Is it possible to make so liberating nations makes them your client state?

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

I am playing a Pergamon-led Hellenic league and for variety's sake I have decided to Balkanize Italia. I have liberated every province except Asculum (I need one to base my garrison in), but regrettably I had to declare war on all my new "allies" and defeat them to vassalize them. It would make a great deal more sense if I had an option to liberate them as a vassal to start with -- Rome did this many times over the course of her rise, and the Hellenistic states did as well.

Is this possible within the game's constraints?

[Jake Armitage]

I don't fully get it. You would like to liberate them (so spawn a new faction which has military alliance with you) and have thieir tributes like if they were vassals?

[Dago Red]

I'm playing the same campaign! tl;dr that would be a nice addition if there were some conditions. Wouldn't want to see an AI Rome for example getting 5 client states by the end of turn 20 and now they're marauding across the map with their already gratuitous stack spam + the extra 15 stacks their 5 clients have. An extreme example, but without conditions this would be game breaking.

A good guide for clients/satrapies is the formula in Paradox games. It can be a final relationship in itself, but also the last step on the road to annexation, which is what DeI / Rome 2 really needs. Just roughly, the conditions are something like:

+ indicates some threshold of a condition that gives a higher chance of success, in some case it may be necessary but not always (ie. you can trade with factions that you don't have good relations with, and you don't have to be trading partners with allies, etc). Maluses are pretty obvious, I won't list them.

Trading partner.
+goods desired by either side
+shared borders
+good relations

Defensive Ally.
+same as above
+trading partner
+cultural affinity
+mutual enemies/same bad relations

Military ally.
+same as above
+defensive alliance
+more powerful than they are
+Or, liberated them

Client / Satrapy etc.
+same as all of the above
+ the more above conditions satisfied, plus the higher power imbalance, more likely
+or, conquered them and high % of above conditions already satisfied
+marriage -- this is crucial but not possible in DeI?

Annexation.
+ above conditions
+Must have above 150 great relations
+Must send special diplomatic envoy and succeed.
+other?



In my Pergamon campaign, the diplomacy is so screwy that Rhodes and Knossos both declared war against me despite being great friends (this always seems to happen). As a result my Hellenic League now stretches east across Anatolia and west through the Greek Islands to Pella and Sparta. Athens by contrast is as green as can be but absolutely refuses to be even a defensive ally, while Sparta joined the League with ease. Phanagoria also wants in, but I'm delaying pushing my borders that far.

Meanwhile Pontos, and Aetolia would make great client states, but they refuse even though I saved them from being erased from history. Lydia is my only client state and in another diplomacy debacle, they refused to trade or give military access despite extremely good relations and a reasonable amount of $. Ended up at war, and left them with Pessinus -- good fronteir against the Galatians who are reduced to Ankara but still have 3 stacks and a fragile peace. Can also levy their Ephesoi phalangites which are better than Pergamon's very mid-range ones (I was surprised). Still haven't made it to Italia, but now of course Rome is gunning for the League...

[antred]

I don't fully get it. You would like to liberate them (so spawn a new faction which has military alliance with you) and have thieir tributes like if they were vassals?

Why not? That's what would most likely happen in real life. If you capture a region you don't want to rule directly, you should at least have the option of installing a puppet regime.

[Dresden]

This may be possible through scripting.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

This would be nice, I find overwhelmingly that when I liberate a faction, they cancel the military alliance soon after and do their own thing instead of serving as the buffer state I liberated them to be in the first place.

[Dresden]

Its possible in Warhammer, I am not sure about Rome 2 where there are less scripting possibilities.

One thing to note is that liberation is a gamble on purpose. Since you can liberate every single region in the GC, it would be overpowered if it was a guarantee.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

The problem is that if it's a gamble, then I'm not going to gamble because it's not worth it. I'll just conquer everything and almost never liberate anything. If they aren't going to cooperate, it's better I take it myself for the money rather than be stuck with a region I can't conquer for 5-10 turns due to diplomatic penalties.

