Feeding vassals and then annexing them is an absurd, gamey and ahistoric mechanic which needs to be vastly reduced in effectiveness and replaced by something else. Preferably something normal, like beating people in a war and taking their stuff.
FWIW, I think AE, OE and Coalitions are good mechanics which simply need to be adjusted, and probably not by that much. However, right now, conquering a half dozen rich provinces will get you damned to hell for all eternity by every neighbor and probably by many who are further away. Plus Mali. Mali will join the coalition against you simply because they are inconvenient for you to get to. On the other hand, forcing those exact same provinces into the hands of one or more vassals produces a shrug from everyone nearby if not an "aww, how cute, now everything's right with the world!" Ten years later, tops, you annex the vassal with these same provinces and not only do you not pay an Aggressive Expansion penalty, you have no OverExtension since your vassal paid the Admin points to core the provinces. The only difficulty in this tactic is disappearing cores and trouble finding the right countries to be your vassals. In the end, pursuing this strategy has less to do with conquest than it does with knowing a series of otherwise inconsequential nations and their holdings.
The Devs should come up with a new Ad Campaign based on this tactic. "Play EUIV, Conquer the World!*
* - conquering the world means finding small nations with many cores, vassalizing or releasing these small nations, then attacking other nations with the sole purpose of forcing these other nations to transfer provinces to your vassals which you will later annex. Bet you never did that in Civ V or TW:Rome2! Hah! A Paradox Exclusive!"
Why does the game make it difficult to expand by seizing land from your enemies in war, and easy to do exactly the same thing with a couple meaningless intermediate steps? It's like replacing the old Assassinate button from CK2 with a "here, try my soup" button that has the same results but absolutely no consequences (damn, now I want that)('cause, you know, people don't realize your vassal is just you and they don't realize the soup was poisoned).
I'm not blaming people who do this. When the game closes the doors and opens a window, people use the window. That's how things work. If the Devs designed the game so that the best way to expand is to make sure your ruler's name had six letters, people would work out fantastic ways to get such a ruler, convert to the right culture group etc. If you rewarded losing wars, people would lose wars. A game needs to reward sensible behavior or at least make the most rewarding behavior something which isn't ridiculous. Maybe it's just me, but the process of feeding vassals strikes me as a ridiculous way to play a historical grand-strategy wargame. Again, people make this work,it's the system that says "here's the best way to grow" that's bad, not the people who use the mechanics that they're given.
Nor am I saying that expansion should be made just as difficult as it is now after Vassal Feeding Frenzy gets nerfed. IMHO real expansion should be possible, it needs to be redirected to a different and better mechanic. One that feels more like playing a strategy wargame and less like being a rules lawyer in MTG.
FWIW, I think AE, OE and Coalitions are good mechanics which simply need to be adjusted, and probably not by that much. However, right now, conquering a half dozen rich provinces will get you damned to hell for all eternity by every neighbor and probably by many who are further away. Plus Mali. Mali will join the coalition against you simply because they are inconvenient for you to get to. On the other hand, forcing those exact same provinces into the hands of one or more vassals produces a shrug from everyone nearby if not an "aww, how cute, now everything's right with the world!" Ten years later, tops, you annex the vassal with these same provinces and not only do you not pay an Aggressive Expansion penalty, you have no OverExtension since your vassal paid the Admin points to core the provinces. The only difficulty in this tactic is disappearing cores and trouble finding the right countries to be your vassals. In the end, pursuing this strategy has less to do with conquest than it does with knowing a series of otherwise inconsequential nations and their holdings.
The Devs should come up with a new Ad Campaign based on this tactic. "Play EUIV, Conquer the World!*
* - conquering the world means finding small nations with many cores, vassalizing or releasing these small nations, then attacking other nations with the sole purpose of forcing these other nations to transfer provinces to your vassals which you will later annex. Bet you never did that in Civ V or TW:Rome2! Hah! A Paradox Exclusive!"
Why does the game make it difficult to expand by seizing land from your enemies in war, and easy to do exactly the same thing with a couple meaningless intermediate steps? It's like replacing the old Assassinate button from CK2 with a "here, try my soup" button that has the same results but absolutely no consequences (damn, now I want that)('cause, you know, people don't realize your vassal is just you and they don't realize the soup was poisoned).
I'm not blaming people who do this. When the game closes the doors and opens a window, people use the window. That's how things work. If the Devs designed the game so that the best way to expand is to make sure your ruler's name had six letters, people would work out fantastic ways to get such a ruler, convert to the right culture group etc. If you rewarded losing wars, people would lose wars. A game needs to reward sensible behavior or at least make the most rewarding behavior something which isn't ridiculous. Maybe it's just me, but the process of feeding vassals strikes me as a ridiculous way to play a historical grand-strategy wargame. Again, people make this work,it's the system that says "here's the best way to grow" that's bad, not the people who use the mechanics that they're given.
Nor am I saying that expansion should be made just as difficult as it is now after Vassal Feeding Frenzy gets nerfed. IMHO real expansion should be possible, it needs to be redirected to a different and better mechanic. One that feels more like playing a strategy wargame and less like being a rules lawyer in MTG.
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