Vassals are simply far to powerful, every faction that starts with one is a really crap boring campaign that is impossible to lose, they really need to make several of the chaos/destruction campaigns much harder, it would help the repeatability of the game a lot.
The easiest fix, at least in Total War Warhammer, is just to give vassals unlimited allegiance points. That means you can recruit as many of their units as you want (within the restraints of army caps), give them orders, and take over their armies when necessary. Would give vassals good utility and all the infrastructure for it is already in the game.
That would actually make me play the Vampire Counts. I don't like playing factions without ranged, so I could easily get some Empire Archers, Crossbowmen or Handgunners in my armies playing as Vlad that way. The vassal units should have a regular recruitment cost then however, to keep it balanced.
Allegiance wouldn't even need to be unlimited, you just need to gain way more per turn in general (maybe proportional to vassals and your own empire size, so that you can keep adding similar amounts of units to more and more armies over time and give more orders as you have more territory and enemies this could also encourage and benefit players to actually get vassals to own more than a single provice in late game) and also be able to trade settlements for allegiance and generate allegiance when gifting to your vassals.
Currently playing with Fudging Vassals! Mod. Much much improved on vanilla, letting you donate conquered settlements etc. what I would like is the Diplomacy option to set Vassals free like in 3K but with the option to have them as a military or defensive ally and have them like you for setting them free rather than hate you for breaking a vassal treaty
This game needs an active vassal loyalty mechanic. in general it'll decay with vassal power, and improve with overlord power, and maybe add a set of actions overlords can do to their vassals, that impact this: donate money, levi taxes, demand troops, donate settlement, demand settlement, and more.
I just recently started vassalizing a lot. I've found that certain settlements offered to certain factions is an automatic vassalization. I'm currently playing a Tamurkhan campaign. Grimgor was ranked 1 in power. I was 60+. I took a settlement next to one of his, offered it to him and he became my vassal. My entire Eastern front is protected.
There should actually be a threat that a vassal can leave you and declare independence. Especially as you mentioned if you tax them too high (which would require that tax rate mechanic)
I feel like they are a great avenue for inter race crossover too. Like a more expanded outpost system where you can maybe build a limited about race specific buildings if you vassalise them for heavy costs. And more factions should be able to vassalise in the first place.
For most factions they can. Warriors of Chaos and Slaanesh are the special ones, their vassals are explictly unable to rebel (and their campaign mechanics depend on that. A faction corrupted and brainwashed by N'Kari being able to say "nope" would (a) not make a whole lot of sense and (b) make the mechanic even worse than it already is). But for everyone else they totally can and will. People just don't notice, because WoC and Slaanesh are also the factions that they... You know... Get vassals on.
This. I didnt know that could happen in warhammer TW. Was playing as Chaos Dwarves and had conquered or vassalized half the map. Next thing i know several of my most useful vassals start rebelling. Made for an annoying yet interesting situation where i suddenly had tough enemies again thanks to feeling the need to crushmy little traitors.@someguy1ification
@austin0351 I've heard it's possible but never experienced it. But then there should be a meter to show how loyal/disloyal to know where they are at. And ways to affect it
I would really like the loan army feature if it was available more than like, once every 50 turns and available for longer. 10 turns is actually not that much. Considering how often i have to spend half that trying to move them from where they are, to somewhere they can actually help me. A building to increase vassal allegiance gain would also be incredibly useful. An embassy, or a subsidy i could give them, etc.
Every time I vassalize morathi and Malekith with Valkia, they end up conquering all of lustria without much imupt from me. I think the vassal problem is mostly due to minor factions not being proactive enough.
My issue with the vassal system is that it's really only for the "badguys" ...and that the player can't be a vassal. Playing as malus you ought to start as malekith's vassal. And playing as volkmar the grim you need to be a vassal of Karl Franse. And playing as Louen Leoncoeur your aim ought to be to vassalise the rest of the lords, not confederate them.
I think we need the changeling/underempire/deep/underemp/piratecove/embassy? So we can actually build on vassal territory like actual master of that vassal. Nakai can build on his vassal territory and only if his vassal control area with lzd landmark, woc can build on norsca vassal capital if they vassalize their capital and vampire can build too on their vassal capital if they are human race. Slaanesh is same but adding elven race
I'd like a system that allows a player to recruit vassal units when in their territory with no cap. It's not 2 allies sharing resources, so it should fall under alliance recruitment. It should be possible as the warriors of chaos to be running around with armies comprised entirely of a mix of cathay, vampire, skaven, empire because they're all vassals and the armies got made along the way. I want vassals to be more vassal and less forced military alliance
This is a good topic that I hope they consider. Vassals should work differently for various factions but the general concept be the same, vassals provide troops & resources as though it were your own with them managing their own upkeep in exchange for protection. Vampire Counts especially need this as a mechanic since it ties so closely to their lore. I’ve vassalized Stirland by turn 5 only for them to break trade agreements etc with me following my attacks against less obedient humans. You are MY faction now, you serve me, not the empire.
