Feudal Contracts feel unmaintainable and pointless.

[fossar_]

This is a explaination of my opinion of feudal contracts, why I think they are flawed, and a couple of suggestions on how to make them better. If you have any tips to avoid any issue I raise please let me know too!

How feudal contracts work
Feudal contracts can be changed at any time by a vassal provided they balance the change with one positive and one negative. If they have even a weak hook on you they can ignore the negative change. Once this is done, further contract negotiations are blocked until both liege and vassal have died or replaced.

Why they are so abusable by AI
When you have a small to medium size realm with anything over 20ish vassals this means you have basically zero control over what the majority of your vassals contracts look like. Your one spymaster can't compete with your vassals' spymasters for getting a balance of hooks to be able to undo the negative changes they get on you, and unless you pin every one of your vassals and meticulously go in and rebalance their contracts/block them from changing it each time one of them dies, they'll end up with completely unreasonable contracts.

Why this is an issue
Having all contracts on default settings I virtually always the clear best option and the fact that the AI changes their contracts all the time because they can very easily, means that it hurts the player everytime they do change it, regardless of whether they have a hook on you or not. Further, and perhaps more importantly, this is a serious missed design opportunity when the effort has been made to create a supposedly fun system to interact with and it ends up just being a minigame to try and forget the system existed by setting everything to default wherever possible.

I stated having all contracts on Normal-Normal with no tickboxes is almost always the best option. The paragraph after this one is just a more detailed description of why I've come to this conclusion. If you agree already, you can skip it.

This gets very annoying when some vassals have massive negative opinion modifiers they've inflicted on themselves because they've used it to 'buy' some other bonus, and some giving you no tax at all. This would be fine if the contracts were actually balanced in terms of each stage up or down and the tickbox options having comparable effects but thats not the case at all. In terms of taxes, the negative opinion penalties are very rarely worth the pretty minor increases going up, however just going down from Normal to Low gives four times less tax, with only +5 opinion. For levies, their main use is as a deterrent for factions so you don't want to lower these particularly, but again the opinion malus for having it above normal will put them closer to joining factions than it prevents so isn't worth it. The tickbox options impose significant gameplay restrictions on you if you can't keep them under control, unless I was hard RPing, there's very little reason to use these. The special types of contract are useful in some situations but are considered neutral (Palatinate might be considered positive but haven't used it yet to check) so are not relevant in this discussion.

Suggestions
My suggestions for how to go about fixing this would start with balancing the steps up and down to be reasonably balanced in terms of the opinion bonuses/maluses being closer connected to the level of change of the resource, and the maximum bonus/malus at each end being closer together. This would go some way to making the contracts work interacting with. Only the special contracts seems reasonably balanced in this regard, they have situational usage but generally provide as many bonuses and negatives.

A second suggestion is to make contracts more difficult to interact with quite so regularly to stop vassals abusing them on a whim. I sincerely doubt a powerful duke could go up to their king after many decades of national peace without reason and say to their liege 'I'm gonna give you 4 times less money but don't worry you can have a few more peasant troops if you need them to make up for it.' I suggest changing a contract at all should require a weak hook, and to change it beneficially should require a strong hook. I feel this is a more accurate representation of the system anyway. The existing rule that they can only be changed once per character is good but that doesn't mean it should change once per character, yet since AI characters have such varied objectives and it costs them nothing to change it, they almost always do.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

As far as I'm aware, this can be done once per liege-vassal relationship (i.e. when either party dies/otherwise replaced the option to change it opens again).

no, it's once per each person's lifetime i.e. they both have to die before it can be changed

 

[Grand Admiral Edward]

I've never had a problem with contracts, for the simple reason I'd rather have 10,000 Tyranny than a vassal having a weak hook on me. Why? If they have a weak hook on me, that means I have go on a murder spree, because the uncouth idiot with 0 diplomacy (not to worry, all the rest of his stats are equally bad or worse) would force my 20+ master diplomat out of my council. A guy who would add 2+2 and get 22 would chose to become my steward (meaning I start to have to PAY my vassals). The leader of the Charge of the Light Brigade has better leadership qualities than the vassal who forced me to let them be my marshal. I'm surprised that an inbred, hideous, Imbecilic, feeble, infertile, weak, and dull character doesn't use a weak hook to become my wife, so she could have that council position.

