The diplo game and legitimacy

[unmerged(177849)]

I already play a pretty diplomacy/vassal oriented game, i.e., a lot of vassals and annexations. But I'm thinking that when I play a nation without a coring bonus I probably will need to play an even more vassal oriented game.

I know many of the power players play that sort of game. I'm not really looking for a "how to," as I already use most of those tactics myself. My biggest question is this - if one is really maxing out that strategy, you'll need to be annexing vassals at a very high rate. How do people deal with the legitimacy hits? Obviously Catholics have the curia, but even there you're probably only generating a couple of points of legitimacy a year, which averages out to one annexation every 4 or 5 years, much too slow. (Yes, heirs with a strong claim reset it to 100% so it's probably a bit faster than that). Non Catholics are even more crippled. (edit - well, except for Sunni monarchs. Embarrassingly enough, I think I've missed getting this in the past. AND constitutional monarchy. Guess I should have looked at the wiki first. )

A subsidiary question is how to deal with the negatives to vassal relations. If you're annexing (say) 5 vassals every 10 years, that's a TON of malus. Obviously max out on better relations over time helps, but are there other tricks? And I assume you take a statesman, which means no diplomat advisor to help with better relations over time.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You just eat the legitimacy hits and it changes on ruler death regardless.

As for the +190, you want a rotating schedule. # diplomats really helps there, because you can concurrently annex 3 nations while improving relations in others, then start annexation before the others finish, then improve relations again, in a big chain.

Balancing that against your expansion rate and feeding is all part of the plan in that regard.

 

[AnonHobo]

I already play a pretty diplomacy/vassal oriented game, i.e., a lot of vassals and annexations. But I'm thinking that when I play a nation without a coring bonus I probably will need to play an even more vassal oriented game.

I know many of the power players play that sort of game. I'm not really looking for a "how to," as I already use most of those tactics myself. My biggest question is this - if one is really maxing out that strategy, you'll need to be annexing vassals at a very high rate. How do people deal with the legitimacy hits? Obviously Catholics have the curia, but even there you're probably only generating a couple of points of legitimacy a year, which averages out to one annexation every 4 or 5 years, much too slow. (Yes, heirs with a strong claim reset it to 100% so it's probably a bit faster than that). Non Catholics are even more crippled. (edit - well, except for Sunni monarchs. Embarrassingly enough, I think I've missed getting this in the past. AND constitutional monarchy. Guess I should have looked at the wiki first. )

A subsidiary question is how to deal with the negatives to vassal relations. If you're annexing (say) 5 vassals every 10 years, that's a TON of malus. Obviously max out on better relations over time helps, but are there other tricks? And I assume you take a statesman, which means no diplomat advisor to help with better relations over time.

It's all in the timing and deciding which vassals to annex and keep around. For example, you can keep vassals with the +200 from returning cores around longer versus those who you have to annex quickly because if you annex too many others prior to them, then you get stuck with them due to the annexed vassal malus.

 

[unmerged(177849)]

Thanks guys.

Not that it is a challenge, but thinking about France. I've actually never played France (well, except for a few decades right after I go the game & didn't really know what I was doing). If I do, I need to decide whether to also go for HRE. I suppose that would be optimal, but I've done the HRE/revoke the privlegia thing in 3 of my last 7 games, so I'm a little sick of it.

Of course I am also thinking of a Portugal or a Malaysia game. And yes, I do have a life beyond EU4 - I just can't seem to stick with a country past roughly 1620.

 

[unmerged(177849)]

Somewhat OT - but on the issue of the more extreme versions of the vassal game ...

I thought this was the case, but didn't want to say anything until I tested it - isn't the problem with the more extreme versions of the strategy the fact that forcing a nation to release other nations, or to return cores, eliminates the releasing/returning nation's cores? So the "dismantle, vasaslize and feed back" strategy is limited mostly to situations where you can take the provinces & sit on the resulting OE until you can vassalize & feed. Obviously that is problematic in two respects - one, for the more enticing targets, it is going to mean sitting on a ton of OE for a long time (absent the truce breaking/assault strategy some have advocated), AND it means you're still going to take on a ton of AE.

(Edit - for returning cores to other nations, which you will then eventually feed back to the target nation, I guess you could take it yourself and sell it back to the original nation - but that's a small part of the problem, there's no way to deal with the released nation issue. Of course you could annex and release, but then you just end up with another vassal, and there is a limit to just how far over the DR limit you can go.)

Tested this specifically with Ayutthaya in my Moghuls game. I can force them to release 3 nations and return 2 cores (over 2 or 3 wars), at which time they will be ripe for vassalization, or nearly so, but if they lose all their other cores I will not have really accomplished much. Basically, the only way that I can absorb Ayutthaya with little or no coring is to end up with three vassals. And that does not seem like a very efficient use of my DR slots. (Contrast that to three vassals to allow free coring all of China, admittedly an extreme example.)

Or am I missing something? Obviously as discussed before, more conventional vassal strategies still allow coring to be minimized, but the "dismantle, vassalize and feed" strategy seems flawed, at least under the current version of the game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Or am I missing something? Obviously as discussed before, more conventional vassal strategies still allow coring to be minimized, but the "dismantle, vassalize and feed" strategy seems flawed, at least under the current version of the game.

"Vassal won't buy a province unless it is a core, claim, or was previously owned"

Of course, you'll have to take AE for ceding the land and then selling it to Ayuthaya to rebuild them, but if they owned the province previously, they'll buy.

 

[unmerged(177849)]

"Vassal won't buy a province unless it is a core, claim, or was previously owned"

Of course, you'll have to take AE for ceding the land and then selling it to Ayuthaya to rebuild them, but if they owned the province previously, they'll buy.

Oh, right. But that's very much a partial solution because of OE for the vassal - they'll just take one province at a time. So in my example, I would probably be looking at about a century - okay, maybe nor quite THAT long, but decades - of slowly feeding Ayuthaya back its (former) cores. And obviously if we talking about a larger nation such as the Ottomans, the problem gets worse.

So I still fail to see how the more extreme version of the strategy is viable.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh, right. But that's very much a partial solution because of OE for the vassal - they'll just take one province at a time. So in my example, I would probably be looking at about a century - okay, maybe nor quite THAT long, but decades - of slowly feeding Ayuthaya back its (former) cores. And obviously if we talking about a larger nation such as the Ottomans, the problem gets worse.

The Ottomans have the lulzy "cut off their Asian holdings and they become cheap colonial provinces" approach, allowing full annex ---> release far more easily than otherwise. For situations like Ayuthaya's try to combine some OE with giving them provinces back to keep it manageable, else just bull through them and sit on more OE yourself until you get the vassal.

 

[unmerged(177849)]

The Ottomans have the lulzy "cut off their Asian holdings and they become cheap colonial provinces" approach, allowing full annex ---> release far more easily than otherwise. For situations like Ayuthaya's try to combine some OE with giving them provinces back to keep it manageable, else just bull through them and sit on more OE yourself until you get the vassal.

Yeah, I have a vision now of how to handle them. Will probably do it that way - it is likely optimal, especially with coring now just under 10 years even for the Moghuls. But I don't have to like it (even if coring it all would be even worse). Which is why I may move on to my Portugal Master of India game.

Anyway, thanks. This has been clarifying and helpful