Love the idea of being able to adjust the amount of income received from vassals, and being able to gift multiple settlements / settlements from afar. Was playing a campaign with Kholek recently and found that vassals vary in playstyle greatly, the minor norscan factions did almost nothing but Grimgor and Tamurkhan were great vassals!
I love vassals, when I still had a laptop, before a fire happened that forced me out of my apartment. When I could play I would try to get a vassal from every subfactions, like collecting the legendary lords, and I was genuinely annoyed when I would get my vassals built up, as a good liege does. They would get a full province and then rebel when I would have like 3 full provinces. I genuinely hope they do eventually do something about the vassal system as the mechanic seems to be an after thought and very much left behind.
there should be an option that makes your vassals attach (follow) their armies to your armies. So they could assist you rather than dying and giving the enemy LL free xp. Also annexing. Their armies would vanish if they are a different race.
You need to gain way more allegiance per turn in general (maybe proportional to vassals and your own empire size, so that you can keep adding similar amounts of units to more and more armies over time and give more orders as you have more territory and enemies this could also encourage and benefit players to actually get vassals to own more than a single provice in late game) and also be able to trade settlements for allegiance and generate allegiance when gifting to your vassals.
An idea of mine would be for the owner faction to demand a detachment force from the vassal faction, a chosen number of units taken away from the vassal faction which would be attached to any armies of their own choosing, even other allied factions. They would act similarly to an orc's waagh and reinforce the chosen army every battle it enters. Or at least a small army that we can control for free that replenishes on its own and builds up over time.
Reliance on vassals is why I don't enjoy playing Warriors of Chaos. You end up having to defend their territory as much as you expand to new territories.
I definitely agree with improving settlement trades. There is no reason why we should not be able to trade multiple settlements simultaneously and there is no reason why you have to be bordering the settlement. Just give a negative opinion to the deal if the settlement is far away as the other faction would be less willing to take it.
I mean, I have had pretty solid results across multiple games with using my vassals in wars as warriors. In fact I've had some vassals that are so bloodthirsty they'll even get ahead of my main armies and take territory I wanted.
I feel like a lot of the complaints about the vassals just kinda tie into the AI in general. All the Ai factions are so slow and passive, they rarely ever do anything. They only seem to be agressive at all when fighting the player, so you see them do shit like just not finish off a completely defenseless enemy for ages and let them build up an army again, or you have a military ally just stand there, nex to an undefended border of a common enemy
I also want to be able to force my vassals to give me a specific settlement, just "this city is mine now." The number of times my vassals have run up and taken a dark fortress from me while I was securing the area is not insignificant. It's a major problem for me.
CA has been pushing out great patches recently. However, a few months of that cannot make up for years of technical debt and under investing in the game's core mechanics. Ai, diplomacy, faction mechanics, ui and qol improvements have suffered because of this for years. In my opinion, the main issue, and my most infuriating shortcoming of Total war is the campaign Ai. I suspect the "potential" system is a mayor culprit here. Because big AI's that are your enemies have no problem sending multiple stacks to attack you. However so many factions have several stacks guarding at home and always sending one stack to die. Another thing is that there used to be complaints that the ai had tunnel vision and did not defend "the other enemy" taking their lands. However this was overcorrected and with the "focus on strongest enemy system" where the ai will now refuse to finish off an enemy and allow them to recover again and again. Also, and this is so basic, don't bloody raze a settlement belonging to your core Province just because an enemy took it. Ai does not know how to prioritize sacking, razing or occupying beyond the level of a todler Those are some of my thoughts... *edit: typos*
You're pretty much on point regarding the potential being important in how useful a vassal can be. If you vassal a minor norscan faction or whatever, don't expect them to do literally anything ever. If you vassalise Throgg, Wulfrik, Grimgor or any of the people you often see become big players then that's a different story. They have a pretty good chance of doing well for themselves. Still won't listen to what you tell them to do though in my experience. Also yes, the AI likes razing and sacking faaaaaar too much. I honestly think disabling their ability to raze or sack settlements (unless that's all they can do, like beastmen etc) would make the AI in general progress a lot faster as they wouldn't waste their time and armies for a measly 100 gold or so.
I would love a propper vassal system. I tryed to play with some vassals sometimes too. Normally I don't because of your mentioned reasons. CK is a great inspiring game for diplomacy and systems and I hope CA is actively looking into this topic!
The problem with vassals is the same with many other interaction types of issue: Diplomacy. Warhammer is still stuck with the old Diplomacy format and it shows how bad is affecting the game.
I was playing an archaon campaign and I was quite happy when I got a dilema that let me to execute my vassals faction leader, allowing me to roll boris with 2 armies in a full marauder tide.
