Overlord: initial impressions

[HFY]

I'd like it if Integration acceptance was based on aspects like:

- Does your empire offer our founder species an equivalent or higher standard of living?

- If our empire is Xenophile, does your empire offer an equivalent or higher standard of living for all our citizens?

- Do your Ethics match our own? -- a Materialist subject should fear integration by a Spiritualist overlord, but a couple of Egalitarians might not mind as much.

- Do your Civics oppose our own? (e.g. Agrarian Idyll vs. Anglers, or Shared Burdens vs. Technocracy) -- this means changes which would cause some upheaval as the integration changed their way of life, even if it's not visible to the player.

 

[PedroLuiz]

There should be a way to push demands through or at least more negotiating room for the overlord in the first contract negotiation after a subjugation war.

it isn't explained on the UI but you can out-influence your vassal and make them accept whatever you want

 

[Silens]

it isn't explained on the UI but you can out-influence your vassal and make them accept whatever you want

Well, from the other thread, to quote myself:

Doesn't exactly work, since the AI can just not accept the changes when not having enough influence to decline. They can simply wait for auto-decline.

Tested it out with a vassal of mine, drained his influence via console command, maxed out on mine and proposed something for 985 influence. The proposal just sat there, I checked to make sure, until it declined by default. Didn't cost the vassal one single influence to do it, as I checked again to make sure.

 

[zZander56]

This patch adds a lot of fun stuff, but is unfortunately being held back by a few serious bugs (e.g. subject contract acceptance weights) and a few poor design decions (e.g. Defense Privatization makes Mercenaries unusable for everyone, despite pushing a reliance on them.)

I've been having fun with it, but this is far from what I expect will be the true experience. I would wait for a bugfixing patch or two before buying. Low sales should reflect low polish.

 

[BrokenSky]

Alright, some suggestions:

• Vassalisation should have some sort of inherent "tithe". Perhaps a 5% Unity tithe? Currently, you can have a situation where an empire is a "Subject", but all it means is that the Overlord will come to their defense if attacked. That's not subjugation, that's Guarantee Independence. Vassalisation is supposed to be about unequal power relations, so there should be some sort of inherent benefit for the Overlord and "payment" from the subject. I would suggest a new set of terms, called something like "Obligation", which would have options like: "Nominal", "Devolved / Semi-Independent", "Puppet", simulating the level of control the Overlord has over the Vassal's internal operation. This would maybe be a scaling Unity tithe.
• Relative power should have a much bigger effect on Loyalty, unless the deal is good enough to balance it. If you're significantly Subsidising someone with a Superior economy, for example, they might not care so much and be quite happy with the situation. Likewise, an Equivalent empire might be happy with giving you a tithe if you agree to come to their defence and they don't have to come to yours, but ONLY IF THEY FEEL THREATENED. If they have no nearby rivals or threats, they shouldn't care as much about you offering to join defensive wars.
• Loyalty should decay towards a baseline, and the baseline should be harder to increase. A Vassal you've had for 3 years shouldn't be able to hit max Loyalty and stay there. Maybe if you've had a Vassal with a good contract and good relations for 50 years, they might have consistently high Loyalty that stays high. The further from the baseline, the quicker the decay / increase (like CK3's Court Grandeur). Things that should affect Baseline are: ethics compatibility, opinion, the favourability of their vassal contract, the length of time they've been a vassal, relative power (including combined relative power with other vassals).
• When modifying a Vassal contract, there should be a way to push through changes, probably by spending more Influence. The more they hate the change, the more Influence you should have to spend, and the more Influence they will have to counter with in order to block the change. Optionally, at a threshold, there should be a chance that they straight up refuse the changes, which should trigger an immediate rebellion / subjugation war.
  • A potential addition here would be the ability for Vassals to form "factions", like CK3, but I imagine that's probably a bit too big of a change. I'm thinking of two possibilities: 1) the AI could swear secret fealty to another one of your vassals. If a war triggers, they join the rebelling vassal and if that vassal wins the war, they become the new Overlord (I think at the moment they can only swear secret fealty to another, independent empire). 2) a sort of "independence faction", where the AI have a secret agreement that if one rebels, they'll all rebel, and if they win, they all get independence.

I'd argue that being above the baseline should also raise the baseline over time (so if you can keep a vassal happy for a long time, they're more inclined to stay happy). Alternatively, trust could be a significant factor in loyalty baseline.

They should probably also have another look at vassal willingness to pay tribute. 15% and 15% basic and advanced should not be worse than 75% of all of either one.
That said, relative power should factor a lot more in vassal term willingness. An empire of strong vassals with a weak overlord should totally be a thing you can have (Space HRE?) but in those situations, it might well be the subjects with the stronger arms to dictate terms.

Additionally, it would be good to give Megacorps more flexibility - either by allowing subsidiaries to give resources (or trade lump sum "Investments", even when the resource is being taxed), or allowing Megacorps to run protectorates or some other subject type (some kind of variant protectorates, perhaps - pay research subsidies but gain a large chunk of advanced resource production, with the ability to build extractors you have the tech for in their space even if they don't have the tech). Alternatively, removing the "50% tech needed" requirement for specialist types.

Additionally, I feel like holdings should have a lower intrinsic cost, and the majority of the loyalty effect should come from the building itself - it feels kinda strange that an Aid agency can end up costing loyalty because the +0.5 it gives doesn't cancel the -1 from the slot. It might also be nice if these gave additional bonuses for vassals suffering resource deficits (as can happen with uplifted low-tech primitives without populations or infrastructure).

 

[PedroLuiz]

Well, from the other thread, to quote myself:

Doesn't exactly work, since the AI can just not accept the changes when not having enough influence to decline. They can simply wait for auto-decline.

Tested it out with a vassal of mine, drained his influence via console command, maxed out on mine and proposed something for 985 influence. The proposal just sat there, I checked to make sure, until it declined by default. Didn't cost the vassal one single influence to do it, as I checked again to make sure.

well, it worked once for me and then didn't work the other time
what a buggy mess