Does oppressive rule allow for vassals to stay loyal through fear? If I allow them no freedom to diplomacy at all, will it work out for me? will it workaround the broken stuff?
Tarkin Doctrine- a workaround for broken vassal war mechanics?
- Thread starter ZeeHero
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The bugs with war seem to be due to vassals making defence pacts and guaranteeing independence. If they have no political autonomy they shouldn’t be able to do this.
As for ruling through fear: it’s not really something you can do. You can’t threaten or get punitive CBs. Loyalty is all about diplomacy; better deals, holdings, and picking the right traditions/perks.
As for ruling through fear: it’s not really something you can do. You can’t threaten or get punitive CBs. Loyalty is all about diplomacy; better deals, holdings, and picking the right traditions/perks.
It should be something you can do. less effectively though. How can I keep a vassal happy as xenophobic assholes? without giving them any freedom?
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No point paying subsidy if they don't do something worth the cost for me. and currently prospectorums are not a thing as its hardwired to always say no.
you don't. would you be happy living under the rule of said xenophobic jerk?
you could deter rebellion with overwhelming force, but deterrence isn't loyalty.
Yeah sure it doesn't work forever you need some kind of carrot. but right now, giving vassals any freedom = game breaking issues.
To be fair, the loyalty-boosting holdings often have an authoritarian vibe to them, and the vassal does take relative strength into account (except in the cases where it is bugged). You just can't explicitly threaten the vassal, as you say.
Historically you could argue that while pure intimidation works for extracting tribute, more complex vassalage relationships have generally involved a great deal of co-optation of the local elites. This can be through benefits to the elites that only a powerful outside patron can grant, but on the negative side, basically the vassal gets into a situation where he's not too popular in his own country and relies on the liege for support, and hence is bound to the liege. For instance a big part of the reason Yugoslavia could break away from the USSR in the Cold War, but the Warsaw Pact regimes couldn't, was that it was a genuinely indigenous government, as opposed to the Polish, Hungarian, East German etc governments that were effectively installed by the Soviets based on factions with little popular support before or during WW2 (e.g. the Polish People's Republic couldn't claim much legitimacy from the Polish Resistance, because the former had mostly killed off/imprisoned surviving members of the latter).
No idea how you model this sort of interaction between within-empire politics and between-empire politics in Stellaris, though; at a minimum it would require some notion of government legitimacy at an empire level, which we don't really have. It would also mean Gestalts are quite difficult to subjugate, which I think makes sense: it's much easier to overthrow an oppressive overlord if you don't have to worry about pro-overlord interests within your own empire.
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I think the closest thing right now is a vassal with ethics that match the overlord, but contrast with the actual population, meaning increased loyalty of the subject but also increased risk of rebellion.
Yes, and this seems to be the subtext behind "liberation" wars, although it doesn't result in a subject: if you create a breakaway state with a status quo, it has extremely good relations with the "liberator". (I suppose there are cases where it's a genuine liberation of the populace, e.g. you force Egalitarian Xenophile Democracy on an empire where most pops were enslaved xenos, but it's not the norm.) The danger is if you take it too far (e.g. by letting you do a combined "liberation"/subjugation war), it becomes too easy to exploit as a way to create very loyal vassals.
If you don't impose a government on the vassal, it's unlikely it will have mismatched ethics between government and pops, so I suppose this is largely moot. (The AI likes to shift its government ethics in line with the pops; perhaps this should be banned for subjects if moving away from their overlord's ethics.)
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Are there any penalties to having low loyalty beyond making it possible they'll try to declare war to become free? If not, then there's no reason loyalty needs to be affected by fear. Vassals can only break free via war, and if you're overwhelmingly powerful, they're never going to declare war because they're afraid you'll just crush them. The only exception is if they find another potential patron who can match you. Even then, if you have Tarkin doctrine levels of power, there shouldn't be any other powers in the galaxy that could support your vassals.
Fear keeps them in line by preventing them from declaring war and thus, keeping them as a vassal regardless of loyalty.
Fear keeps them in line by preventing them from declaring war and thus, keeping them as a vassal regardless of loyalty.