There needs to be a better way of getting allies to support you than praying that they may move into supporting distance during your end turn when you expect to get attacked, or plan to attack a settlement you were sieging. There is a mod that force-teleport an ally to your army, but that is a little too gamey and makes things maybe a bit too easy, but WH3 needs to have something in between these two extremes. It's so annoying when you have a vassal in or two in the area, but they don't come close enough to back you up.
I usually just get the message that vassal armies are containing units I can't recruit so I can hardly use the borrow feature. Not sure if that's Vanilla or a mod conflict.
I think a big part of the "vassals are braindead" vibe is people vassalize tiny factions expecting them to do amazing things. I've got vassals with 20+ regions who stomp all my enemies for me. (Though your example here of them wandering off instead of attacking is also a big issue).
Maybe it doesn’t work for every race/faction but I think an integration system like in EU4 could be good. Maybe it costs X amount of turns per settlement plus a base number, maybe a ton of allegiance points and you have to have high relations.
You can cheese the game by donating a settlement to a faction, and they might become your vassal. Or as I like to call them, buffer states. CA could learn a lot from Paradox in how they handle factions and politics. Stellaris is already basically Warhammer 40k
I’d like to see a loyalty system: loyal vassals give more resources and gifts, and disloyal ones may act against you, makes other vassals disloyal and even rebel. You increase loyalty through being more powerful, agent actions, and giving vassals land, troops, and funds. You decrease loyalty through ordering vassals to join wars, failing to defend them, and demanding funds.
idk if the mod I use fixes this but Vassals help me a shit ton. Now I do Have an AI mod in use its called No-biased AI or something unbiased AI maybe?. Makes everything have the same threat level as the player. Meaning they wont ignore the giant army two spaces away from them to come attack your one army all the way across the island you're on or whatever. this may be fixing the vassal problem. If you are the bigger threat the AI acts like it if you arent it acts like it. How it should be.
4:45 it's so frustrating (and baffling) to me that the WoC cause their vassals to favor their corruption type... But N'Kari doesn't. Vassals I take with Seductive Influence just get destroyed by Slaanesh corruption unless I pack up and move to another continent. Except Morathi. Morathi is a great minion for N'Kari.
... N'Kari is honestly just broken. Vassals will spend themselves into bankruptcy on armies they can't afford, even when not fighting anyone... Or even when they're winning. And SI says it gives a large relations bonus to chaos factions, but it doesn't do that at all. At least not with N'kari's own faction.
Vassalization is one of the best and most fleshed out mechanics in the game, i dont know how come they dont end up destroying all the factions for you like it does for me
yeah no, not even close. With over 7000 hours across all three games, I can confidently say that vasslals suck all around. Even factions that boost/play around vasslas (Archaeon, Valkia, N'kaai, N'kari etc.) suck, vassles are too passive, they don't grow, refuse to continue recruiting armies/units, overall they become brain dead
Might be overpowered but I feel like you should be able to recruit vassal units, of course put limits according to their military strength/rank as that would make you more inclined to vassal an opponent rather than take all settlements and get the extra income.
I WANT to like Warriors of Chaos. But between their limited number of capitals and their reliance on vassals, I just find them WAY more frustrating than fun. Fixing vassals would at least give me a reason to try them again.
Far worse than having a vassal that does nothing is one that kills the army you need to kill or takes the settlement you need even when you told them to do something else. The alliance tab needs one extra order that lets you label an enemy army or settlement as off limits to your vassal or alliance partner.
Having vassals fight amongst themselves for favour would be good. Certain vassals give certain bonuses so the more powerful they become the better you become naturally would be awesome
@@lewishorsman2219 I know it was meant as a taunt but I'll answer you anyway "Having vassals fight amongst themselves for favor would be good." all my campaigns are developing into positional warfare every little help is necessary while I hold the position and expand, my friends are slowly dying I don't need them to die even faster or for relationships to deteriorate because I'm allied with their opponent (the other vassal) on the other hand, the Chaos factions benefit from as many vassals as possible if they slaughter each other, that doesn't help them
That be just like having two military allies, conquering the world and then one declares war on the other and you get dragged into the war with either of them, or lose both and tons of reliability. No thanks. Please don't re-fuck-up Nakai again.
In addition to what you listed, imo there are more issues: Why is it that, even when playing as the likes of Slaanesh and getting loads of extra +vassal income bonuses, the amount they give you is generally pretty god awful? Why, when someone declares war on me, is my vassal allowed to say "nah mate, I'm good"? Why can they do the same when I try to drag them into a war when attacking? Why, particularly when I'm playing WoC, is there no way to "demand" a settlement, like a Dark Fortress or a valuable resource? Why, when playing an evil faction that vassalizes a good-guy faction, does it destroy any chance of diplomacy with other evil factions? What's the point then? Why, when playing a faction like slaanesh or tzeentch or whatever, am I not allowed to leave non-harmful cults detected in settlements by my vassals, or even my allies? Why is my vassal (although this is an AI problem in general) so focused on sacking settlements for less than 100 gold, rather than actually taking them and making way more?
