Make vassals use up only 0.5 diplo relation slots

[OldmansHQ]

The idea is not limited to vassals, and it does not have to be 0.5. It evolved with new posts, so please look at more than just the opening post. Thank you !

Hello,

I thought someone would finally make this suggestion (maybe someone did and I missed it), so I didn't say anything or maybe I was plain lazy. It's going to be one of those stupidly simple ideas that fixes issues, such as vassals being waste of relation slots, because they don't get bonuses to income and force limit the same way independent nations do, making allies always the more optimal choice, unless you want to integrate that vassal later. Ready? Here it is:

Make vassals, marches and client states use up only 0.5 of diplo relation slot instead of an entire 1.0 the way allies still would.

This way you have a choice between two vassals that you have to care for or one fully fledged ally. Everything else works as before. For every one diplo relation above the limit, even if it's a vassal relation worth 0.5 slot, you still get -1 monthly bird mana. Of course, numbers are open to tweaking. This could potentially be applied to other subject nations such as protectorates and colonial nations. Perhaps they could take up 0.2 diplo relation slots.

Although it does not solve the utter lack of influence over internal affairs of vassals, I think this is a simple and easy to implement change that will improve the game.

EDIT: It was very late when I wrote this, so I forgot about it, but I also had in mind transferring trade power and guaranteeing. These also shouldn't be worth a full diplo relation slot.

 

[minven]

Vassals for 0.5 slot would be overpowered. Marches for 0.75 or 0.80 relation could be worth considering, though.

 

[magnusvejby]

I feel like this wold be VERY strong, but I think this would be fine to have in game. But it should only apply to Feudal Monarchies, and vassals under you should ALSO be feudal Monarchies, that way if you have a Merchant Republic vassal it would still be 1 diplo slot, but you can have 2 feudal monarchy vassals if you are one your self. Maybe this would still be too strong so maybe give a penalty to feudal monarchies and thier vassals.

This is just my opinion. This is a good idea still so +1 too you.

 

[OldmansHQ]

Vassals for 0.5 slot would be overpowered. Marches for 0.75 or 0.80 relation could be worth considering, though.

I personally don't think so, but maybe that would be the case. At the end of the day it needs to be something that's fairly easy to get to an integer. Unless we rebalance other diplo relation bonuses from ideas, and how much of diplo relations alliances take. As it is 0.75 or 0.80 wouldn't make any difference with the current bonuses. You could either have 4 alliances or 5 vassals without getting the penalty. What seems reasonable is 1.5 vassals per an ally, so vassals would have to take 0.66 of diplo relation slot.

It was very late when I wrote, so I forgot about it, but I also had in mind transferring trade power and guaranteeing. These also shouldn't be worth a full diplo relation slot. I'm going to add this to the original post.

 

[OldmansHQ]

I feel like this wold be VERY strong, but I think this would be fine to have in game. But it should only apply to Feudal Monarchies, and vassals under you should ALSO be feudal Monarchies, that way if you have a Merchant Republic vassal it would still be 1 diplo slot, but you can have 2 feudal monarchy vassals if you are one your self. Maybe this would still be too strong so maybe give a penalty to feudal monarchies and thier vassals.

This is just my opinion. This is a good idea still so +1 too you.

Thanks . As I said, numbers are open to tweaking. As you said, it could even be integrated this way where states of the same type use up less diplo relation slot, possibly? Still, I think that unless you intend to annex them, vassals are worthless as they are, and some relations such as guaranteeing are too costly. Why would you guarantee some random minor when you could guarantee yourself by getting a strong ally? Yes, there are exceptions, but these are too rare. I've never used transfer trade power in any of my SP games. I'd rather conquer and get all of it.

 

[Soulburger]

Sounds like you want to replace the relationship count with a relationship point pool.

Ex current default DR (dip relationship) is 3 at start of game.

New format start DR pool would be 9.
+1 for military access, warnings, guarantees, transfer trade power.
+2 for vassals, royal marriages, PUs
+3 for military alliances

So you have a lot more combinations of diplomatic options. Not sure how balanced this would be but it is interesting. I would suggest that there would be a dev cap (50?) for vassals. Anything over that cap would count as a +3 DR since you could easily exploit with some OP vassal swarms.

 

[OldmansHQ]

Sounds like you want to replace the relationship count with a relationship point pool.

Ex current default DR (dip relationship) is 3 at start of game.

