Vassals are useless and dont participate in war

[Grimm]

.. they literally camp in their province..

[Brakiros]

and when you annex them their armies get deleted lol

[aqvamare]

And? They give you 50%+ of there income on all resource, you still can cast all "friendly city" spells on then, which increase there income or gives you OP units for POP.

in my pure evil run, i had 5 reguiar towns, and 12 vassals, and simply payed this way, my 3 stacks of balrog only units....and poor vassals were my way to bring the demons into the world.

who needs help from them, when you main stach walk the map.

[JDPUK]

I’m on a 100+ turn game right now, noticed the same, you’re unable to get the AI to assist in anything, just good for trades, that’s it. I wish you could direct them to attack certain cities. This was always my favorite part about Warhammer Gladius, another great 4X game.

[Terminal]

They contribute increasing chunks of their economy to you as they approach integration, up until eventually you can just assimilate/integrate them.

Their usefulness in military actions varies depending on the city state settings. As you say, they typically stick to their own territory - hypothetically, the way they 'contribute' to your campaigns is via Liege's Rally (since you get to recruit their units and they contribute rally points to your total).

I have noticed that if you tweak map settings to make City States more powerful/hostile/aggressive, they tend to retain that aggressiveness even when conquered - and will periodically send stacks to attack enemy units. They are not intelligent about this, mind you - they'll send a stack with three units in it to attack four full enemy stacks with suicidal fervor (same as they usually do to you, in fact) - but occasionally you can exploit this by having a stray stack or two of your own 'tag along' with them.

[Sifer2]

I'm just glad they produce military units at all. In a lot of 4X games the moment you vassalize someone they become total dead weight. At least these make army big enough to defend themselves.

[Cythal]

Originally posted by Terminal:

They contribute increasing chunks of their economy to you as they approach integration, up until eventually you can just assimilate/integrate them.

Their usefulness in military actions varies depending on the city state settings. As you say, they typically stick to their own territory - hypothetically, the way they 'contribute' to your campaigns is via Liege's Rally (since you get to recruit their units and they contribute rally points to your total).

I have noticed that if you tweak map settings to make City States more powerful/hostile/aggressive, they tend to retain that aggressiveness even when conquered - and will periodically send stacks to attack enemy units. They are not intelligent about this, mind you - they'll send a stack with three units in it to attack four full enemy stacks with suicidal fervor (same as they usually do to you, in fact) - but occasionally you can exploit this by having a stray stack or two of your own 'tag along' with them.

Exactly.

As said, their military contributions come in the form of rally. It is good that they should protect their region and in the times of war you can focus more on the offensive than having to send standby armies to defend your vassals.

[JDPUK]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

I'm just glad they produce military units at all. In a lot of 4X games the moment you vassalize someone they become total dead weight. At least these make army big enough to defend themselves.

True, though you should be able to tell it, defend this city, attack this city, etc

[Xiane]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

I'm just glad they produce military units at all. In a lot of 4X games the moment you vassalize someone they become total dead weight. At least these make army big enough to defend themselves.

The problem being on that is that no AI attacks them. An infestation MIGHT if its in the borders of their domain but more often than not it just becomes this void on the map that AI empires and such just overlook.

Where as AI vassals will periodically send raiding army's at you. Our own vassals should have at least this ability.

[aqvamare]

Originally posted by Xiane:

Originally posted by Sifer2:

I'm just glad they produce military units at all. In a lot of 4X games the moment you vassalize someone they become total dead weight. At least these make army big enough to defend themselves.

The problem being on that is that no AI attacks them. An infestation MIGHT if its in the borders of their domain but more often than not it just becomes this void on the map that AI empires and such just overlook.

Where as AI vassals will periodically send raiding army's at you. Our own vassals should have at least this ability.

Your vassals are bond to you as liedge, and they will not raid peaceful neighbours, and it makes no sense for them in a diplomatic play, to walk half the map to the one AI in war.

I had a AI vassal defending my city, which was directly between him and the next AI nation in war, so he moved to this city, and parked a army there, when his 2 other stacks defended his coastline.

After me annexed him, i realized, how many raids from the war AI from the other side of the ocean he got.

Vassals are useful, but they are not your "charge and attack vassal swarm".

they are more a "bolster the defence in the region" vassal swarm, free your resources into othere areas.

[Atma]

Vassals of AI factions do send troops to conquer your cities. Why can't your vassals do the same?

[DramaLama]

A lot of the vassal functionality is actually broken at the moment, if you release a city as a vassal its ai will not be switched on at the moment, making them useless. Free cities that started as free cities at the start of the realm are the only cities capable of having AI as vassals at the moment. Please check this post for more

information:https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/vassals-not-functioning-correctly.1580860/

It explains how vassals work as what as why bugs they currently have.

[Dr.maniac]

I'm fine with them not moving their armies halfway across the world, but I wish they'd at least venture out of their territory a bit and clean up some of the trash mobs around their boarders. If a den's territory overlap with theirs the free city's first priority should be to clear it out.

[aqvamare]

Originally posted by Dr.maniac:

I'm fine with them not moving their armies halfway across the world, but I wish they'd at least venture out of their territory a bit and clean up some of the trash mobs around their boarders. If a den's territory overlap with theirs the free city's first priority should be to clear it out.

they protected one of my cities, which were 80% of the screen distance away from there city.

[DramaLama]

Originally posted by aqvamare:

And? They give you 50%+ of there income on all resource, you still can cast all "friendly city" spells on then, which increase there income or gives you OP units for POP.

in my pure evil run, i had 5 reguiar towns, and 12 vassals, and simply payed this way, my 3 stacks of balrog only units....and poor vassals were my way to bring the demons into the world.

who needs help from them, when you main stach walk the map.

I think its awesome you can use vassals like this, sacrificing their pop to summon powerful daemons into the realm, i'd never thought of using them for this purpose before and it really suits an evil playstyle, i may have to try this!

I think people who play a good playstyle should have the option of having more active and powerful vassal cities though. Maybe increase the range vassals under a good aligned player are willing to go to attack enemy cities.

[FlySC]

Vassals give you a ton of resources, thats their main use, you are capped on cities but not on vassals, they are just free money and defend themselves pretty well