Tributaries should count towards mission conquests

[Galaick]

Hello,

I started up a Great Horde campaign the other day, with the aim of collecting some achievements that I was lacking, and also to try and get better at horde gameplay, my only other experience having been Manchu. They also have some pretty great missions, which I really enjoyed going down. There's one thing that kind of bothered me though, and it's purely from the point of view of roleplay, which is something I also enjoy doing from time to time. Historically, the Golden Horde before its collapse into the Great Horde and the other neighbouring hordes imposed what is now called the Tatar yoke on the Russian principalities, collecting tribute from both Novgorod, Muscovy and the other minors. One of your mission tree has you trying to reassert your control back over the breakaway Russian states as well. However, strangely, re-forcing their tributary state on them won't count for the mission, such as the subjugation of Ryazan mission.

Of course you can just vassalize them and problem is solved, but honestly wouldn't it be better and more flavourful to just be able to make them your tributaries again and complete the mission that way? It's definitely not a huge gamebreaking issue that needs to be implemented immediately, but I'd like to know what you guys think of it. I think the tributary system is an interesting concept that lacks continued development and could use some readjustment, maybe in a future flavourpack.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

No because holding tributaries loyal is alot easier than keeping vassals loyal

 

[Retrac910]

Tributaries are cool, but since it’s a completely optional subject for the tributee it shouldn’t count for conquest achievements. You don’t own the land or have any claim to it.

 

[Commonblob]

As a general statement, I disagree with the OP. For the vast majority of missions and achievements, tributaries shouldn't count as that would make the game too easy.

But it would be flavourful if there were a few mission here and there for eastern nations, that involved making tributaries. And the mission that the OP gave as an example could be one such mission.

At the moment, the tributaries feel like they were solely designed for the Mandate mechanic, as they interact with almost nothing else in the game.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

As a general statement, I disagree with the OP. For the vast majority of missions and achievements, tributaries shouldn't count as that would make the game too easy.

But it would be flavourful if there were a few mission here and there for eastern nations, that involved making tributaries. And the mission that the OP gave as an example could be one such mission.

At the moment, the tributaries feel like they were solely designed for the Mandate mechanic, as they interact with almost nothing else in the game.

Majahapit converts some tribs into vassals via mission tree

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

I don't think the tributary relationship fits the mongol-rus relations.
Tributaries in the game are almost independent and only send a token submission each year. This doesn't feel like how mongol-rus relations worked for most of the time. They behaved much more like real vassals.

 

[Saat98]

Tributaries can be forced in a war by fixed warscore (80 WS, iirc), so if tributaries counted for mission conquests, those missions would be super easy to achieve. You can easily force tributary on a great power, so you can easily "conquer" all of Russia (for example) this way. If the proposal of the OP became a reality, it would be particularly broken, especially if the mission's reward is powerful. Moreover, if tributaries counted for achievements, a WC would be way easier (imagine conquering Spain and France in just one war, without the need to core anything!)

 

[Word_Smith]

Even putting gameplay aside, tributaries were never considered part of the Chinese Empire proper. If anything, they were diplomatic contracts pertaining trade and taxes.

 

[Galaick]

I don't think the tributary relationship fits the mongol-rus relations.
Tributaries in the game are almost independent and only send a token submission each year. This doesn't feel like how mongol-rus relations worked for most of the time. They behaved much more like real vassals.

I'll agree with your first bit, the current state of tributaries in game right now does not really accurately portray their historical relationship, it's more how China did it where they received tribute instead of come to "collect" it, with force and burning of towns if necessary. But making them as vassals feels wrong too because in no way would Ryazan ever help me beat up other Hordes because they just love me so much. I guess I could just choose to make them a scutage then, purely for flavor's sake, but I'd still much rather see something like a less than loyal tributary relationship status

 

[Galaick]

Tributaries can be forced in a war by fixed warscore (80 WS, iirc), so if tributaries counted for mission conquests, those missions would be super easy to achieve. You can easily force tributary on a great power, so you can easily "conquer" all of Russia (for example) this way. If the proposal of the OP became a reality, it would be particularly broken, especially if the mission's reward is powerful. Moreover, if tributaries counted for achievements, a WC would be way easier (imagine conquering Spain and France in just one war, without the need to core anything!)

I'll 100% cede this point, the way tributaries work right now would make what I want too easy to achieve. My point came purely from a rp perspective where I don't want to hold Muscovite culture provinces as a Horde because I feel like that's not what they'd do, they often just let the local population rule their own lands and collect yearly taxes from them. It's historically why Novgorod starts so big at the game start date, because they were generally very cooperative with the Golden Horde and therefore their lands remained untouched, whereas the other principalities had to deal with raids etc., if my reading of history is correct.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I'll 100% cede this point, the way tributaries work right now would make what I want too easy to achieve. My point came purely from a rp perspective where I don't want to hold Muscovite culture provinces as a Horde because I feel like that's not what they'd do, they often just let the local population rule their own lands and collect yearly taxes from them.

So give yourself a vassal swarm

It's historically why Novgorod starts so big at the game start date, because they were generally very cooperative with the Golden Horde and therefore their lands remained untouched, whereas the other principalities had to deal with raids etc., if my reading of history is correct.

Nevsky submitted prematurely and faced a revolt occasionally for this
Novgorod is so big at game start because no one is going to make principalities out of arctic coastline as well as the shift to Republicanism meaning no new principalities.
The fracturing of the golden horde meant that when Lithuania invaded the rus principalities, all they could do was ask Lithuania to pay for it, not actually recover them under the old princes
Kazan, nogan, and crimean raids were raids by khanates that were neither the golden nor great horde, which is why they raided and set their own danegeld of tribute to avoid further raids
Muscovy is the one who loyally pays tribute until it reached the critical mass to be able to resist further tribute

 

[jonjowett]

I think it's useful here to separate the historicity arguments from the gameplay arguments. There are lots of historical arguments for and against the current tributary system but, really, the problems we care about are the gameplay problems.

For example:

Spoiler: wall of text

• Direct adjacency is almost-required for tributary creation - even 1 province in between is usually too much!
  • As the potential tributary, you might want the protection of a large defensive ally, or the expansion opportunities, or both
  • As the overlord, you might want to expand your tributary network over large distances, and this is rather difficult.
  • If you're not adjacent, you probably can't ask to become a tributary diplomatically.
• Tribute is optional
  • Peacefully choosing not to pay tribute should not be an option - the only two options should be to pay or declare an independence war
  • At the very least, if you peacefully refuse to pay then the overlord's defensive guarantee should be immediately voided.
    • This would make non-payment a choice with interesting tradeoffs
    • For more realism, the guarantee should only be reinstated after paying an extra-large tribute for all those years you missed.
• Tributaries can't do joint independence wars against their overlord
  • If this was permitted then it would put a natural limit on the size of a nation's tributary network.
• AI overlords dislike receiving huge amounts of tribute from large tributaries
  • Seriously, why would they kick you out just for having more than 300 dev (or whatever the threshold is)?! They're giving you tons of tribute!
• Overlords have very limited options for meddling in wars between their tributaries
  • At the very least, they should be able to use the "enforce peace" interaction.
    • I don't know if this is forbidden by the game or simply something the AI doesn't do.
    • AI use of "enforce peace" on excessively-expansionist tributaries would be one solution to the previous point re. disliking large tributaries.
• Creation of tributaries should be available to more types of nation, not just hordes and eastern religion
  • Eg. Hegemons, as an alternative to map-painting.
  • If we also added "give me trade power" as a tribute option then this would be a viable strategy for world empires.
• ... and the list goes on...