New format start DR pool would be 9.
+1 for military access, warnings, guarantees, transfer trade power.
+2 for vassals, royal marriages, PUs
+3 for military alliances

So you have a lot more combinations of diplomatic options. Not sure how balanced this would be but it is interesting. I would suggest that there would be a dev cap (50?) for vassals. Anything over that cap would count as a +3 DR since you could easily exploit with some OP vassal swarms.

Kinda... Going with integers instead of decimals is the same really in this case. Though I thought my way was simpler, because it would not require a global rebalancing of diplo relations, so it would be easier for devs. From player perspective, the way you suggested is probably the less confusing way.

 

[Dutchman251]

I don't think this will make it harder for the developers. They only have to tweak some numbers, which shouldn't be to hard.

A march should be also only 1 point, though, to make them more attractive.

 

[ChildeR]

I'd like to see half cost vassals as a feature for feudal monarchy, possibly some other forms of government. Because tradeoffs are more interesting.

 

[OldmansHQ]

I don't think this will make it harder for the developers. They only have to tweak some numbers, which shouldn't be to hard.

A march should be also only 1 point, though, to make them more attractive.

Why, that is the hardest part of development. Ask the developers of StarCraft.

I'd like to see half cost vassals as a feature for feudal monarchy, possibly some other forms of government. Because tradeoffs are more interesting.

I say vassals should be worth less diplo relation slots in general to make them worth having at all, but feudal monarchies could definitely have them take up even less slots. That is a good idea.

Some people clicked the "respectfully disagree" button. I wish they'd say what is wrong with the idea. Maybe they have some suggestions. Then again, if they had any they'd have probably given them by now.

 

[JohnMK]

The diplomatic relations concept and implementation could really use more nuance.

 

[IHateThisCo]

Why, that is the hardest part of development. Ask the developers of StarCraft.


I say vassals should be worth less diplo relation slots in general to make them worth having at all, but feudal monarchies could definitely have them take up even less slots. That is a good idea.

Some people clicked the "respectfully disagree" button. I wish they'd say what is wrong with the idea. Maybe they have some suggestions. Then again, if they had any they'd have probably given them by now.

After your post, I went back just to click the disagree button.

Your suggestion does not take into account at all the benefits of vassals over an ally. Vassals cannot separate peace out of a war. Cannot refuse to join in your wars. When you give a vassal territory, it still benefits you. Vassals can be annexed, adding to your empire using dip points instead of admin. A vassal can be created out of your territory to drop you down from 150% OE, and you don't have to reconquer it.

I just fed a vassal all of the British Isles. Ulm is an OPM. Which one is worth a full diplomatic relations slot? I don't care that Ulm gets the independent nation bonuses. 200+ accepted culture/right religion provinces is more.

Before you start getting snarky with people for disagreeing with you, perhaps actually develop your post with enough information so that it is something worth agreeing with.

 

[OldmansHQ]

After your post, I went back just to click the disagree button.

Your suggestion does not take into account at all the benefits of vassals over an ally. Vassals cannot separate peace out of a war. Cannot refuse to join in your wars. When you give a vassal territory, it still benefits you. Vassals can be annexed, adding to your empire using dip points instead of admin. A vassal can be created out of your territory to drop you down from 150% OE, and you don't have to reconquer it.

I just fed a vassal all of the British Isles. Ulm is an OPM. Which one is worth a full diplomatic relations slot? I don't care that Ulm gets the independent nation bonuses. 200+ accepted culture/right religion provinces is more.

Before you start getting snarky with people for disagreeing with you, perhaps actually develop your post with enough information so that it is something worth agreeing with.

You went out of your way to dislike the idea because you didn't like me inquiring the reason behind others disliking it? That's neither nice nor smart.

Vassals are worth it only if you intend to Annex them or cheat with overseas coring, which is not good enough. For all the reasons that you gave against the idea, such as vassals can not peace out on you, there are reasons for, such as subject nations have a base FL of 2 and NL of 4,whereas independent nations have literally three times the amount. Same with income. A subject nation cannot grow as fast as an independent one, because it shares warscore with its overlord. Did you forget about liberty desire and problems it can cause? Allies don't have that. There are many, many reasons why vassal should be worth less diplo relations than an ally. Even the fact that they cannot refuse to join wars, because they are not independent is in and of itself a valid reason.

