AI is WAY WAY WAY too Protectorate-Happy

[Pellucid]

I've seen tons of AIs totally gimping themselves by making Protectorates of nations they should be annexing. Russia making Golden Horde into one, Mamlukes making Ethiopia into one, and even my own New World colony making a protectorate out of a one province minor Native American civ that was literally bisecting their territory. Oh, and when I declared war on the one-province minor, apparently my cultural kin in the colony sided with the natives? I'm assuming that's a bug.

The AI definitely needs some tweaks in this regard. For one thing, it shouldn't rule out attacking a protectorate who is weak or vulnerable, and it probably shouldn't make protectorates of civs which have a capital on the same continent as them.

 

[unmerged(82265)]

Protectorates should just be removed period. They serve no purpose other than to ruin the game.

 

[Pellucid]

I think they could be made to work if the rules regarding them were stricter. After all, Great Britain's relationship with India was more like a series of protectorates than an occupation.

 

[unmerged(82265)]

Work to what end? What are they even supposed to do? They aren't even defined. If they actually had some stated purpose, sure they could work if fixed to serve a purpose with a set of mechanics that went with them.

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

The colonies making protectorats and then sidig with them is gamebreaking imho. I get the thirteen colonies, who then make protectoras of all the native american tribes, siding with them, when I try to conqour them...

 

[Marcus Septim]

i usualy declare a useless war in which my colonies join..then i attack their protectorates so my colonies cant join them if they are together in war with me, still this is a huge problem

 

[Magean]

The colonies making protectorats and then sidig with them is gamebreaking imho. I get the thirteen colonies, who then make protectoras of all the native american tribes, siding with them, when I try to conqour them...

That one can't be WAD.


That said, Russia making protectorates out of Hordes is indeed game-breaking and map-breaking. In this game, both Golden Horde and Uzbek are Russian protectorates :

 

[Rabid]

There should really be a way to annex protectorates but only under very specific circumstances; not being able to annex overseas protectorates in India or Africa makes sense, not being able to annex protectorates you border because you're Russia and your natural expansion path is into Central Asia is stupid. Or maybe just make special rules for nomads, that would be annoying but at least it would work vaguely (though it would still make stupid crap like westernised Indians not being able to vassal their neighbours)

 

[Khalep]

My main concern with these protectorates is the aformentioned tendency for Russia to turn the hordes into protectorates, which allows them to easily turn a foe into a semi-ally. It just doesn't seem proper for that to happen without a fight.

 

[Jack]

I've seen tons of AIs totally gimping themselves by making Protectorates of nations they should be annexing. Russia making Golden Horde into one, Mamlukes making Ethiopia into one, and even my own New World colony making a protectorate out of a one province minor Native American civ that was literally bisecting their territory. Oh, and when I declared war on the one-province minor, apparently my cultural kin in the colony sided with the natives? I'm assuming that's a bug.

The AI definitely needs some tweaks in this regard. For one thing, it shouldn't rule out attacking a protectorate who is weak or vulnerable, and it probably shouldn't make protectorates of civs which have a capital on the same continent as them.

Same thing happend to me last night. I atacked some natives and as a result my colony was lost . Colony should go over protectorat in my opinion)

 

[ChildeR]

Probably would be a good idea to simply make the AI never get protectorates in the new world or in their home continent. It not 100% sure you'd never want one close to home, but as a colonial power you definitely don't want one in the new world, since you don't need to use your own points for coring.

Elsewhere, it sometimes makes sense to use them, especially if fleet basing bugs are fixed.

 

[Tiaexz]

Don't mind my colonies annexing the Indian states, but turning them into protectorates is indeed annoying.

 

[Colossal_Elk]

Work to what end? What are they even supposed to do? They aren't even defined. If they actually had some stated purpose, sure they could work if fixed to serve a purpose with a set of mechanics that went with them.

That's the biggest problem with protectorates IMO. They don't even contribute anything militarily, and they won't strike out against their "protector" even in times of extreme turmoil. As Korea, I went to war with Russia who had the Uzbek and Golden Horde as protectorates expecting half of Eurasia to attack me. Instead I just got some Russian armies, and when I destroyed them all, Golden Horde and Uzbek were just sitting around doing nothing.