Not wholly disagreeing with you on this. But as warriors of chaos I've gotten great use out of the vassal system in my campaigns. I do need to admit that i use a mod that removes the mercenary cap, but aside from that its all vanilla gameplay. Ive had chaos campaigns where I was getting 25k per turn in the green thanks to vassals. I've got one going right now as Sigvald where i have 8 armies rolling around and still in the green on income at the end of every turn. One thing is definitely don't restrict yourself to just norscan vassals, in fact most any time the opportunity to vassalize a faction presents itself take it. Also, make sure where possible that your vassals get access to major settlements. How are you supposed to get access to high tier units from allies if they can't make high tier buildings? In my Sigvald game I've got an army with treemen from wood elves and Alariel, and several other armies rocking hydras and kharybdass from dark elves.
I'm currently quite late into an Azazel campaign and I wish I could just gift them any settlement as I've got three norscans as a vassal, Festus and I've got Throt as a Vassal and I keep gifting throt settlements but he doesn't have the food so his armies take attrition so I've had to pause giving him settlements but now I've got a tonne of settlements I have no use of I wish I could just throw to my norscan vassals one border further away maybe with some work I can get them to border where I'm currently waging war but damn its going to take some time
pharaoh vassals are active, but they tend to bomb your diplomacy, because allies of the vasal master and vassals of allies don’t count as vassals for some reason. in 3k I think vassals also were very independent, I don’t know about rome 2, but in my experience vassals actually acted once in a while, so warhammer just is the trilogy that got shit vassals
First of all more fractions schould have akcess to vasal system. Bretonia as medival kingdom, empire becouse elector counts are basicaly vasal. Dwarws also have a king and schould be able to vasalize other dwarws.
I just use a mod to eliminate the Warriors of Chaos needing vassals. Once CA stops trying to treat the game as something other than a map painting simulator, we will know true peace.
Vassals are OK First of all, please deal with real problems and not slightly annoying side issues More annoying is that you can't recruit the same units that a coalition faction can recruit after you have formed a coalition But my biggest problem is the map and the late game (after round 150-400 or so) The map is huge (actually good) which means it takes a long time to take everything (not so good) But at the same time, the visibility and the willingness of the AI to attack across oceans and incredible distances is ridiculous In the end, the whole world is in an eternally long trench war And if you then have funny mechanics that make it all even more annoying, make it last longer or otherwise prevent you from winning quickly... (limited army numbers for tomb kings, slaves and resources of the chaos dwarves, the rebel armies of the dark elves... oh how much fun it is to take five times as long as usual... ) that's the main reason why the game is slowly burning me out please let me take over a continent and only have a few points where the enemies have the chance to be close enough to attack and not have to surround an entire ocean to secure it
The whole diplomatic system is lame and dumb. I want a game of thrones level of diplomacy with skills for backstabing people without getting automatic penalties.
I mean with the CA debackle still having any hope for improvement. When the top brass wasnt fired or changed. Like what do you want? Sure your channel only grew because of total war warhammer. But like. A sinking ship is still a sinking ship. Either you sink with it or you leave.
Giveaway linked in the description :)
Vassals are simply far to powerful, every faction that starts with one is a really crap boring campaign that is impossible to lose, they really need to make several of the chaos/destruction campaigns much harder, it would help the repeatability of the game a lot.
@@alistairbolden63403 kingdoms vassal system. Simple fix
The easiest fix, at least in Total War Warhammer, is just to give vassals unlimited allegiance points. That means you can recruit as many of their units as you want (within the restraints of army caps), give them orders, and take over their armies when necessary. Would give vassals good utility and all the infrastructure for it is already in the game.
That would actually make me play the Vampire Counts. I don't like playing factions without ranged, so I could easily get some Empire Archers, Crossbowmen or Handgunners in my armies playing as Vlad that way. The vassal units should have a regular recruitment cost then however, to keep it balanced.
Should also so you can force vassals to trade settlements (my vassls keep taking my wanted settlements!) And borrow vassal factions leaders.
While good on paper,bit is but a small fix for a mechanic that in my book deserves more time and work.
Allegiance wouldn't even need to be unlimited, you just need to gain way more per turn in general (maybe proportional to vassals and your own empire size, so that you can keep adding similar amounts of units to more and more armies over time and give more orders as you have more territory and enemies this could also encourage and benefit players to actually get vassals to own more than a single provice in late game) and also be able to trade settlements for allegiance and generate allegiance when gifting to your vassals.
@IlBuonDiavolo131313 I don't disagree, but I'm just saying it could be significantly improved with only a minor tweak.
