Theres probably a specific thread on this but I cant find one...
Whats the deciding factor when choosing to either vassalize or just annex? When Im on my own personal mission to conquer all of europe or something, without a thought I want to annex after every war. In that mind set, I dont see the point in vassalizing.
So ultimately Im asking is whats the point to ever vassalize? Cheaper infamy? The only thing I have read is that the cost of tech-ing is related to how many provinces you have. So if you annex like crazy, yet they are mainly poor provinces, you will actually be kind of screwing yourself in the end since the province isnt paying enough for it to be worth the extra cost tacked on to tech-ing. Is this pretty much the case? Or is there something more Im missing?
There are lots of ways to play this game, and one of them is to just go gung ho and to hell with the consequences. The consequences are pretty bad though. Or you can exercise some self-control.
If you annex a four-province country you don't have cores on, you are taking 16 infamy. This will have numerous negative consequences. It's hard to burn off more than 0.8-1.5 reputation per year so you'll have those consequences for a while. You'll also have four provinces that are less productive than your cores, until they become cores, which takes 50 years.
It may be worth it to do this. An alternative is to vassalize the country for four infamy (zero with a subjugate CB, which comes via a mission). You can offer them an alliance and they'll help you to some small extent if you ask, either with their army or by providing some provinces for the enemy to siege rather than yours, and at very least they'll be a country that won't attack you. They'll give you money each year as well.
You can annex them 10 years later at the cost of (I believe) one infamy per province and one point of stability. You can annex one nation every ten years (you can't vassalize a whole bunch and annex them all at once). You won't get cores, but you won't get a ton of infamy either.
The subjugate missions that the game gives out like candy will make it very easy to form a huge vassal cloud (a subjugate mission is a free vassal and rewards -2 infamy on completion, so you can vassalize the target nation's ally, then vassalize the target nation, and end up paying 2 infamy total for both).
If you get a big enough vassal cloud they are ridiculously over powered. In my current game I have 40 of them, mostly by just doing missions, or by vassalizing a random nation when at war and at zero infamy, and they are giving me over 500 ducats per year, and if someone is fool enough to attack me they'll end up getting besieged by dozens of little army stacks without me having to do anything.
Every once in a while I get a mission to annex one of these guys, that gives a free core, so if it's a small nation this is a good way to expand, with very little down side.
I didn't even mention holy roman empire stuff, where it's almost prohibitive to annex nations without having cores first. It would be insane, for example, for Austria to annex Aquileia, which would result in 16 infamy up front, and another one per year for fifty years, for a total of 66 infamy for 4 provinces.
So:
I would annex a nation in war time without even thinking about it if I had cores on it and the war also gave me zero or very little infamy.
As a European nation, I would probably annex a nation in India if I had the holy war casus belli (sharply reduced infamy costs). One infamy per province is not a bad deal if you've decided you want those provinces.
I might vassalize a nation outside Europe if I had zero infamy, or some kind of reduced infamy CB, and the nation was pretty big but had low-income provinces. I am not someone who goes out and annexes Swahili. I might not waste 4 infamy by vassalizing a little one with bad provinces, in that case I'd just take money and forget about it. If Portugal wants to gimp itself by annexing all of the little animist minors, be my guest.
The game will give me missions to vassalize small nations adjacent to me in Europe, so normally I will do this. I would almost never pay 8 infamy to annex a one province minor in Europe.
In particular, I would never annex an HRE nation unless I had a core or was going to get one immediately as consequence of a mission, unless it was one province and I thought it was incredibly strategic to do it.
