Not always...Slargos said:If you have the chance to vassalize say France, I'm willing to bet you're already powerful enough to do as you please, however.
...in my last "Groß-Hessen" game, fance backstabbed me (and my vassals), i fought a 8 year lasting war and was finally in a position where i could demand vassalisation. Not a year to early, because my alliance had almost no troops left, while france was recruiting over 5000 new ones...
...just as a side note...
and @ topic: As small country (Hessen), i prefer to vassalize. Vassals can pour up quite big armies. Sometimes i even had techrushing vassals (my land tech: 5 theirs: 8) that were able to repel an enemy attack for several months.
But as said, once you are big enough (by taking big $$$ provinces), you can even annex low income provinces, preferable for manufactories (etc).