 

[Dayvit78]

I've also never had this problem of vassals getting too many hooks on me. I often check my vassal contracts - you can see them quickly in the vassal screen.

The only problem i've noticed is that the AI is very often to get into negative contracts with their own vassals. I've even seen some with 0 tax/0 levies. How many tyranny wars did he have to lose to get that? Therefore if their vassal gets transferred to me, I'm stuck with a bad contract. But you can fix it slowly over generations, or you can revoke and start anew with a new vassal. Or you can live with it, it's not really a big deal.

In terms of options, most of the checkboxes seem only favorable to vassals - so if you are playing as a vassal, you might want them. As a liege, it's really only beneficial to increase taxes and levies if you can afford the opinion hit.

IMHO, the current system is suitable enough. A fix to the AI is needed all around and contract management would be part of that.

 

[Slow Bathroom]

The current system is awful because levies are useless and all the special contracts are super unbalanced. But it's even worse if you're a clan vassal and you don't have a contract because that means you have to get a hook every single time you want to declare war. I don't think vassal gameplay is a high priority for Paradox, I really think they expect most players to just start as an independent king or emperor.

 

[Kurt Pat]

I never had problem with feudal contract. I admit I usually dont commit lot of crimes, so my vassals cant blackmail me. A thing I dont understand one an other hand is sometime a vassal entrench himself in my council, like if he had a hook against me that he cant have. On some occassion I could play criminal lords, but If I do that, it is usually because it is the character vocation ; a master spy. That means everybody who try to blackmail me is dead.

At the inverse when I decide to play as a vassal, usually in hre or greek empire, I m a real calamity for my liege lord, and quickly I cant be revoked me, I have a council seat guaranted and pay few or no tax.

Game cant stop to make everyone cheating his husband or spouse, so it is easy to blackmail my overlord.

If a vassal try to entrench in my council and have not the required quality, he will loose is life or his title (that expel him from the council automatically).

If I play a vassal and an other vassal use a hook to take my seat on the overlord council, he will loose his life or his title (s). It is why my overlord had better to not raise the crown authority over 2, or I will immediatly join or create a faction. I need to be able to go at war inside the empire if neccessary, and right to go at war is usually not my priority on feudal contract.

In short ; I dont see problem with feudal contract, except may be for options who need an innovation. If the new overlord is of a different culture than the former and dont know the same innovation, it can modify automatically your feudal contract without vassal nor overlord ask or negociate for it.

Last if for a reason, you have a vassal with a disbalanced contract ; revoke him even you have to forge a claim on his land. Then give the land to a random guy. It will create a new and fresh balanced contract.

 

[JonathanOfArc]

I've also never had this problem of vassals getting too many hooks on me. I often check my vassal contracts - you can see them quickly in the vassal screen.

The only problem i've noticed is that the AI is very often to get into negative contracts with their own vassals. I've even seen some with 0 tax/0 levies. How many tyranny wars did he have to lose to get that? Therefore if their vassal gets transferred to me, I'm stuck with a bad contract.

Same here, I don't ever have an issue with characters having hooks on me, I avoid them like the plague. Though like you I've seen some horrific contracts. In a recent game I was enjoying the Independent Greek Despot life when after generations of Byzantine's usurping the throne back and forth, I decided it was time to claim it myself. What I saw was complete madness! So many Dukes, soooo many.... Their contracts were all hideous, hardly anyone was paying taxes or giving levies, and many with council seat rights! Oh the horror! I tried to go through them, the ones I could access and fix them. Give them coinage rights to take away the council seat rights. Even after all that I still had a 7 Martial guy boot my 33 Martial marshal to the curb. In the end I just created a few Kingdom titles and gave them to the Dukes who had the most "normal" contracts and tried to just forget about the whole mess.