That said my apparently snarky attitude did work, because your answer made the idea evolve in my mind. How can a giant vassal be worth less relations than some minor pushover? As such, what comes to mind is something along the lines of diplo relation cost based on compared number of provinces, development, FL and NL and of course income. It would always be capped at 1. This way the difference in base income and army size of an independent and subject nations would be taken into account.

In other words: a diplomatic relation would be worth as much as the nation in question. Though I still say that base cost of a subject should be lower than that of an independent nation.

 

[Quaade]

Well as promised, I will leave my remarks here instead but stil find it hillarious how you advertised your own post, but I will support the effort, am also a regular under suggestions anyway ;-)

I can tell that this has evolved a bit into scaled relations, which could be a great idea if it also applied to allies aswell, having two smaller allies at the size of one huge could cost the same essentially. But then there´s the issue with representation, how do you show the values and if you have too many 0.3 and .5 it suddenly gets very difficult to get an overview. This I do have a solution for anyway later...

The second is, vassals compared to allies are already in many cases thought better to have in most situations, since they give you income, follows your every war, cannot drag you into any war nor make their own wars so thay can´t aid you in yours (something I want to change, please look at my long suggestions ), so having two vassals for the price of one ally, will beat the setup every day since you get more money than from the ally, you get the same or more troops that stands by till you go to war... Basically you get more for 1 than you get the hassle, and this should be a strategical decision, should take a vassal or an ally, what to do with this slot...

However, scaled relations might be able to work in general and could make sense and make diplomacy more fluid and sensible... Actually got the idea from you guys and when I thought of the new way they changed spy-network... Change diplomatic relations to a score of, say 100 since they use that number a lot of times anyway... An even sized nation would, with alliance and marriage cost 25 relations. So dividing the numbers could be, the alliance cost 15 and marriage cost 10, access could cost 10 too... So instead of having 1 slot to get ALL the diplomatic relations with one nation, transfer trade power, access, marriage, guarantee... they all cost relations.

Basically you could decide to have only access and no allies, you could make diplomatic agreements where you spend you last 10 relations on getting a transfer trade power instead of having to spend a whole slot for it and at times also a dip point every month. This would also strengthen trade wars, since trade power would still cost you relations, but it might not be enough to get you over your limit, so if done wisely you could get trade power from a few nations while sacrificing a few marriages, perhaps because one of your allies is a republic so you use the "marriage" relations to get it somewhere else instead of just spending a slot for it.

Now to scaled, having a larger nation being your ally should really cost you more than having a smaller. So by scaling it slightly to increase or decrease would have you choose between two or one ally, and in the events that you can´t ally any big nation you are still able to get the same result from allying more smaller nations instead which could balance out against larger nations.

Basically it doesn´t make sense to me, that you can spend one slot to get all diplomatic actions with one nation, while diplomacy was often more fluid than that and deals were often made with other nations which could be represented with such a system. And really, at times I wish I could make a marriage or get access through a nation without instantly losing a dip point, which you could do with such a system if you had some spare points. And with regards to republics, you basically lose a slot for a marriage, which could be circumvented by using this system since you just make the marriage anywhere.

Perhaps the cost on their own should be increased, but with every diplomatic action you have it could have a discount... Like alliance cost 20 and marriage cost 15 on their own, but when you have one of them a discount of 10 relations is given, to prevent too much exploiting and promoting to gather relations in one place and to represent how your previous diplomatic actions have gotten you closer. Marriages, trade agreements and such could be vital at screwing up the war-scene, since they could prevent someone from entering a war against you.

That´s my take on it, as promised I´ve posted on this

 

[Dutchman251]

What about the very simple solution to scale alliances and vassals by government rank? That would make calculations comparable and simple

 

[grommile]

In other words: a diplomatic relation would be worth as much as the nation in question. Though I still say that base cost of a subject should be lower than that of an independent nation.

Generally speaking, I would rather have a vassal than two allies each of the same size as the vassal, unless I am in a truly desperate situation.

 

[Dutchman251]

Just vassalize those allies in that case

 

[OldmansHQ]

Well as promised, I will leave my remarks here instead but stil find it hillarious how you advertised your own post, but I will support the effort, am also a regular under suggestions anyway ;-)

I can tell that this has evolved a bit into scaled relations, which could be a great idea if it also applied to allies aswell, having two smaller allies at the size of one huge could cost the same essentially. But then there´s the issue with representation, how do you show the values and if you have too many 0.3 and .5 it suddenly gets very difficult to get an overview. This I do have a solution for anyway later...

