Has there been some changes to federations recently (in the last half year or so)?
I just joined a 3 member federation with my 6 subjects, and totally used my superior voting power to kick out the original members and usurped the federation for myself could not help but notice that the original members were highly unpopular with my subjects and were quickly persuaded to leave.
A few months later, another empire offered me federation association. I first thought that I had misread and the empire wanted associate membership, but it was actually me who would be the associate. My federation apparently had disbanded when I wasn't looking.
Is this intended? The strategy worked well before, but I see how it could be considered totally somewhat gamey, so I can see why it might have been patched out.
TLDR: Do federations which only consist of one independent empire and all its vassals automatically disband now?
Edit: Nevermind, I've figured it out. I also changed federation types, and all types other than hegemony now don't include subjects by default. So when I switched types, I unintentionally kicked all of my subjects, leaving me as the sole federation member which caused the federation to disband.