Do vassals suck or am I missing something

[jearbear]

Sure, the AI is dum, and sure, managing hassling vassals sounds like a cool gameplay experience. I think its been poorly implemented though. They don't give any extra money over managing the province yourself, they suffer huge opinion penalties all the time so you constantly have to monitor them, and they don't have a lot of interplay between them. Early game, this all adds up to just avoiding vassalage as much as possible, only handing them out when expanding beyond your limits. They are kind of inevitable though if you play 867 and don't have primogeniture. Late game things can get interesting, buuuut.....

Vassals don't interact with each other very much if at all. Only once did I have my vassals fight each other for land, which was cool, but it happened so fast that I didn't get to choose sides. There doesn't seem to be a lot of avenues to mediate between your vassals. This has the side effect of playing as a vassal kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I can't go to my lord and be like "he keeps raiding me, can I fight him and you not intervene" or "why are his taxes lower than mine." At the moment vassals take a lot more away from my experience than adds to it, and I spend a lot of time figuring out how to make them irrelevant instead of using them to my advantage.

But that's just what I have seen so far, maybe I haven't been using them right or someone else has found a cool interaction. Let me know cause I would love to test it out! This game is so much fun so far!

[madlarkin8]

"...or am I missing something" ====> You are missing something.

Vassals interact with each other a LOT. About as much as a player vassal does to his fellow vassals, maybe less than an experienced player though. That includes murders, swaying, befriending, marriages, abducting, war etc.

Much of that goes unnoticed by you, and happens in private. They scheme with and against each other to win your favor, steal from each other and possibly overthrow you.

You as the liege lord are not obligated or sometimes even allowed to interfere in wars between vassals in your realm besides enforcing a realmwide white peace.

It is objectively better to manage a county yourself than to let a vassal do it..... UNTIL you reach the domain limit, which will happen as your realm gets bigger, hitting you with huge penalties you going over it (20 percent less prestige and tax for every county over the limit, plus opinion penalty), at that point you will be forced to rely on vassals. The idea is to keep the best counties/duchies for yourself to manage, and give the lesser ones to vassals so you are always stronger than your vassals.

[Myth Alric]

Well the point is that a single person can't possibly run an entire kingdom all by themselves. Dealing with a vassal is supposed to be one of the challenges of the game rather than a tool to help you.

They do interact though. Vassals will war with each other and scheme to kill each other. Generally you don't want them to do that though, because it messes stuff up. If you have everything organized nicely into clean duchies and then they start fighting and mixing titles between themselves it is going to make things pain for you later.

[jearbear]

Both great answers! Glad to know they are at least doing SOMETHING!. I still want more interaction, but at least they don't just sit there

[Toblm]

As your vassals get more powerful their actions become more obvious. Count level vassals, just like count level players have a lot of sitting an waiting to do. Vassals with Duke, several Duchies or King level titles will be much more blatant in their action. Up to and including invading neighboring kingdoms.

[Retro]

I took a vassals land away... because in the pop up story had slept with another vassals wife. The other vassal wanted justice, so I gave him justice. I attempted to imprison my vassal, but failed, we went to war I won and took his lands. His son died in the conflict as well in battle vs my king and son... so the angry vassal hide away in another court. He found a way back in and murdered my only son and my wife and a had king of other court invade me on his behalf. Needless to say he ruined my match and I had to quit.

[lubed_assassin]

Originally posted by jearbear:

Sure, the AI is dum, and sure, managing hassling vassals sounds like a cool gameplay experience. I think its been poorly implemented though. They don't give any extra money over managing the province yourself, they suffer huge opinion penalties all the time so you constantly have to monitor them, and they don't have a lot of interplay between them. Early game, this all adds up to just avoiding vassalage as much as possible, only handing them out when expanding beyond your limits. They are kind of inevitable though if you play 867 and don't have primogeniture. Late game things can get interesting, buuuut.....

Vassals don't interact with each other very much if at all. Only once did I have my vassals fight each other for land, which was cool, but it happened so fast that I didn't get to choose sides. There doesn't seem to be a lot of avenues to mediate between your vassals. This has the side effect of playing as a vassal kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I can't go to my lord and be like "he keeps raiding me, can I fight him and you not intervene" or "why are his taxes lower than mine." At the moment vassals take a lot more away from my experience than adds to it, and I spend a lot of time figuring out how to make them irrelevant instead of using them to my advantage.

But that's just what I have seen so far, maybe I haven't been using them right or someone else has found a cool interaction. Let me know cause I would love to test it out! This game is so much fun so far!

I assume your playing tribal, vassals arnt that great until you get wayyyyy too much land, then they help you keep your troops up from penalties... Also if your vassals are dynasty members you get dynasty reknown and a friendly relations bonus, unless your siblings because you all have claims on each other.

When you get to the fudual lord they give you gold and troops and that can be adjusted... eventually most of your money and levies will come from vassals, once you start building more holdings in your lands the vassals skyrocket.

[lubed_assassin]

Originally posted by Retro_Relapse:

I took a vassals land away... because in the pop up story had slept with another vassals wife. The other vassal wanted justice, so I gave him justice. I attempted to imprison my vassal, but failed, we went to war I won and took his lands. His son died in the conflict as well in battle vs my king and son... so the angry vassal hide away in another court. He found a way back in and murdered my only son and my wife and a had king of other court invade me on his behalf. Needless to say he ruined my match and I had to quit.

if you capture him as a viking they let u blood eagle him >;o for killing ur son.

[jearbear]

Well, I'm glad to know other people are having fun with it! Lubed_assassin was right, I've only been doing tribal stuff and haven't gotten to any big empire play yet, so hopefully I get to experience some of that stuff soon!