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LoSici

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Feb 23, 2021
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This is my first post on this forum so forgive me if I do not follow the etiquette...

If I were to declare on a nation that immediately borders a subject nation (with cradle of civ enabled), my subject will 99% likely be drilling. I'm glad they do drill, but in several cases I've experienced, they haven't attacked an enemy army they could easily beat (30k vs 5k just happened to me) because, obviously, they have no morale.
It would be lovely to be able to have an equivalent of 'prepare for war' with subject, maybe adding +5% lib desire or something, so they stop drilling and maybe recruit a couple more regiments, while you build a spy network or whatever.

Is there any way you guys have got round this? Or do you just accept it?

What else about subjects do you have an issue with/want to suggest to others? I'm an 800h noob so any comments are much appreciated!
 
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I had never had such a situation, maybe because I keep an army in vassal land in such situations. Also to kill rebels there, cause vassals are weak at this. I also tend not to engage vassals in war. Note for example that if you put Byzantium on scutage and fighting Ottomans, you get the place you can recruit armies and Ottomans cannot occupy it because Byzantium is formaly not involved in war.

in my games each vassals have their clear reason.

1) reconquest vassals - to grab land and quickly integrate - nations that already have cores or tend to collapse leaving a lot of cores. These vassals are never turned into marches and depending on situation are engaged in wars or not.
Examples: Khorasan, Novgorod and the Big Four: Kazakh, Timurids, Byzantium, Ming

2) cash vassals
These are vassals that have one clear goal - generate cash. Those nations are always on scutage to prevent devastation and on divert trade. Best nations are those with bonus tax income (theocracies and tax from ideas) or bonus trade (bonus merchants, goods produced, bonus trade power, better steering). You may want to upgrade their centers of trade for even more trade power, you would take for yourself by divert trade, and occasionaly take a province to set up company there to boost goods even higher
My big trio is:
a) Pskov: bonus trade power, bonus merchants from ideas and veche republic, goods produced boost from ideas and veche republic mechanism. It must be taken from Muscovy before integration, otherwise veche republic would be lost. Pskov is insane, just feed it with Novgorod node and Baltic
b) Gujarat - gets trade power both provincial and global and is a monster monopolising Gujarat node. Because Gujarat tends to be beaten early, there is also some benefit from reconquest, also gujarati mission tree can be followed, because unlike many trees it does not require Gujarat to be independent - so you get claims from your vassal's mission tree
c) Kutai - massive trade steering, trade power, goods produced and reasonably stable with more tax on top, it will easily allow you to make Mallacca the richest node

c) fighting vassals - march. Used only for wars, never on scitage or divert trade. Preferably those with nice war ideas and hard terrain, close to many big countries.
The perfect march is for example Georgia:
it becomes a monster march against Ottomas, Persia, Russia, PLC, Austria
Goergia as a march with 100% patriarch authority is sth like:
min 25% max 58% national manpower
+5 happiness in orthodox provinces
land force limit +20%
45% fort defense (and forts in mountains :D ) and less maintanance of forts
+40% manpower recovery
Monthly war exhaustion -0,02
Infantry +10% CA
Infantry 20% cheaper and on top of it -20% maintanace of all land armies
St micheal icon? Never checked
Add any miltary ideas group....
 
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Best nations are those with bonus tax income (theocracies and tax from ideas)
Bonus trade, sure ; but bonus tax is useless, because tax income from vassals is a joke. Here is a possible example : say you have a large vassal, half your size and about half your income. Past the very early game, tax income is typically no more than 25% of a nation's total income - and that's being generous. Out of your vassal's tax income, you get a base 10% - let's say 20% if you stack modifiers. So with a close to ideal setup, this large vassal provides a pathetic +2.5% to your total income...
 
Bonus trade, sure ; but bonus tax is useless, because tax income from vassals is a joke. Here is a possible example : say you have a large vassal, half your size and about half your income. Past the very early game, tax income is typically no more than 25% of a nation's total income - and that's being generous. Out of your vassal's tax income, you get a base 10% - let's say 20% if you stack modifiers. So with a close to ideal setup, this large vassal provides a pathetic +2.5% to your total income...
Here comes +25% from influence and +25/50% from policies, so you drain 85% vassals tax income (as far as I remember these % are additive). With theocracies having +20% max from devotion and some from reforms and 10% from ideas these may be significant. Theocracies are also good at fighting so having such a vassal is valuable - just decide when turn them on and off scutage - you may need Salzburg (feed it before with whole Bavaria) fighting in Europe, while not necessairy in Asia.