Currently playing with Fudging Vassals! Mod. Much much improved on vanilla, letting you donate conquered settlements etc. what I would like is the Diplomacy option to set Vassals free like in 3K but with the option to have them as a military or defensive ally and have them like you for setting them free rather than hate you for breaking a vassal treaty
Fudging Vassals is great, goes with any campaign even if you're not doing any vassalizing.
This game needs an active vassal loyalty mechanic. in general it'll decay with vassal power, and improve with overlord power, and maybe add a set of actions overlords can do to their vassals, that impact this: donate money, levi taxes, demand troops, donate settlement, demand settlement, and more.
I just recently started vassalizing a lot. I've found that certain settlements offered to certain factions is an automatic vassalization. I'm currently playing a Tamurkhan campaign. Grimgor was ranked 1 in power. I was 60+. I took a settlement next to one of his, offered it to him and he became my vassal. My entire Eastern front is protected.
I was playing as Vlad and noticed this too. Thought it was because of a Vampire mod, but nope. Just a skewed game mechanic.
There should actually be a threat that a vassal can leave you and declare independence. Especially as you mentioned if you tax them too high (which would require that tax rate mechanic)
I feel like this happened me once and I don't know if it was a mod or me misremembering what happened also could have been me being an idiot
I feel like they are a great avenue for inter race crossover too. Like a more expanded outpost system where you can maybe build a limited about race specific buildings if you vassalise them for heavy costs. And more factions should be able to vassalise in the first place.
For most factions they can. Warriors of Chaos and Slaanesh are the special ones, their vassals are explictly unable to rebel (and their campaign mechanics depend on that. A faction corrupted and brainwashed by N'Kari being able to say "nope" would (a) not make a whole lot of sense and (b) make the mechanic even worse than it already is). But for everyone else they totally can and will.
People just don't notice, because WoC and Slaanesh are also the factions that they... You know... Get vassals on.
This. I didnt know that could happen in warhammer TW. Was playing as Chaos Dwarves and had conquered or vassalized half the map. Next thing i know several of my most useful vassals start rebelling. Made for an annoying yet interesting situation where i suddenly had tough enemies again thanks to feeling the need to crushmy little traitors.@someguy1ification
@austin0351 I've heard it's possible but never experienced it. But then there should be a meter to show how loyal/disloyal to know where they are at. And ways to affect it
I like the eu4 system of vassel, where I can feed them settlements, take them off them, and most importantly integrate them
I would really like the loan army feature if it was available more than like, once every 50 turns and available for longer. 10 turns is actually not that much. Considering how often i have to spend half that trying to move them from where they are, to somewhere they can actually help me. A building to increase vassal allegiance gain would also be incredibly useful. An embassy, or a subsidy i could give them, etc.
This is exactly it. Vassals are supposed to send troops !
Ah man but I really like gifting a faction twice my size a tier 2 settlement for the cost of vassalization.
Yeah, this needs to be fixed.
Every time I vassalize morathi and Malekith with Valkia, they end up conquering all of lustria without much imupt from me. I think the vassal problem is mostly due to minor factions not being proactive enough.
100% this
They could take some inspiration from Age of Wonders 4. I love that you can recruit for your vassal (at a discount!) and they seem to follow orders.
My issue with the vassal system is that it's really only for the "badguys" ...and that the player can't be a vassal.
Playing as malus you ought to start as malekith's vassal. And playing as volkmar the grim you need to be a vassal of Karl Franse. And playing as Louen Leoncoeur your aim ought to be to vassalise the rest of the lords, not confederate them.
I think we need the changeling/underempire/deep/underemp/piratecove/embassy? So we can actually build on vassal territory like actual master of that vassal. Nakai can build on his vassal territory and only if his vassal control area with lzd landmark, woc can build on norsca vassal capital if they vassalize their capital and vampire can build too on their vassal capital if they are human race. Slaanesh is same but adding elven race
I'd like a system that allows a player to recruit vassal units when in their territory with no cap. It's not 2 allies sharing resources, so it should fall under alliance recruitment. It should be possible as the warriors of chaos to be running around with armies comprised entirely of a mix of cathay, vampire, skaven, empire because they're all vassals and the armies got made along the way. I want vassals to be more vassal and less forced military alliance
Also…why don’t we have a system like Mount and Blade where we can tell an allied army to follow us around?
This is a good topic that I hope they consider. Vassals should work differently for various factions but the general concept be the same, vassals provide troops & resources as though it were your own with them managing their own upkeep in exchange for protection.
Vampire Counts especially need this as a mechanic since it ties so closely to their lore. I’ve vassalized Stirland by turn 5 only for them to break trade agreements etc with me following my attacks against less obedient humans. You are MY faction now, you serve me, not the empire.
