positive so I went with it.

    I never tried to give away land while hostile forces were present so I don't know if that is something that gets checked, but there is definitely some type of geographical proximity in what is available for trading with another faction in vanilla.

  13. #13

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    The trick I found after three campaigns is to always take peaceful vassals. Treacherous ones are more trouble then worth.

  14. #14

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Fest View Post
    I was wondering about vassals as well. I played Kong Rong in my first playthrough and people constantly declared war on me even if I had treaties and decent relations with them (even 'trusting', or 'honourable' personalities).

    So I thought I would try again and try to make use of vassals instead but I never had much luck, the decay on positive relations is extremely fast, I went from about 200+ in one case down to about 30 in probably 10-15 turns, and then of course they rebelled (can't say I blame them though).

    Which of course leads to the other comical thing about the game is the vassal blob that the AI accomplishes. I went out of my wei to take out Yuan Shao since I thought he was the vassal master but another AI faction just picks up the slack:

    Sun Jian and Sun Ce both died off (I guess scripted events) and so Lady Wu took over and start vassalising everyone (resistance is futile) just like before, even Liu Bei who was strength ranked 3 (Lady Wu was 2, and I was 1 and I was in a coalition with Liu Bei, which just doesn't matter apparently):
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    so there is a huge plus for 'treaties with friends' not sure about the benefits. Even Yuan Shu who didn't have good relations to begin with shot up to massive relations in a short period of time
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    The embedded spy shows that she seems to pretty weak overall, so where is this power to vassalise coming from? Is it an anti-player effect or just a bug?:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    I say that because for me, it seems difficult to get them to agree to it and then even harder to keep them from not going solo again:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    On harder difficulties, I think the AI gets opinion bonuses with each other. For this reason, vassals of the AI are usually way less likely than vassals of the player to break off. When deciding whether or not to become a vassal or declare independence, the AI takes into account the strength of the other faction and all of their vassals, which often further deters the other AI factions from breaking away or makes the AI accept offers of vassalage even if the other faction is much weaker when compared one-to-one. Because of that, northern and central China often ends up as a vassal swarm if the player doesn't conquer these regions early.

  15. #15

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZhongBoy View Post
    So they’re offering to become your vassal and then dragging you into wars once you accept?
    Exactly ^^


    Quote Originally Posted by Fest View Post
    Yeah, getting kicked out of the coalition was a surprise and not once but twice, damn ingrates.

    I think the land for political support is probably a fairly general principle but it was effective in keeping relations positive so I went with it.

    I never tried to give away land while hostile forces were present so I don't know if that is something that gets checked, but there is definitely some type of geographical proximity in what is available for trading with another faction in vanilla.

    In vanilla the land has to be adjacent to their territory, and traverseably so.

    It's nice to turn this off so you can give away whatever to whomever, but the AI will also start buggering you with dumb requests like:
    Give me these 5 territory's I'm nowhere near, x ancillaries and regular tribute, then I'll have peace with you.

    I think their ludicrous expectations for peace are usually nearly never a possibility but territories really add up so I'm guessing that's why this happens.

  16. #16

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by ABullishBear View Post
    Exactly ^^
    That’s actually sort of smart. The fact that the AI can actually think through diplomatic schemes in 3K is both fun and frustrating at the same time. You got that, and then you got the AI basically vassal hopping from one faction to another to exploit the automatic peace mechanic, and more.

  17. #17
    LestaT's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Odinarius View Post
    The trick I found after three campaigns is to always take peaceful vassals. Treacherous ones are more trouble then worth.
    The best vassals are those that you have prior trade or nap or military access with them and you vassalize them if they are at war with bigger factions or coalitions.

    The worse are those that are your former enemies and you vassalize them even after you defeated few their armies but have no resource to continue the war yourself. I usually only vassalize these factions if they dont request autonomy and they are willing to pay food/money. Those who doesnt usually with face annahiliation except the accept vassalized from other faction.

  18. #18

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    after a certian level its more efficient for you economy to use vassals or the curruption will just not make it worthwhile to own all provinces.

  19. #19

    Default Re: What is the point of vassals?

    I am completely done with Vassals. Impossible to keep happy, get you into unwanted wars, not as much income as just taking their territory. They have been nothing but trouble in all Total War games. I've had them get me into a war with a powerful neighbor even though the Vassal was on the other side of the map and completely surrounded by me. Crazy, not worth it. Two vassals declaring war on each other is even worse. In order for these to be useful, they need to be stripped of all diplomatic rights and their needs to be some kind of oppression mechanism to keep them from rebelling or at least know when there is a danger of them rebelling.

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