The second is, vassals compared to allies are already in many cases thought better to have in most situations, since they give you income, follows your every war, cannot drag you into any war nor make their own wars so thay can´t aid you in yours (something I want to change, please look at my long suggestions ), so having two vassals for the price of one ally, will beat the setup every day since you get more money than from the ally, you get the same or more troops that stands by till you go to war... Basically you get more for 1 than you get the hassle, and this should be a strategical decision, should take a vassal or an ally, what to do with this slot...

However, scaled relations might be able to work in general and could make sense and make diplomacy more fluid and sensible... Actually got the idea from you guys and when I thought of the new way they changed spy-network... Change diplomatic relations to a score of, say 100 since they use that number a lot of times anyway... An even sized nation would, with alliance and marriage cost 25 relations. So dividing the numbers could be, the alliance cost 15 and marriage cost 10, access could cost 10 too... So instead of having 1 slot to get ALL the diplomatic relations with one nation, transfer trade power, access, marriage, guarantee... they all cost relations.

Basically you could decide to have only access and no allies, you could make diplomatic agreements where you spend you last 10 relations on getting a transfer trade power instead of having to spend a whole slot for it and at times also a dip point every month. This would also strengthen trade wars, since trade power would still cost you relations, but it might not be enough to get you over your limit, so if done wisely you could get trade power from a few nations while sacrificing a few marriages, perhaps because one of your allies is a republic so you use the "marriage" relations to get it somewhere else instead of just spending a slot for it.

Now to scaled, having a larger nation being your ally should really cost you more than having a smaller. So by scaling it slightly to increase or decrease would have you choose between two or one ally, and in the events that you can´t ally any big nation you are still able to get the same result from allying more smaller nations instead which could balance out against larger nations.

Basically it doesn´t make sense to me, that you can spend one slot to get all diplomatic actions with one nation, while diplomacy was often more fluid than that and deals were often made with other nations which could be represented with such a system. And really, at times I wish I could make a marriage or get access through a nation without instantly losing a dip point, which you could do with such a system if you had some spare points. And with regards to republics, you basically lose a slot for a marriage, which could be circumvented by using this system since you just make the marriage anywhere.

Perhaps the cost on their own should be increased, but with every diplomatic action you have it could have a discount... Like alliance cost 20 and marriage cost 15 on their own, but when you have one of them a discount of 10 relations is given, to prevent too much exploiting and promoting to gather relations in one place and to represent how your previous diplomatic actions have gotten you closer. Marriages, trade agreements and such could be vital at screwing up the war-scene, since they could prevent someone from entering a war against you.

That´s my take on it, as promised I´ve posted on this

Thanks.

I don't think that one decimal makes it so much more complicated. As you later proposed we could change it to integers, make it something like "26/40 Diplomatic Relations" at the start of the game, "34/52 Diplomatic Relations" with some modifiers. Where the first value is how much your current relations are worth, and second one indicating the limit, before you start losing diplo mana for exceeding it, and additional loss for every 10 over the limit.

The money vassals give is laughable. As I already said it here, there are ups and downs of vassals and allies alike. At the end of the day, the relation cost based on compared development and so on would be the most fair way of deciding who's worth more. I do agree that how you use that relation slot should be a decision, I think it already it, but I wish there was more incentive to keep vassals apart from diplo annexing them.

What you are suggesting half way through, with the example of transferring trade power is EXACTLY the same what I am suggesting. Again, the only difference is between the use of decimals and integers which is only a superficial difference.

Speaking of comparing the worth of a relation. What I initially I had in mind is that the nations bound diplo relation compare the worth of the relation between each other, so for example: For France the cost of alliance with Navarra could be 0.3, but for Navarra the alliance with France could cost a full 1.0. This has its problems though, Navarra would have to exceed one diplo slot to ally and marry France, and France could have a bazillion of these tiny allies... But would they want to have a bazillion of tiny allies rather than few powerful ones? Wouldn't that still be fair? This would certainly add another layer of depth to the decision as to who to ally. How else could the comparison be done?

I do like the idea of marriage / alliance / open borders with one nation costing separately, but at a discount with more of those stacked together. That's a neat idea.

What about the very simple solution to scale alliances and vassals by government rank? That would make calculations comparable and simple

I don't like the idea. That would be so inflexible that we might as well leave it the way it is now. And what about protectorates, trade power transfer and so on? I also don't think that compared development, FL and the like would make it so much more complicated. We wouldn't need to know exactly how much diplo-relation-slot-use is increased by development, computer would calculate all of it, and it could be rounded to one decimal. I do however believe that the details should be displayed in a tooltip.