Love the idea of being able to adjust the amount of income received from vassals, and being able to gift multiple settlements / settlements from afar. Was playing a campaign with Kholek recently and found that vassals vary in playstyle greatly, the minor norscan factions did almost nothing but Grimgor and Tamurkhan were great vassals!
I love vassals, when I still had a laptop, before a fire happened that forced me out of my apartment. When I could play I would try to get a vassal from every subfactions, like collecting the legendary lords, and I was genuinely annoyed when I would get my vassals built up, as a good liege does. They would get a full province and then rebel when I would have like 3 full provinces.
I genuinely hope they do eventually do something about the vassal system as the mechanic seems to be an after thought and very much left behind.
there should be an option that makes your vassals attach (follow) their armies to your armies. So they could assist you rather than dying and giving the enemy LL free xp. Also annexing. Their armies would vanish if they are a different race.
I love that CA seem to be listening to these kind of suggestions, keep the ideas coming it's greatly appreciated
You need to gain way more allegiance per turn in general (maybe proportional to vassals and your own empire size, so that you can keep adding similar amounts of units to more and more armies over time and give more orders as you have more territory and enemies this could also encourage and benefit players to actually get vassals to own more than a single provice in late game) and also be able to trade settlements for allegiance and generate allegiance when gifting to your vassals.
An idea of mine would be for the owner faction to demand a detachment force from the vassal faction, a chosen number of units taken away from the vassal faction which would be attached to any armies of their own choosing, even other allied factions. They would act similarly to an orc's waagh and reinforce the chosen army every battle it enters.
Or at least a small army that we can control for free that replenishes on its own and builds up over time.
Reliance on vassals is why I don't enjoy playing Warriors of Chaos. You end up having to defend their territory as much as you expand to new territories.
I definitely agree with improving settlement trades. There is no reason why we should not be able to trade multiple settlements simultaneously and there is no reason why you have to be bordering the settlement. Just give a negative opinion to the deal if the settlement is far away as the other faction would be less willing to take it.
I mean, I have had pretty solid results across multiple games with using my vassals in wars as warriors. In fact I've had some vassals that are so bloodthirsty they'll even get ahead of my main armies and take territory I wanted.
I feel like a lot of the complaints about the vassals just kinda tie into the AI in general. All the Ai factions are so slow and passive, they rarely ever do anything. They only seem to be agressive at all when fighting the player, so you see them do shit like just not finish off a completely defenseless enemy for ages and let them build up an army again, or you have a military ally just stand there, nex to an undefended border of a common enemy
At 11:20 I thought you said feudal Texas ….interesting thought experiment
I also want to be able to force my vassals to give me a specific settlement, just "this city is mine now." The number of times my vassals have run up and taken a dark fortress from me while I was securing the area is not insignificant. It's a major problem for me.
CA has been pushing out great patches recently. However, a few months of that cannot make up for years of technical debt and under investing in the game's core mechanics. Ai, diplomacy, faction mechanics, ui and qol improvements have suffered because of this for years.
In my opinion, the main issue, and my most infuriating shortcoming of Total war is the campaign Ai.
I suspect the "potential" system is a mayor culprit here. Because big AI's that are your enemies have no problem sending multiple stacks to attack you.
However so many factions have several stacks guarding at home and always sending one stack to die.
Another thing is that there used to be complaints that the ai had tunnel vision and did not defend "the other enemy" taking their lands. However this was overcorrected and with the "focus on strongest enemy system" where the ai will now refuse to finish off an enemy and allow them to recover again and again.
Also, and this is so basic, don't bloody raze a settlement belonging to your core Province just because an enemy took it.
Ai does not know how to prioritize sacking, razing or occupying beyond the level of a todler
Those are some of my thoughts...
*edit: typos*
You're pretty much on point regarding the potential being important in how useful a vassal can be. If you vassal a minor norscan faction or whatever, don't expect them to do literally anything ever.
If you vassalise Throgg, Wulfrik, Grimgor or any of the people you often see become big players then that's a different story.
They have a pretty good chance of doing well for themselves. Still won't listen to what you tell them to do though in my experience.
Also yes, the AI likes razing and sacking faaaaaar too much.
I honestly think disabling their ability to raze or sack settlements (unless that's all they can do, like beastmen etc) would make the AI in general progress a lot faster as they wouldn't waste their time and armies for a measly 100 gold or so.
I'm glad you covered this topic man it is so needed that CA take another look at the vassal system and give it a good rework!
I would love a propper vassal system. I tryed to play with some vassals sometimes too. Normally I don't because of your mentioned reasons.
CK is a great inspiring game for diplomacy and systems and I hope CA is actively looking into this topic!
The problem with vassals is the same with many other interaction types of issue: Diplomacy.
Warhammer is still stuck with the old Diplomacy format and it shows how bad is affecting the game.
I was playing an archaon campaign and I was quite happy when I got a dilema that let me to execute my vassals faction leader, allowing me to roll boris with 2 armies in a full marauder tide.