 

[Volodio]

Same here, I don't ever have an issue with characters having hooks on me, I avoid them like the plague. Though like you I've seen some horrific contracts. In a recent game I was enjoying the Independent Greek Despot life when after generations of Byzantine's usurping the throne back and forth, I decided it was time to claim it myself. What I saw was complete madness! So many Dukes, soooo many.... Their contracts were all hideous, hardly anyone was paying taxes or giving levies, and many with council seat rights! Oh the horror! I tried to go through them, the ones I could access and fix them. Give them coinage rights to take away the council seat rights. Even after all that I still had a 7 Martial guy boot my 33 Martial marshal to the curb. In the end I just created a few Kingdom titles and gave them to the Dukes who had the most "normal" contracts and tried to just forget about the whole mess.

If you revoke their titles and give them to someone else, it resets the contracts. So the solution when you take over the vassals from someone is to replace all of the nobility. Wait for a rebellion to fire, defeat them, take their titles.

 

[fossar_]

I've never had a problem with contracts, for the simple reason I'd rather have 10,000 Tyranny than a vassal having a weak hook on me.

I've also never had this problem of vassals getting too many hooks on me. I often check my vassal contracts - you can see them quickly in the vassal screen.

Same here, I don't ever have an issue with characters having hooks on me, I avoid them like the plague.

To be clear the main point of my post is not at all that my vassals are getting too many hooks on me. I think the number of weak hooks in the game is pretty decent. My issue is primarily with the fact that the opinion bonuses for giving beneficial contracts are laughably small. +10 for paying no tax at all, +5 for your family permanently forcing themselves onto your council. If these contracts are meant to be fun to interact with, why are we so incentivised to have them all the same all the time? Even as a vassal there's not much more conplexity to it: High Levies has such low downside since alliances are pretty easy to get and levies aren't worth much anyway that if you start as a vassal you might as well modify your contract before you unpause at the start and take low taxes or anything relevant from the tickboxes, they're all leagues better.

I do stand by the suggestion that it would be more realistic if changing the contract at all required a weak hook, contracts shouldn't be changing often and weak hooks are really not difficult to get if you want one.

Just spamming tyranny doesn't appear to be a viable option because in my empire the are constantly vassals trying to support pretender claimants regardless of them having no obvious reason for grievance, 60+ opinion, and me having great traits. That's a whole different issue I'm not trying to bring up except to explain why ignoring the system by constantly having tyranny penalties would cause more serious issues, at least in my experience.

 

[fossar_]

If you revoke their titles and give them to someone else, it resets the contracts. So the solution when you take over the vassals from someone is to replace all of the nobility. Wait for a rebellion to fire, defeat them, take their titles.

This definitely works but only for so long, the new vassals will change their contracts when they get the chance and as I explained, that always results in it being worse regardless of whether they had a hook or not. Your options then are do that purging process every couple of generations when they've all made their contracts terrible again (and if you want to play as a remotely just ruler then that's not a particularly good option), or pin everyone and meticulously wait for the when you or the vassals die and contract negotiations open up again to make sure any changes made go closer to default, I think there aren't many players that will care about it enough to bother doing that though.

Its probably the case that most players aren't bothered that much about keeping everyones contracts in check, and I don't blame them, the game is easy enough you don't have to be really, but I still feel like there's an issue there whether it bothers most people or not.

 

[Miroku20X6]

I agree that the benefit of increasing vassal contract is rarely worth the opinion hit.

Vassal contract granting levies AND MAA would be a big step in the right direction to make the vassal contract matter. It would also help AI kings/emperors be a bit stronger.

 

[Videogames]

I agree that the benefit of increasing vassal contract is rarely worth the opinion hit.

Vassal contract granting levies AND MAA would be a big step in the right direction to make the vassal contract matter. It would also help AI kings/emperors be a bit stronger.

Yes, getting a portion of the vassal's MAA would do a lot to make lieges actually benefit from their vassals' military contributions. It might even do a bit to help prop up AI lieges who are having a hard time managing partition succession and don't have much of a demesne of their own.

 

[Kerham]

Feudal vassals are useless and only give headaches. Use republicans or theocratic vassals for actual significant contributions and way less time spent managing them.