 

[Quaade]

I don't think that one decimal makes it so much more complicated. As you later proposed we could change it to integers, make it something like "26/40 Diplomatic Relations" at the start of the game, "34/52 Diplomatic Relations" with some modifiers. Where the first value is how much your current relations are worth, and second one indicating the limit, before you start losing diplo mana for exceeding it, and additional loss for every 10 over the limit.

just think it would be more appealing to the eye rather than having a decimal... I for one remember the long post about adding the K to units and using decimals ;-)

The money vassals give is laughable. As I already said it here, there are ups and downs of vassals and allies alike. At the end of the day, the relation cost based on compared development and so on would be the most fair way of deciding who's worth more. I do agree that how you use that relation slot should be a decision, I think it already it, but I wish there was more incentive to keep vassals apart from diplo annexing them.

They still grant more than allies in terms of money ;-) Though I would appreciate if allies would grant money to you when they can´t aid in the war in other ways.

What you are suggesting half way through, with the example of transferring trade power is EXACTLY the same what I am suggesting. Again, the only difference is between the use of decimals and integers which is only a superficial difference.

Didn´t catch that point, sry... But yeah, it would make it more strategic and never use this option unless I already use the slot for alliance... To me it´s always more worth having an ally or vassal than transfer trade, which really nerfs the use of a mechanic that was more common than one would suspect.

Speaking of comparing the worth of a relation. What I initially I had in mind is that the nations bound diplo relation compare the worth of the relation between each other, so for example: For France the cost of alliance with Navarra could be 0.3, but for Navarra the alliance with France could cost a full 1.0. This has its problems though, Navarra would have to exceed one diplo slot to ally and marry France, and France could have a bazillion of these tiny allies... But would they want to have a bazillion of tiny allies rather than few powerful ones? Wouldn't that still be fair? This would certainly add another layer of depth to the decision as to who to ally. How else could the comparison be done?

Didn´t think of that, but yes... That would be the conclusion, of course France would have to pay less than Navarra for the alliance... It should however be scaled due to the independent nation bonuses, so you still have a sligth more advantage for having a larger ally than two smaller. Of course, having two smaller with same army and capalities should be roughly the same but then again... Having marriages and other diplomatic actions with two nations could also swiftly take up most your relations anyway, so perhaps it could be balanced well enough on it´s own...

I do like the idea of marriage / alliance / open borders with one nation costing separately, but at a discount with more of those stacked together. That's a neat idea.

yeah, I´m full of neat ideas... That one came half-way through... Since I dislike exploiting it so you could basically have a republic AND a marriage elsewhere for the same price of having it with one... So giving discount made sense as to gather your relations, which also makes sense since you already have relations with the party anyway making it easier to enter an agreement... I mean, marriage and alliance usually goes along and isn´t that far from each other, and while we are married and allied, we could just as easily have this trade agreement where we will benefit each other... and your troops... We are friends, just pass them through

I don't like the idea. That would be so inflexible that we might as well leave it the way it is now. And what about protectorates, trade power transfer and so on? I also don't think that compared development, FL and the like would make it so much more complicated. We wouldn't need to know exactly how much diplo-relation-slot-use is increased by development, computer would calculate all of it, and it could be rounded to one decimal. I do however believe that the details should be displayed in a tooltip.

A agree, also there is a huge difference between duke, kings and emperors in terms of development so it would quickly scale badly

 

[Philadelphus]

Well, I'd be all for it, because my experience is that vassals > allies 95% of the time, and I would absolutely love to have a my own personal swarm of loyal attack countries to swarm anyone who attacks me.

But seriously, I do like the idea of making diplomatic relations more modular even if the exact numbers would need balancing. I also like @Soulburger's idea of a relationship point pool just to keep the mental arithmetic simpler. With such a system you could do things like have certain governments or countries give discounts to particular types of relationships (like, say, Feudal Monarchy gives a discount to vassals and marches, Austria could get a discount to royal marriages rather than a straight +2 diplo relations, that sort of thing).

Scaling with the size of the country is also an intriguing idea; why should half-of-Europe-France and OPM-Albania require the same diplomatic resources to deal with? 1.16 made it harder to get alliances with countries much bigger than you, but a system like this could introduce an element of self-balancing; you can either have France or four smaller countries as allies instead of France and thre smaller countries. Definitely an interesting idea!