There needs to be a better way of getting allies to support you than praying that they may move into supporting distance during your end turn when you expect to get attacked, or plan to attack a settlement you were sieging.
There is a mod that force-teleport an ally to your army, but that is a little too gamey and makes things maybe a bit too easy, but WH3 needs to have something in between these two extremes. It's so annoying when you have a vassal in or two in the area, but they don't come close enough to back you up.
I usually just get the message that vassal armies are containing units I can't recruit so I can hardly use the borrow feature. Not sure if that's Vanilla or a mod conflict.
I feel especially with a slaanesh dlc being all but confirmed next, it would be an apt time for a vassal rework
Diplomacy and Vassals are very undercooked in Warhammer Total War.
I’d definitely appreciate a revamp of the system.
I am waiting for this change to do a only 1 provance slannesh play through
I think a big part of the "vassals are braindead" vibe is people vassalize tiny factions expecting them to do amazing things. I've got vassals with 20+ regions who stomp all my enemies for me. (Though your example here of them wandering off instead of attacking is also a big issue).
Maybe it doesn’t work for every race/faction but I think an integration system like in EU4 could be good. Maybe it costs X amount of turns per settlement plus a base number, maybe a ton of allegiance points and you have to have high relations.
You can cheese the game by donating a settlement to a faction, and they might become your vassal. Or as I like to call them, buffer states. CA could learn a lot from Paradox in how they handle factions and politics. Stellaris is already basically Warhammer 40k
I have a hard time even getting any vessels
I’d like to see a loyalty system: loyal vassals give more resources and gifts, and disloyal ones may act against you, makes other vassals disloyal and even rebel. You increase loyalty through being more powerful, agent actions, and giving vassals land, troops, and funds. You decrease loyalty through ordering vassals to join wars, failing to defend them, and demanding funds.
I'd even accept the odd rng missions based on the particilular faction and have branching option etc
This can wait tbh. There are things in the game that need the fixes more urgently...
*Stares at undead factions intently*
idk if the mod I use fixes this but Vassals help me a shit ton.
Now I do Have an AI mod in use its called No-biased AI or something unbiased AI maybe?. Makes everything have the same threat level as the player. Meaning they wont ignore the giant army two spaces away from them to come attack your one army all the way across the island you're on or whatever. this may be fixing the vassal problem. If you are the bigger threat the AI acts like it if you arent it acts like it. How it should be.
4:45 it's so frustrating (and baffling) to me that the WoC cause their vassals to favor their corruption type... But N'Kari doesn't. Vassals I take with Seductive Influence just get destroyed by Slaanesh corruption unless I pack up and move to another continent.
Except Morathi. Morathi is a great minion for N'Kari.
... N'Kari is honestly just broken. Vassals will spend themselves into bankruptcy on armies they can't afford, even when not fighting anyone... Or even when they're winning.
And SI says it gives a large relations bonus to chaos factions, but it doesn't do that at all. At least not with N'kari's own faction.
Vassalization is one of the best and most fleshed out mechanics in the game, i dont know how come they dont end up destroying all the factions for you like it does for me
IT really is not Even close to what you are saying itse better than IT was but far from The best mechanic
yeah no, not even close. With over 7000 hours across all three games, I can confidently say that vasslals suck all around. Even factions that boost/play around vasslas (Archaeon, Valkia, N'kaai, N'kari etc.) suck, vassles are too passive, they don't grow, refuse to continue recruiting armies/units, overall they become brain dead
@@thatswede836 There's your problem, you just mentioned mostly Warriors of chaos. When the real fun is vassalizing as Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts
Might be overpowered but I feel like you should be able to recruit vassal units, of course put limits according to their military strength/rank as that would make you more inclined to vassal an opponent rather than take all settlements and get the extra income.
I WANT to like Warriors of Chaos. But between their limited number of capitals and their reliance on vassals, I just find them WAY more frustrating than fun. Fixing vassals would at least give me a reason to try them again.
Far worse than having a vassal that does nothing is one that kills the army you need to kill or takes the settlement you need even when you told them to do something else. The alliance tab needs one extra order that lets you label an enemy army or settlement as off limits to your vassal or alliance partner.
I think you should be able to control your vasals armies
Having vassals fight amongst themselves for favour would be good.
Certain vassals give certain bonuses so the more powerful they become the better you become naturally would be awesome
please don't
@@TAB_100 oh wise one please show me the error of my ways…
@@lewishorsman2219
I know it was meant as a taunt
but I'll answer you anyway
"Having vassals fight amongst themselves for favor would be good."
all my campaigns are developing into positional warfare
every little help is necessary
while I hold the position and expand, my friends are slowly dying
I don't need them to die even faster or for relationships to deteriorate because I'm allied with their opponent
(the other vassal)
on the other hand, the Chaos factions benefit from as many vassals as possible
if they slaughter each other, that doesn't help them
That be just like having two military allies, conquering the world and then one declares war on the other and you get dragged into the war with either of them, or lose both and tons of reliability. No thanks.
