Vassal Strategy Help

[Ineffablebob]

So I saw some of the posts about using "vassal states" and thought I'd give it a shot. I started a Pangea large Monarch game and built a ton of warriors, and off we went. I found a couple of other Civs and started taking their cities. From what other people have posted, supposedly you let them have a few cities - I left them have 3 - and then you let them give you a bunch of stuff for peace. Not in my case. A few hundred years later, these guys were still attacking me with archers and spearmen, and refusing my attempts to get something from them for a peace treaty. Needless to say, this was not a very good game, since I was fighting my supposed vassals and the rest of the civs were busy building up.

So here's the question - what do you do in order to get a "vassal" state? How many cities do you let them have? Do you have to keep a bunch of units stationed nearby? Do you go to them and offer peace or let them come to you?

[Kc7mxo]

Did you burn any of their cities? They REALLY hate that


In one game i ripped the heart out of the zulu empire, and they hated my for about 2000 years. but i just kept on being nice to em and eventually we got to be such good friends that they happily did just about anything i asked of them.

[jgflg]

How many cities did you take from them originally, and are you sure that they only had three cities left? I've never had any trouble getting the AI to submit to me on Standard maps (Emperor) if I overrun most of their cities, leaving three or four, and have a large enough military for them to fear extinction. Maybe your military isn't large enough.

And I do think having troops next to or near cities is a factor since that troops approach threat in diplomacy almost never works unless I actually have troops within the city radius. Without troops near, I've found that I make that threat and they say something about fighting to the death, but then give me three cities and all their techs in negotations anyway.

Lastly, leaving a civ with three cities on a huge map is too small of an amount because they won't generate enough resources to trade and develop techs quickly. They'll end up being that civ still cruising galleys around when everyone else is using modern transports. I leave them about four or five cities on a standard map, so you might consider leaving them five to seven.

[Osprey]

I tried the vassal state strategy also. I believe the land configuration was just right for this as my continent was in the shape of a huge "Y". I had the Babylonians and the Persians bottled up at the ends of the upper areas in each fork of the "Y". The Babylonians had about 6 or 7 cities and the Persians about the same. At first the strategy worked ok but I also found out that both countries would resist my demands and I would have to devote all my resources to building enough units to have the overwhelming numbers I needed to threaten their cities. When they would eventually give into my demands for peace, they wouldn't have anything I really wanted anyway. I already had all the techs they had and that was my main reason for wanting to use the strategy in the first place. I did end up winning a diplomatic victory in that particular game set on Warlord.
The Osprey

[Ineffablebob]

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't burn any cities at first, so I don't think that caused any problems. I suppose my military could have not been large enough. I was playing Aztecs and had about 50 Jag. Warriors running around, but they were dispersed over a fairly large area.

One problem I kept running into was that if I left my units within their cultural borders, I was forced to declare war on them. In the early going, that's no big deal, but once they're down to a few cities, it's hard to intimidate when your units are all three squares away.

I'll see if I can get it work by leaving them 4 or 5 cities, and putting more units on their borders. About how many units do you guys tend to leave guarding the borders?

[pchang]

You grab all their techs at the beginning. After that Vassals have no techs that you want. You want Vassals primarily for the per turn income stream that you get out of them. In order to have effective Vassals, you must link them to your road network so you can trade stuff with them. Trade techs, luxuries, resources, etc. for money per turn. You bankrupt their economies and use their income to fuel your own economy (especially research spending). Also, concentrate your research along 1 branch as much as possible. If you do that, then one of your Vassals just may research something on another branch that you don't have already.

[MarshalN]

I've had the same problem in one of my games where the supposed vassal just doesn't seem to want to give me anything.

I could've crushed them any time, but they still refuse to submit. I kinda gave up on them and left them alone since their cities were mostly in tundra that were worthless.

[Kolyana]

Crush them, crush them all. Burn what you don't need, rule with an iron fist over the rest.

