Releasing Vassals: A bum deal?

[unmerged(16501)]

When one country gets to powerful rather than going WC on its ass myeslf I tend to demand a province which I know I can release as a vassal.

Now you'd think that there were to be some kind of reward to freeing minors but instead I have found it to be a bum deal. When you release a vassal the vassal gets your tech levels. Even if you only hold it for one day after the peace resolution and then release it, the vassal will have your techs. If you have an advantage in tech, the newly created vassal will give all your enemies a neighbour bonus, thus helping your enemies!

Suggestion: Instead of gaining your fulls techs a voulenterily released vassal will get:

your land tech -3
your naval tech -3
your trade -1
your infra -1

What do you all think?

 

[unmerged(20077)]

There's something to be said for reducing the technology of a released vassal - and perhaps its knowledge of the world map early in the game - if it's tech group is lower than yours, maybe by -3/-1 per group... so if England releases Creek as a vassal, the Creek would get 12 lower naval and land and 4 lower infra and trade.
On the other hand releasing an advanced vassal to run amok among its primitive neighbours can be fun - as France in the 1700s I captured Egypt from the OE and released it as a vassal with something like Land Tech 48. They walked all over Nubia which was still Land Tech 9 and crushed anyone who tried to stop them.

 

[MattyG]

As much as the vassal-release system is currently oversimplified, I think that your suggestions might be more of the same: a simplistic solution that would be genuinely appropruate in very very few circumstances.

a. It would still make no sense in the case of pagans (capture all their provinces, then one month later release the capital as a vassal - boom, higher techs then they had a month ago.)

b. Capture a German minor with higher techs than you had, release them as a vassal one months= later - boom, their culture has suddenly fallen from a trade tech ahead to a trade tech behind???

I'd rather it stay as is, then for Johan start minor tinkering that effectively swaps one unbalanced system for another. It should instead receive the attention it deserves and be an approach that takes into account the initial tech levels, the culture type, distance from the capital, length of time as part of the conquering nation and a few minor random rolls of the dice.

 

[unmerged(10894)]

This is where CK's system is better, since techs are done per province, not per nation.