Please don't re-fuck-up Nakai again.
In addition to what you listed, imo there are more issues:
Why is it that, even when playing as the likes of Slaanesh and getting loads of extra +vassal income bonuses, the amount they give you is generally pretty god awful?
Why, when someone declares war on me, is my vassal allowed to say "nah mate, I'm good"? Why can they do the same when I try to drag them into a war when attacking?
Why, particularly when I'm playing WoC, is there no way to "demand" a settlement, like a Dark Fortress or a valuable resource?
Why, when playing an evil faction that vassalizes a good-guy faction, does it destroy any chance of diplomacy with other evil factions? What's the point then?
Why, when playing a faction like slaanesh or tzeentch or whatever, am I not allowed to leave non-harmful cults detected in settlements by my vassals, or even my allies?
Why is my vassal (although this is an AI problem in general) so focused on sacking settlements for less than 100 gold, rather than actually taking them and making way more?
Not wholly disagreeing with you on this. But as warriors of chaos I've gotten great use out of the vassal system in my campaigns. I do need to admit that i use a mod that removes the mercenary cap, but aside from that its all vanilla gameplay. Ive had chaos campaigns where I was getting 25k per turn in the green thanks to vassals. I've got one going right now as Sigvald where i have 8 armies rolling around and still in the green on income at the end of every turn. One thing is definitely don't restrict yourself to just norscan vassals, in fact most any time the opportunity to vassalize a faction presents itself take it. Also, make sure where possible that your vassals get access to major settlements. How are you supposed to get access to high tier units from allies if they can't make high tier buildings? In my Sigvald game I've got an army with treemen from wood elves and Alariel, and several other armies rocking hydras and kharybdass from dark elves.
I'm currently quite late into an Azazel campaign and I wish I could just gift them any settlement as I've got three norscans as a vassal, Festus and I've got Throt as a Vassal and I keep gifting throt settlements but he doesn't have the food so his armies take attrition so I've had to pause giving him settlements but now I've got a tonne of settlements I have no use of I wish I could just throw to my norscan vassals one border further away maybe with some work I can get them to border where I'm currently waging war but damn its going to take some time
pharaoh vassals are active, but they tend to bomb your diplomacy, because allies of the vasal master and vassals of allies don’t count as vassals for some reason. in 3k I think vassals also were very independent, I don’t know about rome 2, but in my experience vassals actually acted once in a while, so warhammer just is the trilogy that got shit vassals
I do agree. System for Nakai is very annoying
First of all more fractions schould have akcess to vasal system. Bretonia as medival kingdom, empire becouse elector counts are basicaly vasal. Dwarws also have a king and schould be able to vasalize other dwarws.
All i ask is for high elves to be able to vassalize
I just use a mod to eliminate the Warriors of Chaos needing vassals. Once CA stops trying to treat the game as something other than a map painting simulator, we will know true peace.
They should do what you tell them to do.
maybe with Slanesh DLC
Is there a mod that improves the vassal system?
Vassals and alliances always feel weak and passive. It's very annoying.
They still didn't release the trailer. Legend was right with the leaks.
What are you talking about
What were the leaks exactly?
First! Knee down, vassals!
I think the root of the problem lies in AI in general. Its just so stupid
Ya its not very good,i once vasseled a faction just for it to declare independence on the very next turn like how does that even happen?
Vassals are OK
First of all, please deal with real problems and not slightly annoying side issues
More annoying is that you can't recruit the same units that a coalition faction can recruit after you have formed a coalition
But my biggest problem is the map and the late game (after round 150-400 or so)
The map is huge (actually good) which means it takes a long time to take everything (not so good)
But at the same time, the visibility and the willingness of the AI to attack across oceans and incredible distances is ridiculous
In the end, the whole world is in an eternally long trench war
And if you then have funny mechanics that make it all even more annoying, make it last longer or otherwise prevent you from winning quickly...
(limited army numbers for tomb kings, slaves and resources of the chaos dwarves, the rebel armies of the dark elves... oh how much fun it is to take five times as long as usual... )
that's the main reason why the game is slowly burning me out
please let me take over a continent and only have a few points where the enemies have the chance to be close enough to attack
and not have to surround an entire ocean to secure it
I wish they listen to you
The whole diplomatic system is lame and dumb. I want a game of thrones level of diplomacy with skills for backstabing people without getting automatic penalties.
.
I mean with the CA debackle still having any hope for improvement.
When the top brass wasnt fired or changed.
Like what do you want?
Sure your channel only grew because of total war warhammer.
But like. A sinking ship is still a sinking ship. Either you sink with it or you leave.
Bro