Free Cities...

[Winterwolf]

So they're kind of awful. At least, the Ai for them is, which I blame the player Ai as well. I had about 6-7 fully vassalized Free Cities in my last playthrough while working on an Expansion Victory.

None of them helped when half the world declared war on me. Their units sat in their towns and did absolutely nothing. I even gave my bordering free city my entire roster from the Rally, which was about 4-6 unit stacks of anything between Tier 1-3, with a good few from T3. Enemy armies marched across the land, those units stayed inside his castle... absolutely worthless.

I wish there was a button you could press to force your vassals to help you.. I mean.. they're your vassals.. you should be able to tell them what to do. Hell, in that early example, same city had an entire army of nothing but T3-4s just sitting in the water doing nothing. Enemy just sailed right past em as if they weren't even there.

[Gilmore]

Someone said that vassals that came from conquered cities are bugged. Only free city vassals work as intended.

[Winterwolf]

Originally posted by Gilmore:

Someone said that vassals that came from conquered cities are bugged. Only free city vassals work as intended.

The one I'm talking about in my example above.. was my starting free city, the one of your own race near your position lol.

[Gilmore]

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Originally posted by Gilmore:

Someone said that vassals that came from conquered cities are bugged. Only free city vassals work as intended.

The one I'm talking about in my example above.. was my starting free city, the one of your own race near your position lol.

Weird, maybe they’re all bugged. But yeah, most of my vassals just stay in their city and don’t move.

[PlutonArioch]

I have seen one of my vassals attack an enemy who crossed their land. But that was a very weak army and my vassals force was much stronger. Another time when the same enemy had some stronger armies in their land, they stayed within their walls.

They seem overly cautious to me. But then that goes for my enemies too. I have so far only once seen an AI take an equal fight voluntarily, and that was when I had their capital besieged with their leader inside, and reinforcements on the way.

[DramaLama]

Free city ai only send raiding parties to enemy cities nearby to them, also the realm has to be on a hostility rating to something more than "passive".

Here's a link to the post about vassals not working.

Unfortunately the latest update doesn't address the bugs yet.

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