Strictly ontopic, one big flaw of PDX is they try to railroad the player into a specific playstyle. The design is based on you planting your dynasty as your vassals (very awful shooting-yourself-in-the-foot idea) and then you'd control your vassals' contracts through dynasty head hook interactions, which would bring them fast to extortionate. Which is bollocks, because said vassals will anyway pump out claimant factions nomatter if they're at minimum or maximum contributions. So then is a better idea to not have your relatives vassals, so then respective hooks become redundant from this p.o.v. so then you have to keep a constant eye on the their contracts, which will get very messy for any bigger realm. So screw them, I use republicans.

I agree with the direction of your idea. Make it so that, for example, having taxes and levies on, say, low, will prevent vassals from joining or creating factions and I will set myself the contracts so from day one, their contributions are irrelevant anyway, because they have their own vassals with their own contracts, hooks etc.

 

[Kurt Pat]

To be clear the main point of my post is not at all that my vassals are getting too many hooks on me. I think the number of weak hooks in the game is pretty decent. My issue is primarily with the fact that the opinion bonuses for giving beneficial contracts are laughably small. +10 for paying no tax at all, +5 for your family permanently forcing themselves onto your council.

Even the opinions bonus is ludicrous, I agree with that, It is not that much a problem, since I will never reduce my vassals obligations. It will even be the inverse, especially for tax. In my first games I frequently changed my vassals contracts, not for more tax, not to have more money, but just to avoid they can themself change this contract. It is only one change by live or the overlord AND the vassal. Consequence Taking intiative to change their contracts, locked any possibility of futur change for a while. I tend now to be more moderate.

After that I dont care too much, about my vassals opinions expect when I want to change laws. Factions are not a problem for a player who take care of its military. Brute force cause a faction to disband to same day it appears.

 

[Volodio]

This definitely works but only for so long, the new vassals will change their contracts when they get the chance and as I explained, that always results in it being worse regardless of whether they had a hook or not. Your options then are do that purging process every couple of generations when they've all made their contracts terrible again (and if you want to play as a remotely just ruler then that's not a particularly good option), or pin everyone and meticulously wait for the when you or the vassals die and contract negotiations open up again to make sure any changes made go closer to default, I think there aren't many players that will care about it enough to bother doing that though.

Its probably the case that most players aren't bothered that much about keeping everyones contracts in check, and I don't blame them, the game is easy enough you don't have to be really, but I still feel like there's an issue there whether it bothers most people or not.

Vassals don't change their contract without a hook, and it's totally possible to avoid giving any hook to your vassals while playing. I agree changing the contracts take too much time and a decent argument could be made to reduce the cooldown to like every 30 years rather than once per lifetime (though it could be exploitable with strong hooks), but it's still very possible for the player to be in control of the contracts for most of the game.

 

[klopkr]

But it's even worse if you're a clan vassal and you don't have a contract because that means you have to get a hook every single time you want to declare war. I don't think vassal gameplay is a high priority for Paradox, I really think they expect most players to just start as an independent king or emperor.

I was surprised to find out clan vassals can't negotiate religious rights or anything either. Religious protections just scream middle east and islam to me and yet I'm better off being a feudal if I want that safety.

 

[TomLore]

My only gripe is that the contracts are tied to individuals instead of the title. Couple this with the revolving door that is the current state of factions, and you get titles bouncing all over the place and contracts being reset. So that vassal whose contract I set up how I like it? Oh he was deposed last week and the new guy is back to default contract. Ok well lets change their contract to how I like it. Oh great, now they got replaced by a fraction... I just stopped caring about vassal contracts unless its my own. A shame since they could be a cool part of the game.

 

[LebaneseDude]

There's a cool mod that lets you manage contracts en masse for all de jure titles under any title you have based on your realm authority. OneProudBavarian uses it in his latest series.

For vanilla I would suggest just limiting the number of vassals you have to minimize the headache. It does pay off to manage it though. It's often beneficial to trade taxes for less levies.

 

[Azarias59]

In their current form, they are stupid; not pointless, but so unrealistic. If feudalism ever gets a revamp, these contracts could certainly play a bigger role.

 

[Prairie_Doggin]

I find Feudal Contracts to be just another part of the game that you can go out of your way to interact with if you want to, but they can also be totally ignored and don't really have a significant effect on gameplay.