The other problem with protectorates is there's no downside to being one. Vassals will get annexed sooner or later, but you get cheaper tech just by being under the thumb of someone else no matter what their tech group is.

 

[LDSkinny]

Personally, I think that they should make it so that when a protectorate westernizes, rather than automatically break free, they would become a vassal with a very high desire for independence. If that was the case, there would be an active reason for the overlord to assist in the westernization process while also creating a risk in doing so, as a new vassal would take an additional diplo slot they weren't using as a protectorate and a large protectorate could become a major threat in seeking independence.

 

[Jorlaan]

I am in the middle of an Ottoman game where I helped Crimea take a province from Lithuania during a recent war and RIGHT after the war ended Crimea is a Lithuanian protectorate. Like I mean less than a month after the end of the war I click on Crimea to send a gift of some gold to help em out and I find this out. This make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER! A war between them ended less than a month earlier, they didn't have this status before the war and it was not in the peace deal, so how the HELL did it happen? NO WAY Crimea agrees to that.
I actually manually switched and ended it as I felt it was 100% BS.

 

[ChildeR]

The other problem with protectorates is there's no downside to being one. Vassals will get annexed sooner or later, but you get cheaper tech just by being under the thumb of someone else no matter what their tech group is.

They lose half their trade power, do they not?

 

[unmerged(195685)]

Hordes don't fit into the protectorate model very well, and it would probably make sense to remove them from becoming one. It makes a lot of sense with other nations though-granted, it's annoying when a colonial creates a protectorate of a tiny native american, but that doesn't mean it's ahistorical. People don't like it when new world nations get protected because there's no cost to the player to annex them (aside from 50 diplo), so why do anything else? Don't forget that there is still a cost for the colonial nation to core and control that province, so they ought to be less willing. Either way, it's a trivial matter to get around one of your colonials protecting a native. As far what exactly protectorates do, it's fairly simple-

-Transfer 50% of their trade power to the overlord.
-Gain a tech bonus of some kind.
-Automatically call in the overlord if they are declared on.

Other than that, there's no difference between a protectorate and an independent nation. Protectorates are best utilized where it would be otherwise difficult to conquer that much territory but you still want to pull trade through the area (ivory coast, ceylon, malacca are all good examples of nodes where it may be beneficial to create a protectorate instead of annex/coring). The upside to creating protectorates in said areas instead of vassalizing is that it's 1000x easier to create a protectorate of most of the nations-I was able to do so with a vijayanagar that held most of india with just some improved relations, rather than 100 years of conquest.

There are certainly still some kinks to work out with protectorates, but overall I like them as an addition to the game.

 

[PedroVargas]

I really start to hate them. After playing and enjoying EU4 for more than 1000 hours they are the thing that annoy me the most - worse than any coalition or overexaggerated AE before. I am currently trying the Najd achievement and with the protectorates it is just plain impossible:

- Every major power spawns protectorates as mentioned above by others. Russia protects the Oriat Horde for God's sake who cover almost all of central and eastern Asia in my game. And the Ottos protect QQ which I need to attack to get Iraqi cores. And they never end, there's no way to make them end in a peace deal. Nothing. It's even impossible to make a war against the overlord and attack the protectorate immediately afterwards - the overlord will still join, despite a truce. They might be the strongest bonds in the entire game ...

- What's probably even worse is that I cannot vassalize anything east of India, I can only make protectorates. I know vassal feeding is thought to be gamey but coring all of Asia is a lot worse. There are huge opportunities in India to kill giant powers and eat up the bits, but as it stands now, I can only core, core, core. And that happened even before I westernized because I was ... I don't know ... some 5 techs ahead.

I thought I was on my way very well, the Arabian penninsula and Egypt are mine, half of India too, and I have the giant sized Timurids into a PU, westernized by 1550. All for nothing now because I can only advance further at snail's pace.

 

[Golladan]

westernized by 1550.

You shouldn't have westernized.

 

[PedroVargas]

Actually I was unable to make vassals in India even before westernizing. I was able at first but when I got a little too far ahead in tech, the game prevented it.