Matrix Games Forums

I like that the game gives you the option to turn a minor regime into a vassal if you so desire, instead of just conquering them by force. However, I was kinda disappointed with the feature when I tried it.

These are the problems I found with the feature or at least areas where it is lacking:

1: There only seem to be 3 minor regime stratagems in general.
Propose peace, make protectorate, make vassal. If you tell your foreign affairs director to focus on diplomacy with minors, you will eventually build up a huge stockpile of these cards, more than you're gonna be needing of them. None of these cards are really reusable or applicable to many situations.
More reusable minor diplomacy cards would be nice to have. Maybe something like a card to bully them into giving a one time tribute or to influence them into attacking one of their neighbours.
There should also be a card for improving your relations with minors. Right now, if you fail the roll to turn them into a protectorate or vassal, then they will lose some relations with you and there's pretty much no way for you to make this relation rise again, unless maybe if you get some random event.

2: I think it would be nice if there was a third foreign affairs investment slider (besides major and minor diplomacy), a slider specifically for diplomacy with your subordinate regimes, protectorates and vassals.
These stratagems could be things like, asking them for money, for militia units, for leaders, to attack some other regime, increasing relations, slowly trying to integrate them into your nation.

I'm imagining it something like this: If you play cards asking for favors like money, militia units, etc, then they will reduce your relation with them even if they were successful (maybe not on a critical success?).
If your relation with them drops too low, there would be a chance for them to break free and stop being your subordinate.
To counter-act that, you have to play other cards that increase your relation with them, so that your relation with them pretty much becomes some sort of currency that you get to spend on favors.

I know that subordinate states will become part of your nation when they are being attacked by another major, but the problem about that is when you vassalise some state that turns out to be so far away from other majors that that will pretty much never happen. Or they are completely surrounded by other minor regimes.
That's why I would also like some active way to integrate vassals into our nation. But it should be a longer process. Like, you would have to play this integration card multiple times, it would cost a lot of PP and it would also require very high relations.

3: Subordinate states feel incredibly lifeless right now. They don't seem to be doing anything, not moving their units at all and don't give you any events.
Normal minor regimes sometimes give events/decisions, which is nice, because it gives you some interaction between you and them, but once you turn them into subordinates, you don't ever hear anything from them again.
There should definitely be some events/decisions added for subordinate states.

4: Finally, here comes the biggest problem with subordinate states. We currently CANNOT move through their territory without declaring war.
That means, a new player might accidentally completely block themselves off from the rest of the world by vassalising too many minors.
There NEEDS to be a way for us to move our troops through client states without declaring war and we also need to be able to move logistics and supplies through their territory.

2. Sounds like the major regime strategem "Asking for Help".

4. Is going to be a mess/massive project. "Who is getting that hex" is going to be a question. Nevermind uneven war states.
IIRC, not even the victory alliance - the highest form of allicance- allows passing through each others terrain.

FYI, when protectorates are attacked you just instantly take full control of them.

Oh, I forgot another thing.
I'm not sure if it's true, but I think creating vassals doesn't increases your victory score. If that's true, then it's a bit of a problem, since it potentially makes it harder to actually close out the game when you have a bunch of vassals.

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
4. Is going to be a mess/massive project. "Who is getting that hex" is going to be a question. Nevermind uneven war states.
IIRC, not even the victory alliance - the highest form of allicance- allows passing through each others terrain.

Can't tell how hard it would be without looking at the source code.
If it's absolutely impossible to do moving through another regime's territory, then there should at least be something that works like the strategic move, which would let you teleport your units to the other side of the vassal's territory. And your logistics should be able to flow through them of course.

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
FYI, when protectorates are attacked you just instantly take full control of them.

Yeah, I wrote a little paragraph about it in the post. It's a neat mechanic, but I think there should still be another way to integrate vassals into your territory when there is no way for them to be declared on by other majors.

Yes I too miss some diplomacy-with-minor options. Like increasing their relation. Or decreasing.

Also, in diplomacy with a Major, it would be nice if we could tell beforehand (maybe we can, but if so I did not know) whether our investments will be worth it.
I've spent time, energy, credits and goodwill of my cabinet to increase relations with this Dunkelstate Major, only to find when they finally got above 40, than the difficulty for exchanging Embassies is 656. 656! I roll 1d100 +50 or so.