It's a basic problem that is in common with looting as well. Looting is the opposite of liberate: it is so wholly beneficial that there is no reason to choose anything else ever for the first 100 turns of the game. Loot and Liberate compete with each other, but it's not a fair fight. Looting completely trivializes the campaign economy and much more because of how much it provides: massive cash injection, huge public order loss to spawn easy rebellions for vetting up new generals and army traditions, slaves to sell for extra income throughout my empire, and the rebellion can be used to purposely lose the city to them so you can loot again for another 10k every 2 turns, providing a loot & cash loop that lets you bypass income entirely and maintain a large treasury even when income is thousands in the red. The looted city can also be abandoned to the AI who will retake it and repair everything, and their army will be trapped in the town for easy destruction next turn. When one option gives me so much, why choose anything else? Similarly if liberate has a high chance of not only giving me nothing but actually taking away from me by making me less trustworthy and risking trade agreements and war declarations, why would I choose it?

If liberate was less gambley and I could be sure it would be beneficial, I might choose it over loot sometimes. Even then probably not, Loot is just that strong.

[antred]

This would be nice, I find overwhelmingly that when I liberate a faction, they cancel the military alliance soon after

I think that depends heavily on your diplomatic reliability rating and your relations with that faction (you can have negative relation points if they hate you from what you did to a previous incarnation of their faction). I find that, if my reliability rating is "steadfast" and I have fairly good relations with them, they tend to stay allied with me basically forever (unless they accidentally declare war on another faction I'm also allied with).

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

Maybe, the AI is highly reluctant to sign military alliances as a general rule. Even with 500+ rep and several common enemies factions still don't agree to military alliance even if I offer 100,000 romebucks with it. Liberated factions will start with the alliance, but in their AI "mind" the conditions for actually wanting a military alliance are not met, leading to them cancelling it within a few turns of being liberated. Happens for me all the time, this behavior persists into Attila as well.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Its possible in Warhammer, I am not sure about Rome 2 where there are less scripting possibilities.

One thing to note is that liberation is a gamble on purpose. Since you can liberate every single region in the GC, it would be overpowered if it was a guarantee.

It's really not so much of a gamble as a certainty that the AI will betray you within 10 turns. By the time you are a great empire and want to start creating buffer states, your imperium and expanionism modifier means that not only will they not keep the alliance -- they won't even trade with you.

Right now what I do is liberate them and then when they inevitably betray me I subjugate them as vassals. That feels ahistorical and cumbersome.

The AI using it would be an issue, but perhaps if just the player could do it under certain conditions?

[Kimazenois]

Would be absoloutly awesome if one could choose between liberating a millitary ally, client state or satrapy. Do you gus believe that´s possible?

[Ptolemaios Soter]

If this is doable (and I agree that it is sorely needed), perhaps the way to balance it would be to have liberating as a client state cost money (something along the lines of 4-10k), whereas currently liberating gives you 2k.

I find that sometimes I can get a newly liberated faction to accept client status in exchange for trade (sometimes the first turn that trade is available seems bugged where the AI will give it extraordinary weight). Also feels gamey, but works better than re-capturing after their shocking but inevitable betrayal.

[Jake Armitage]

Not so easy to give an answer and the hypothetical solution might not be a straight one, meaning that it may require some "curvy roads".
Anyway, as Dresden already said, something (conceptually, at least) should be doable.

Regarding Dago Red's more complex suggestions, well, the answer is more or less the same.
The political patch released some may-be possible functions to check the actual diplomatic stance. Fact is that political scripts are written in a way I'm not really used to.
Could be really easy to use them as could be difficult or even impossible (if some hidden references are hardcoded)
I'll surely check if that's possible for a VPS feature I have in mind and for the transfer_region system.

Speaking personally, I've taken notes about this thread so to re-check it when (and if) I'll work on this.

[Lt_Kapout]

But regrettably I had to declare war on all my new "allies" and defeat them to vassalize them. It would make a great deal more sense if I had an option to liberate them as a vassal to start with

Yeah, it's an rp element that do feel like missing.
Sometimes, I just want my borders to be owned by clients rather by some millitary allies.


And to bounce on what Dago said, there is this possibility where I'm expanding or fighting and I cant hold the city but can't take the risk to let it free for my enemy so I liberate it.
But I know if I want to take this city, I will have to fight one more time. And this is where the annexation possibility would be great.
I personnaly more view it possible by using the confederation system while not changing the name of the faction and adding some conditions like a cultural threshold or/and a diplomatic one.
But for this point, Jake told me he may look at it so I just cross my fingers and hope it will be available a day