Requirements to create a puppet state

[The Running Man]

^

[easytarget]

Not absolutely sure, I just pulled the trigger on Attila when it was 50% off, so I'm only about 25 hours into a campaign. But in my experience I've had pretty good luck throwing money at them, which I've got plenty of. It's about year 407 or so and last turn I "bought" one because they'd started a war with another of my puppets and I didn't want them unraveling the whole region, cost me 8k, which seemed like a bargain to me to keep the area between me and the huns populated with puppet buffers that are happy.

[The Running Man]

How exactly do you buy them??? I have 2 mil in my treasury in my sassanid campign and I litteraly offered Aksum 150000 to become my puppet state and they denied!!! then armenia showed up and killed them all....I also have a 1 settlement ally who loves me and I also offered them to become puppet state and said no!!!

[easytarget]

I'm playing Sassanids too. At the edge of all those puppets you start with I've got a state causing trouble, so when they asked me for peace I countered with an offer to become a puppet and sweetened the deal sufficiently that it was a moderate success offer (you can customize dollar amount offers by switching to them paying you which allows you smaller dollar amounts than when it's set where you want you switch it back to your offer). Funny you should mention Amernia, that's who they were bugging in my campaign.

Not sure what all the factors are that affect this, clearly money isn't the only component given our two different outcomes here.

[ChibiFenrir]

you can either throw money at them till they accept or you can subjugate them which is when they are on there last settlment and you attack it, it will give the option to subjugate them.

Also getting someone to strapy onto you is pretty hard, they usely need to be at war with mutipul teams and loseing to accept to be your strapy other wise they feel they are strong enough on there own and don't need to be your strapy.