Of course it becomes weak late game, when everything comes from prod+trade, but early till midgame is a significant boost to income while keeping vassal on low liberty desire (no cash to hire troops)
 
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I haven't tried to get significant income from subjects in ages. Is there a cap on % increase? With scutage, influence, feudal monarchy, and a couple policies you could get well over 100% from modifiers. Sadly, that's still just on tax income, so it still sucks. But it would imply that you get more tax from subjects than you would tax from own provinces. Too bad you can't shake down their production income so easily :p.
 
c) fighting vassals - march. Used only for wars, never on scitage or divert trade.
This is really what i was aiming for with this thread.
But in terms of having a march (99% of my subjects, as for how i play), the drilling I find very annoying. Obviously I want them to drill as much as possible, but I'd really like a way to stop them drilling, maybe two months ticks before declaring so they can recover morale.
b) Gujarat - gets trade power both provincial and global and is a monster monopolising Gujarat node. Because Gujarat tends to be beaten early, there is also some benefit from reconquest, also gujarati mission tree can be followed, because unlike many trees it does not require Gujarat to be independent - so you get claims from your vassal's mission tree
I didn't know this - this has definitely given me my next game plan. Thank you!
 
I haven't tried to get significant income from subjects in ages. Is there a cap on % increase? With scutage, influence, feudal monarchy, and a couple policies you could get well over 100% from modifiers. Sadly, that's still just on tax income, so it still sucks. But it would imply that you get more tax from subjects than you would tax from own provinces. Too bad you can't shake down their production income so easily :p.
It has been ages since I tested this, so I may be wrong.

Base is 10%, meaning vassal pays 10% of their tax income
All modifiers should be additive, so with influence, couple policies, proper gvernment, over 100% is possible, but as far as I remember, vassal will not pay you more, it simply transfers all their income from tax.
NOTE
Scutage is an exception from being additive - it multiplies the final tax, so if your vassal makes 20 from tax, you have 50 % efficiency (visible on subject tab), you get 10 ducats. If you turn on scutage, you will get 15 ducats (+50% from 10), not 20. I did not check it with very high vassal fee, for example 80% to see if the income with scutage can be higher than vassals tax income :D But it is fairly easy to check - income in ledger shows vassals tax before it is transfered to overlord.
 
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This is really what i was aiming for with this thread.
But in terms of having a march (99% of my subjects, as for how i play), the drilling I find very annoying. Obviously I want them to drill as much as possible, but I'd really like a way to stop them drilling, maybe two months ticks before declaring so they can recover morale.
Countries never drill on borders, if they can do it in interior, they ill drill there, also forts somehow make them save from being wiped. And as overlord you can build a fort you will pay for instead of the march
 
It has been ages since I tested this, so I may be wrong.

Base is 10%, meaning vassal pays 10% of their tax income
All modifiers should be additive, so with influence, couple policies, proper gvernment, over 100% is possible, but as far as I remember, vassal will not pay you more, it simply transfers all their income from tax.
NOTE
Scutage is an exception from being additive - it multiplies the final tax, so if your vassal makes 20 from tax, you have 50 % efficiency (visible on subject tab), you get 10 ducats. If you turn on scutage, you will get 15 ducats (+50% from 10), not 20. I did not check it with very high vassal fee, for example 80% to see if the income with scutage can be higher than vassals tax income :D But it is fairly easy to check - income in ledger shows vassals tax before it is transfered to overlord.
It's possible to hit 100% before scutage. I wonder if you can get 30 if they have 20 tax income.

Still, when similar idea group investment allows 100's of ducats/mo in BOTH production and trade, even the most gouged vassal income modifiers seem like a joke.
 
Joke or not, with limited governing capacity you probably want some vassals, and it is better to have those, which will contribute sth instead of nothing.
So it is better to have Kutai feeded with Brunei land than having Brunei with Kutai land.
It is better to have Pskov with Novogrodian land than Novgorod with Pskovian land
It is better to have Salzburg than Bavaria
It is better to have Georgia than Armenia
It is better to have Gujarat than Sindh
It is better to have Scotland than England (supposing both went exploration)
and so on

All this thread makes me want to play as Bosnia next game :D
 
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