Can someone explain Vassals for me?

[DanOramA]

So I've played with Archaon for a good few hours and I've gotten some vassals and it feels like they get super passive after that. Are you supposed to babysit every vassal and tell them where to attack and such? Even their armies goes down to just tier 1 units. I even tried to gift a few settlements because I thought that they had a bad economy.

If I'm doing something wrong then by all means, please tell me what I'm doing wrong

[StrangestEcho]

The Vassals mechanic isn't great and they mostly just intimidate the other AI factions. They're not programmed to be very active on the map. You can ask them to attack a specific target or defend a settlement, but that's unreliable. You can also borrow their armies once you get their allegiance up which can be quite useful.

Most people just give them the minor settlements that have no value and take all the dark fortresses and resource settlements for themselves. You can later give them provincial capitals that aren't dark fortress sites so that they can build some higher tier units eventually.

[KoboldUtopian]

It really depends on whether you give them enough to be powerful. A vassal faction with 1-2 provinces isn't going to do much. But give them like 20+ regions and they can take over the map for you

[BIG E.]

Vassals = buffer.

Their only purpose is to prevent AI from walking to your dark fortresses.

Because the way AI works is if there are 5 enemy settlements with armies in them between AI and dark fortress theya re never gonna try to push towards you at all.

Vassals basicly turn Legendary AI into VE afk AI.

Also every vassal increases your hidden power rating. I am saying hidden power rating because it is actually hidden, when an AI decides to declare war on you they also take into account your allies (in this case vassals) and their armies as if it was your power rating. Therefor when you have few vassals AI will never declare war on you. You can just do whatever you want on the map.

[path2power]

Yes, you have to spend alliance points to get them to do stuff. From the alliance menu, order your vassals to defend one of your armies that is going invading, and they will send an army to follow it. Once the vassals catches up, you raze a settlement, you cancel the defend order and they will occupy it. Thats the cheapest way I've found.

[b0rm4nn]

I personally find vassals useless (expection for WoC norscan vassals), so I don't even bother to make ones.

[Basarab Laiota]

You're supposed to borrow their armies.

[Human bean]

They are ok for keeping your fortresses online (in the words of a certain american blogger) but bear in mind that your commands might take a couple of turns to actually be enacted

[AkumulatoR]

They suck. That's all you need to know about vassals.

[KoboldUtopian]

Originally posted by AkumulatoR:

They suck. That's all you need to know about vassals.

If that's all you know about them you will definitely think they suck.

[Farsha]

I think it depends who you vassalize.
The minor Norscan factions don't seem to do much for me either.
But I did vassalize Grimgor as Kholek ( I vassalized everyone as Kholek to be fair and created a god) and he was pretty aggressive.
So depends what AI you Vassalize what is it's aggressivity lvl in that particular campaign set to (That is kinda rolled at the start of each new campaign)

[MadArtillery]

Do remember minor factions get a bunch of nerfs and in general are wimpy and sucky pansies who lose every fight because the devs hate them, vasselize major factions and they will happily carry you.

[Chozer]

Originally posted by DanOramA:

So I've played with Archaon for a good few hours and I've gotten some vassals and it feels like they get super passive after that. Are you supposed to babysit every vassal and tell them where to attack and such? Even their armies goes down to just tier 1 units. I even tried to gift a few settlements because I thought that they had a bad economy.

If I'm doing something wrong then by all means, please tell me what I'm doing wrong

passive? lol im also playing archaon and they are helping so much. everywhere i go they follow its so nice. i make the vassels really big and give them one dark fortress and they have many armies to harass the forces of order with. i have like 10 vassels. in total they have like 15 armies and now im going to confederate kolek and the other chaos undivided