Why is diplo-vassalizing capped at 100 development?

[jonjowett]

Liberty desire is far easier to deal with nowadays, we have strong duchies for -10% which is semi universally available, with dev reduction modifiers being more rampant you can dev someone into being happy, income boosts also mean gifts and subsidies easy to get
Winter palace is best used for institutions, thats it sadly

Yes, LD is easily managed at the moment. However, you are still limited by diplo slots, and if you have lots of vassals that require development then you will probably not be able to dev yourself sufficiently.

However, if you look at the actual calculation, it's not at all trivial to vassalise anyone with >100 dev: you need to overcome an economic disparity of at least -85 (proposer has <=2k dev), which is rather difficult (barring Winter Palace etc). (Eg: Ally + royal marriage + 100 trust + empire vs duchy + massive vs zero military + directly adjacent + same religion + not HRE + 6 diprep = +88 reasons.)

I truly don't see how this can be exploited in the early game; it's only really viable to diplovassalise >100 dev nations if your own nation has >5000 dev, ie. in the lategame. (5000 vs 100 dev => -65 reasons.) Do we really need the additional blocker here? Really?!

 

[jonjowett]

Currently, the economic base penalty is capped at -90. If you remove the blocker, you'd probably also want to tune that cap. Otherwise, you could get to ~1000 dev, pick espionage/diplo (or influence), get trading in ivory, and diplovassal nations like France or Portugal...pretty much any non-empire in your religion that you could marry and get +20 military on. You'd need a lot more diprep to overcome heathen religion penalty, though that's not impossible.

At some point it's more practical to just conquer the stuff. Right now, that point is "immediately", so there's room to tweak this. I'm all for making diplovassaling work better with investment, but this could easily get out of hand unless done carefully.

OK, let's work your example.

Spoiler: calculations

Ally + RM: +20
100 Trust: +10
Empire vs kingdom: +10
Kingdom: -10
Economic reasons: -90
Military reasons: +20 (you're massive, they have nothing)
(Assume target is same religion, directly adjacent, not in HRE, not MR, and has no subjects)

Required reasons from diprep = 41
Required diprep = 41/3 = 13.7

Likely ways to get high diprep:
100 legitimacy: +1
Ivory: +2
Statesman: +1
Proposer is HRE member/emperor: +1 (Unlikely but possible, given that target is directly adjacent and not in HRE)
Papal interaction: +1
Diplomatic ideas: +2
Influence ideas: +2
Two policies: +2 (choose your favourite ones)
(I don't know why you mentioned Espoinage ideas, they seem irrelevant.)
...All of that only gets you +13. You're going to need to have some national ideas and/or great works to push you over the limit.

13.7 diprep is theoretically possible for some nations in the lategame, but it's nowhere near as easy as you suggest.

Also:

• It might be tricky to arrange for a large (eg. 500 dev) country to be your ally with 100 trust while also having literally zero military and being at peace. (IE: They were fully-occupied and their army was destroyed, which probably means that they have no exclaves, islands or strait crossings.) If that's not true then some of the +30 we're assuming will disappear, meaning you need even more diprep.
• Remember that the target must have no subjects, which means France, Spain, Portugal, etc will not be valid targets after ~1500 (due to colonies). (And France won't be a valid target before 1500 either, due to their vassals.)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

13.7 diprep is theoretically possible for some nations in the lategame, but it's nowhere near as easy as you suggest.

+20 military isn't provided in depth in the wiki, but you can get it much, much easier than you can reduce economic base penalty below the ~85 range. I see the +20 from military reliably enough that it's not a serious gate to doing this...you're going to have it before you clear the other bottlenecks.

I was thinking in context of next patch (since it's the earliest we would see such change), where espionage gives +15 reasons for diplovassal. Most small nations are duchies until 300 development, so if we're at empire rank (1k) then those would be doable. You are right that colonizers are bad examples, but Indian nations/fairly large Islamic nations will fit this bill.

For duchy allies the sequence would be something like:

1. Push to 100 trust
2. Use 70 base reasons (adjacent empire vs duchy) + 15 (espionage) + 6 (2 diprep) to hit +91.
3. Feed ally to arbitrarily large amount in peace deal, so long as you can send offer before they become kingdom.
4. Diplovassal

To offer vassalazation to same-religion kingdom, we would then need 8.6 diprep rather than 13.7. Steep, but actually possible. Since that allows up to just under 1k, using force religion from great holy war would be an amusing alternative to brute forcing the coring.

