How did you get so big!?
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Confederation of the Rhine among the other Napoleonic French puppet states. Soviet Union feeds Silesia to Poland in 1945.
I really don't get why whether "vassal feeding" is historical or not is important. Sure it may not be historical, but everything else you do in the game is not historical the moment you unpause. Arguing from history is rather futile: the real life has a really grey area between vassalage and alliance, and most historical atlases would simply include the purely nominally independent realms as part of the larger empire. I'm not that interested in the EU4 period history, but the gray area existed from the antiquity to now. When did the Italian and Greek city states ceased to be Roman allies and became their vassals, and became part of the Empire? Modern South Korea is an independent nation and is allied to the US, but South Korea is unable to declare war without the American consent. Is South Korea a "vassal" to the US? More in the EU4 period history, how about the local rulers in the Ottoman Empire? How autonomous do they need to be to be "vassals" or just "provinces"? The game can't simulate the gray area, and draws the clear-cut between an independent and a subject nation. At least that's my two cents, I'm not going to argue from history.
Whether vassal feeding is an exploit or an intended way to play the game at all would be a more legit question. For me, it's an intended way to play the game, because I've seen AIs doing the same to me. I got fed as a vassal and I was offered to be a vassal, so the AI knows the strategy, though they may not be able to do it as extensively as some humans who almost entirely rely on it - the question is how much is too much. And it's completely up to the players: if you want to roleplay a historical drama, you probably won't like seeing people painting the whole continent with the same color. If you're a wannabe Genghis then you'd jump on it. The option is there, the AIs know how to do it but prefers to keep it as a secondary strategy, if the human decides to use it as a primary mean or not is up to the human. Whether you want to be a roleplayer or min/maxer is your choice, and who has the rights to say one is inherently better or worse?
I haven't bothered checking EVERY historical diplomatic situations, but Khmer is one example where a vassal continues to exist throughout the in-game period. It begins as an Ayutthayan vassal, but it changes hands between Ayutthaya and Annam (a southern Vietnamese revolt state) back and forth with few brief periods of independence in between. If anything is ahistorical, it's that the in-game Ayutthaya would annex Khmer as soon as they can rather than keeping it as a vassal.
That said, returning cores to vassals is something that the AI doesn't do as often as they could. I must admit this. France never demands England to return core Labourd to Armagnac (I tried as Armagnac three times, sieged my core, France never gave it to me) and I am yet to see the AI Ayutthaya demanding Lan Xang to return Khmer core in Stung Treng. But then again, Labourd is a French core as well, and Ayutthaya usually doesn't go to war with Lan Xang right away because Aceh is the bigger enemy and I can understand the AI decisions in both of these cases.
But it doesn't mean the AI doesn't know how to return cores to its vassal. I wish I had taken a sceenshot, but I've seen France demanding Aragon to return core Roussillon to its vassal Foix. The AI is capable of it, and will do it if there's an opportunity and a reason to do so. It's just not their primary strategy, which is sort of understandable as a gameplay design since: if all AIs decide to go vassal feeding, the alliance and diplomacy system would break down, the blobs will form much quicker, and people will complain even more.
So, in the end, if you want to use vassal expansion as your primary mean, or only as a secondary mean, or never to use it at all, is your choice. For the AIs it's clearly a secondary mean, but they know how to do it.
Whether vassal feeding is an exploit or an intended way to play the game at all would be a more legit question. For me, it's an intended way to play the game, because I've seen AIs doing the same to me. I got fed as a vassal and I was offered to be a vassal, so the AI knows the strategy, though they may not be able to do it as extensively as some humans who almost entirely rely on it - the question is how much is too much. And it's completely up to the players: if you want to roleplay a historical drama, you probably won't like seeing people painting the whole continent with the same color. If you're a wannabe Genghis then you'd jump on it. The option is there, the AIs know how to do it but prefers to keep it as a secondary strategy, if the human decides to use it as a primary mean or not is up to the human. Whether you want to be a roleplayer or min/maxer is your choice, and who has the rights to say one is inherently better or worse?
I haven't bothered checking EVERY historical diplomatic situations, but Khmer is one example where a vassal continues to exist throughout the in-game period. It begins as an Ayutthayan vassal, but it changes hands between Ayutthaya and Annam (a southern Vietnamese revolt state) back and forth with few brief periods of independence in between. If anything is ahistorical, it's that the in-game Ayutthaya would annex Khmer as soon as they can rather than keeping it as a vassal.