Five cities under my control will always be more profitable than under an AI's control ... even if it's just to pump out military units.

[randomturn]

pchang has summed up what you get: all their techs when you first make them a vassal (even if it's like 5 techs!), then you'll get the odd tech that they researched but you didn't, plus gold per turn, lump sum, luxuries they have that you don't, world maps, communications, etc. The more powerful you are in the game, the less help they will be to you. Definitely vasselize whoever builds the Great Library and you will continue to get lots of techs from your vassal for free.

As to Ineffablebob's and MarshalN's problem: I've never seen a vassal resist giving you anything (other than cities) soon after you make it a vassal. Were they talking to you or "refusing to meet your envoy"? If they are talking to you and you are threatening their survival, they are programmed to give you everything they can other than cities, and even some of those. You need to have taken a good % of their cities, have a sizable military and, yes, I think it helps to have units threatening their cities. Some of the culture-building civs will get cities back if you don't rush-build culture improvements and station lots of units there. Sometimes late in the game, vassals that you conquered early get a little uppity, and I once had one actually declare war on me at that time, but they quickly fall back to vassal status as soon as you conquer a city or two.

I don't think Kolyana really understands the vassal strategy. Or perhaps he's been playing on a level that's too easy for him. It is demonstrably incorrect that "five cities under his control will always be more profitable" and productive than if they were under a vassal's control. Vassal's giving you substantial gold per turn allows you to rush-build tons of units, which you can use to vasslize some other civ. That's clearly better than wiping out that first civ and ignoring the second -- the first one is no longer a threat and is now actually helping you a great deal.

[pchang]

In fact, "Vassalizing" is one of the few strategies that works better the harder the difficulty level. The AI advantages allows vassals to help you more. I tried "Vassalizing" at warlord just to get the hang of it and at that level, it is pretty worthless.

[Ineffablebob]

The difficulty level comment is an astute one. I think that perhaps part of my problem is that on Monarch, I have to actually let the opposing civs build up to 7-10 cities before I start taking them away, or else I end up beating them down to only one city before they'll give me anything. Maybe I'll give Emporer a try, or at least wait another 100 years or so on Monarch.

[daFrog]

I have been following the discussions on this and have managed to play a variant on it (Egypt, regent, standard size pangea, 8 countries).

Most of the other countries started on 1/2 the continent and were quicly hemmed in by the greeks, who seemed intent on cutting them off, leaving the rest to me and the Aztecs, who for some reason were really peaceful and laid back about expanding (although they did take most all of the goody huts). So I ended up with a 1/3 to 1/2 of the landmass to myself.

Anyway - to the point - I never fought anybody until about 5 turn ago, (that was over Indian coal which I just discovered, and is ongoing as I want a path to the Germans who have all the spices and have built a lot of wonders with their few huge cities - they couldn't expand as the indians have them boxed in so they grew what they had instead.)

Now I was just selling resources (I have 6 of 8 due to my sprawl) and tech whoring (hey if they do it - it's not cheating ) and I had no problems with them, well the English declared war from behind 2 other countries but so what? I was soooo far away, I eventually gave them a spare tech to go away.
Anyway I never had to keep a large military and the only annoyance was the constant encroach of settlers into by terrain holes, most of which overturned to my culture anyway.

So you can run vassals without supressing them militarily, just keep them friendly!

I just wish I could keep it that way now, but as the Indians are too stupid to sell me their cities (not for my entire empire apparently), I have to destroy them just to take 2 german cities!
[That is - the only route goes by the square next to their capital and they wont give me the closest city to the German border as it's their second biggest city, I already took 2 of their other 7 cities to get to their coal, another as it was in my heartland and left me vulnerable while I was at war with them, so they will be worthless as a vassal. *sniff*]
And the romans (#2 power) are starting to get ansty as well - I need to clip their wings next - could be a problem, given their mpp with the aztecs (#3 power, but no iron or horses haha!)

btw = b**** slap?