Still, as I run through the numbers I start to conclude that your assertion that the cap isn't needed is correct. While you can do things like dismantle HRE + diplovassal most of the place using the above, you can also just...take emperor and revoke. Similarly, while diplovassaling stuff like Bahmanis and Bukhara etc sounds nice, the investment to do it is substantial, and it is already proven that good players can simply annex the entire religious group before the setup for this could pay off.

 

[jonjowett]

I was thinking in context of next patch (since it's the earliest we would see such change), where espionage gives +15 reasons for diplovassal.

Ah, I forgot about that. If the cap was removed, Espionage + Winter Palace 3 (ie. +45 reasons) might make for an interesting and different type of run.

Push to 100 trust

I think it's worth pointing out that this requires a significant investment of time. (100 favors, or perhaps 80 favors + 2 great power influence nation. IE: One of your diplomats will be fully-occupied for several decades, at least.)

using force religion from great holy war would be an amusing alternative to brute forcing the coring.

I hadn't thought of that. Nice!

I'm trying to think of theocracies (or nations that can easily become theocracies) near Russia (for the Winter Palace). Teutons or Livonians, perhaps?

Still, as I run through the numbers I start to conclude that your assertion that the cap isn't needed is correct. While you can do things like dismantle HRE + diplovassal most of the place using the above, you can also just...take emperor and revoke. Similarly, while diplovassaling stuff like Bahmanis and Bukhara etc sounds nice, the investment to do it is substantial, and it is already proven that good players can simply annex the entire religious group before the setup for this could pay off.

I'm not a WC type of player, but my feeling is that a diplovassal strategy (if the cap were removed) would be a lot slower than taking the territory in war.

However, it seems like this strategy would be a different and viable playstyle - which would also be quite thematic for nations which penalise you for taking land in war (eg. Buddhist, Inwards Perfection). I think EU4 would be better if there were more of these alternative viable playstyles.

 

[Mindel]

Making it harder to vassalize a larger nation is reasonable, but it makes no sense at all to impose an arbitrary hard cap at 100 dev. There is no meaningful difference between a 99 dev nation and a 101 dev one. It would make much more sense to put some kind of soft cap scaling with development.

 

[brifbates]

I think it's worth pointing out that this requires a significant investment of time. (100 favors, or perhaps 80 favors + 2 great power influence nation. IE: One of your diplomats will be fully-occupied for several decades, at least.)

If you're large enough to get the other factors close enough then currying favors will get you 100 in less than a decade, it certainly won't require several...

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

I would argue that the max vassalization dev should be modified by admin efficiency just like forced vassalization (or conquest, for that matter), i.e. at 50 admin efficiency, a country can vassalize other countries up to 200 dev, at 75 admin efficiency up to 400 dev and so on.

Overcoming the relative economy modifier should be enough of a challenge.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think it's worth pointing out that this requires a significant investment of time. (100 favors, or perhaps 80 favors + 2 great power influence nation. IE: One of your diplomats will be fully-occupied for several decades, at least.)

If you're at +20 military reasons, merely being allied to someone will accrue favors quickly. I could see relations slots being an issue. It will always be faster to conquer the same land than to diplovassal it, and considerably so. This is a supplement at best even next patch I think. But maybe it becomes a bit more worth using than now.

I'm trying to think of theocracies (or nations that can easily become theocracies) near Russia (for the Winter Palace). Teutons or Livonians, perhaps?

Those could work. Hordes could technically become them too, but that's a downgrade. Maybe reform progress will be fast enough that generic nations can pull it off next patch, but I would be surprised. It's all moot as long as the 100 dev cap is there though.

However, it seems like this strategy would be a different and viable playstyle - which would also be quite thematic for nations which penalise you for taking land in war (eg. Buddhist, Inwards Perfection). I think EU4 would be better if there were more of these alternative viable playstyles.

Buddhism is the most obvious candidate to me, because they don't pay diplo to release nations in peace and doing that gives them karma, in offset to declaring that war + whatever is taken. It's like they were mechanically made for this, and simply can't do it right now lol.

I had forgotten about winter palace. That makes diplovassaling heathens a reasonable proposition, and only needs you to promote the culture.