That said, returning cores to vassals is something that the AI doesn't do as often as they could. I must admit this. France never demands England to return core Labourd to Armagnac (I tried as Armagnac three times, sieged my core, France never gave it to me) and I am yet to see the AI Ayutthaya demanding Lan Xang to return Khmer core in Stung Treng. But then again, Labourd is a French core as well, and Ayutthaya usually doesn't go to war with Lan Xang right away because Aceh is the bigger enemy and I can understand the AI decisions in both of these cases.
But it doesn't mean the AI doesn't know how to return cores to its vassal. I wish I had taken a sceenshot, but I've seen France demanding Aragon to return core Roussillon to its vassal Foix. The AI is capable of it, and will do it if there's an opportunity and a reason to do so. It's just not their primary strategy, which is sort of understandable as a gameplay design since: if all AIs decide to go vassal feeding, the alliance and diplomacy system would break down, the blobs will form much quicker, and people will complain even more.
So, in the end, if you want to use vassal expansion as your primary mean, or only as a secondary mean, or never to use it at all, is your choice. For the AIs it's clearly a secondary mean, but they know how to do it.
I get really tired of hearing this non-argument. What everyone is asking for is for the rules to force us to deal with the same constraints historical leaders faced, not for the rules to force the same outcome history had.
Anyway, the problem isn't the existence of vassals. The problem is using vassals to get yourself cores on the vassal's territory.
That's not a problem, that's the whole game. It's SUPPOSED to be like this.
You might as well say "The problem isn't the ability to omnisciently see the exact location of all your troops at the same time. The problem is the ability to direct all your troops instantly without any communication delay."
There are a billion abstractions that exist for game purposes because they roughly approximate how a country behaves. Vassal feeding is a fine example of this.
And I get really tired of hearing this "oh it's not historically so" non-argument. It's a freaking game, and seriously, what alternative do you have to propose? So you don't want to get cores when you annex a vassal. FINE. What do you have to propose in compensation for that?
Back to one of the examples I cited. Ayutthaya starts with a vassal Khmer. If Ayutthaya annexes it and does not get a core, it's likely to cause an overextension either close to or over 100%. What if you suddenly inherit a nation while you're at 80% overextension and working on coring them already? I once inherited 5 provinces Bosnia while I was overextended that much. I didn't plan it, it just happened, and I would have ragequit if that put me +100% in overextension. See, if you want to change the "free core" problems, you need to change overextension in order to make the game playable. And since you're restricting player choices severely, you'd need to provide an alternative mean to vassal strategy. By then you might as well be designing a whole new game instead.
Yeah, you would be designing a whole new game.
One that modeled the historical difficulties of expanding an empire rather than created new ones.
One that modeled the historical difficulties of expanding an empire rather than created new ones.
only time i deliberately lost a war was to change to orthodox , wanted to be a orthodox power house fighting against the heathen catholics , just me and maybe russia/moscowy Vs europe
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Not to undercut what an otherwise great post, but there's a simple reason for this: it's the only common framework people have to work from that's at least tangentially related to the design and balance of a historical strategy game, so that's what they do. Most posters barely understand the difference between game design and game balance, and are usually not familiar enough with the psychology of learning to make a valid argument from risk-reward except in cases of self-evidently dominant strategies (I-win-buttons). It's a problem of expression, not understanding, however: the fact that you can't tell me what you are perceiving that allows you to maintain an upright posture in your chair doesn't allow me to claim you don't understand how to sit upright.
Similarly, I think there's almost always a legitimate game mechanics argument to be teased out of people's historical arguments. People are perceiving that something is not right, and they want to express that as objectively as possible, hence historical arguments. The only exceptions are generally the cyclical debates about complex multi-mechanic issues that go on and on like a broken record, such as coalitions, with neither side making any progress--here, a Venn diagram between "narratives poster X thinks are historically accurate" and "mechanics poster X has an a priori preference for" is just a circle, so no one gets anywhere.
I just like to remain in my own little world, like as Bohemia, in 2 years i've only captured like 3 provinces, but love the game anyway. :3
I'm never about being big lol. xD Am I playing wrong?
I'm never about being big lol. xD Am I playing wrong?