vassal contracts can be exploited pretty hard

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dawedqafdAD

First Lieutenant
Dec 31, 2020
221
572
for some reason if you propose a deal so insane that it costs to much influence to refuse the ai will have no choice but to accept it. According to the ingame tooltip as someone pointed out this is an intentional mechanic not a bug just thought that was kind of silly


This problem is less apparent in single player but when people abuse it in multiplayer it becomes much much more annoying
 
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It's weird to me you have to spend influence to refuse contract negotiations. IMO contract refusals should just impact relations and enable a "force contract" CB.
 
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I see that as well but something about a vassal saving up tons of influence and forcing the overlord to give them literally everything they own just doesn't make sense...

lemme put it in perspective; Lets say you're the overlord here and thanks to steady expansion to neighboring systems (claims and starbases) you're running low on influence, you've vassalized one of your neighbors and said neighbor is trapped between you and another empire so he basically just stockpiles influence because he has nothing to spend it on, basically just like was seen in the video I posted. Now imagine that just because your vassal has more influence from just biding time he can now send you a massive contract change request so outrageous that you simply cant decline it because it would cost to much.
I agree this is silly and shouldn't work this way.

But if you're looking for a solution:
1. Accept the contract (costs you nothing)
2. Release vassal
3. Change policy: oppressive vassalization (optional, if feeling petty)
4. Declare war (vassalize)
5. Push his face in the dirt

This costs you zero influence, and resets the vassal to such an unpalatable deal that he'll eagerly accept whatever changes you like after the 5 year cool down. He spent all that influence, but you have all the leverage: you can end the arrangement at any time you like.
 
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I agree this is silly and shouldn't work this way.

But if you're looking for a solution:
1. Accept the contract (costs you nothing)
2. Release vassal
3. Change policy: oppressive vassalization (optional, if feeling petty)
4. Declare war (vassalize)
5. Push his face in the dirt

This costs you zero influence, and resets the vassal to such an unpalatable deal that he'll eagerly accept whatever changes you like after the 5 year cool down. He spent all that influence, but you have all the leverage: you can end the arrangement at any time you like.
Definitely a good work around, hits a small snag if you had them specialized but still better then living under the boot of your vassal lmao
 
Practically every aspect of the vassalization system is trivially exploitable to absurd degrees. It makes GA a cakewalk, even using mods like Starnet. Just submit to a neighbor, and they'll let you leech resources + protection until you can techboom enough to crush them. Or don't even bother killing them, as they'll keep subsidizing you even if you're 10x their size. They won't give science at some point, but I believe all other resources will be granted automatically with the overlord just chaining bankruptcies endlessly to do so. You lose out on stuff like federations and galcom president, but in return you get massive economic boosts that are almost on par with what the AI receives at the highest difficulty.
 
I tried leeching - but the ai kept proposing contracts to leech from me and keep me down until i ran out of influence.
In the end i was a bulwark - one which was near a fanatic purifier. With a condition to defend my overlord should he be attacked, but die alone and without help should i be attacked. Not to forget the ressources the ai demanded from me.
Its not as easy as it sounds - the influence cost can be quite hefty.

As overlord however u are king.
 
I tried leeching - but the ai kept proposing contracts to leech from me and keep me down until i ran out of influence.
In the end i was a bulwark - one which was near a fanatic purifier. With a condition to defend my overlord should he be attacked, but die alone and without help should i be attacked. Not to forget the ressources the ai demanded from me.
Its not as easy as it sounds - the influence cost can be quite hefty.

As overlord however u are king.
This can happen, but if you implement a contract change then it will be locked-in for the next 10 years. Sometimes this can lead to influence fights, but it's definitely not a constant from what I've seen at least on GA. Plus, once the overlord defaults for the first time its influence gets cut in half, and one default almost certainly leads further defaults.