ORIGINAL: Destragon

Can't tell how hard it would be without looking at the source code.
If it's absolutely impossible to do moving through another regime's territory, then there should at least be something that works like the strategic move, which would let you teleport your units to the other side of the vassal's territory. And your logistics should be able to flow through them of course.

This is not so much a source code question, as a question of process:
- If you move out of your allies territory into enemy/Non-Aligned/3rd party territory, who is getting the new hexes? You the one who moved the unit - or the ally that allowed you to even be there in the first place?
- what if you are at war with someone, but your ally is not. Could you attack the enemies territory from your allies, even if the enemy could not counter-attack without declaring war?
- logistics performance is massively helped by the fact that logistics never goes outside of your territory. All the parts of the planet that belong to other people? No need to even consider them for supply spread.
- can you use your allies supply transport capacity? can you even do a war if you got to rely on your ally upgrading and not taxing out their supply capacity? Even if said ally is an AI? Could you pay for upgrades of his infrastructure?
Paradox Games have been tangling with those particular questions since forever. The answers they came up with have never been pretty. Or useable, really.


*Shadow Empire might at least have a solution for the logistics part - you could propably build your own ruck stops in allied terrain. Having a allies building hosted in your terrain is not much different from having a private asset in your terrain - IP to build it and fuel to run it would be your allies problem.

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
- If you move out of your allies territory into enemy/Non-Aligned/3rd party territory, who is getting the new hexes? You the one who moved the unit - or the ally that allowed you to even be there in the first place?

That depends on if vassal states are going to stay as passive as they are now. If they stay passive, then make it the player's territory. If vassals actually get more of a personality and start doing things like join the war effort and use their units to fight, then maybe make it the vassal's territory.
Making vassals unable to conquer territory for themselves and just always giving it to their master would be fine though.

- what if you are at war with someone, but your ally is not. Could you attack the enemies territory from your allies, even if the enemy could not counter-attack without declaring war?

I think vassals should always be at war with the enemies of their master.
Protectorates however could stay the way they are now, flipping to you when they are getting attacked and not actually letting you move your units past them.

- logistics performance is massively helped by the fact that logistics never goes outside of your territory. All the parts of the planet that belong to other people? No need to even consider them for supply spread.

Making the vassal's road network be considered part of your own road network doesn't sound like a performance problem to me. It should in theory perform the same way it would if you owned your vassal's territory.

- can you use your allies supply transport capacity? can you even do a war if you got to rely on your ally upgrading and not taxing out their supply capacity? Even if said ally is an AI? Could you pay for upgrades of his infrastructure?

Well, being able to build roads (and place traffic signs) inside vassal territory would be useful at least.
Building buildings inside vassal territory might not be that important, since they don't really tend to have that big of a territory anyway, so you should probably be able to send your logistics through them with your own buildings.

I want to be able to swallow a vassal without problems. In my game I have a Hunter minor regime that is blocking my logistics because I offered protection in early game. Now it is just a PITA at ~ 60 relation, so I cannot just attack it risking turmoil in my countries zones.

Maybe a "Surrender or..." Strat card? If executed successful minor vassal regime will be added as a new zone, if unsuccessful, relation will drop to 30?

Resurrecting yet another dead thread...

Playing 1.12e

Have a BIG problem with Majors dealing with minors which I've set up protection/vassal status with....

Have established a 'non-aggression' pact with 2 Majors; each Major pushes its borders up to a minor of mine that has either a protectorate or vassal status then goes ahead and enters the territory of said minor. This triggers each minor to join me and a state of war between me and said major starting. Both majors had very high relation status (90+ Friendly status) with multiple other ties (science, trade etc.)

The program ISN'T 'warning' the majors that the minor is protected and entering will trigger a war (thus immediately violating non-aggression pact). With one major, I was able to immediately play a 'peace' card and it agreed and war was ended before any combat took place. With the other, the minor is 'detached' from my contiguous territory, and I haven't had a 'peace card' to play as of yet.

There REALLY needs to be a modification to the program that would treat protected minors as being the territory of the protector as far as AI majors are concerned.

Adding to the above post...

Both Majors in question are Republican regimes with Realpolitik factions in control.