We Need To Talk About Vassals In Stellaris

Playing with vassals is.. boring..
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Stellaris is a 4X grand strategy video game developed and published by Paradox Interactive. Stellaris' gameplay revolves around space exploration, managing an empire, diplomacy, and space warfare with other space-faring civilizations.
#Stellaris #Ep3o #vassals

[@Ep3o]

What should paradox do about vassals?

[@eagan_1902]

Easy Make them require a envoy for each vassal Or at least make it hella hard without them Also if an ai gets or becomes a vassal that vassal loses all ai benifits Nerf specialized vassals Buff conquering at least fully conquering Buff the ai ( Give them blueprints for builds like [ if alloy production is less than X specialize a planet for forges Fix loyalty Negative loyalty should make people 90% likely to rebel Negative loyalty should spread to your other vassals massivly And if bad things happen to your vassal and you dont do anything more negative loyalty Someone declares war on them A crisis spawns near them An Infiltration fully happens

[@pawezarnowski4793]

Definitely needs better ways to wage war. Something like knocking vassals out from your opponents empire one by one when you conquer them. And rework the independecne wars. The fact, that you cannot decide to stand against your overlord when someone else rebels is very limiting. And the fact, that in liberation war vassal needs to conquer overlords systems is plainly stupid

[@Nameless-dd7ju]

Make vassals more rebellious and every month they have a chance to revolt and must conquer their own domain. add to this some ideaolagy interactions and options as well as more options for the overlord for their subjects/pops. also some ideaolagies that fundamentally go against it and will never vassalize (easily).

[@mchristian2142]

I feel like there should be a hard vassal cap instead of a soft cap with loyalty, similar to mercenary cap. Make it possible to increase through ethics (maybe Authoritarian gives increased vassal cap?) or civics/ascension perks to a smaller extent, similar to now but stricter/less generous. Loyalty should scale the rate of return from subject taxes. 100 Loyalty? Get 100% of the taxes. -100 Loyalty? 0% of the taxes. This simultaneously gives disloyal vassals the resources to fight back against their Overlord while crippling an over-dependent Overlord, and logically assumes that a disloyal and therefore neglected or abused vassal will be less willing to give up its resources or sovereignty. Alternatively, do what the vassal trust mod does and require that there's a minimum trust required to propose diplomatic vassalage, or that you can only create vassals through war- which won't stop more powerful empires from taking someone as a subject, but it requires more effort on their part, more time and penalizes their relationship- as it should.

[@yaroslavstarchenko4358]

We Need Borders mod sounds like they nailed a very good idea on paper, looking forward to that video. Also your vassals will rebel(one by one, which sucks) only if you are being a TOTAL fanatic xenophobic ass, I feel that any points of ethics difference should bleed loyalty and when loyalty is -100 they shall be trying to go to war with you and unite other mad vassals, perhaps plainly pay you less or sabotage you in other different ways

[@EeveeAsPie]

make vassalizing harder, and less OP, and make cooperation between independent empires stronger also wanna see vassalizing changed like mentioned, making it more interesting from a story telling side. they should be much more demanding to justify their benefits

[@Thetb93]

on the other hands vassalised empires should not be a burden on the overlord. i like vassals to free up my own hands to not have to manage every planet in the galaxy

[@EeveeAsPie]

@@Thetb93 i mean demanding more like, loyalty matters more, not so much requires management

[@Verpal]

Although I had some stupid vassal micromanagement mod installed myself, I understand the general playerbase doesn't like crushing their ball after work and pretend that is gaming, so yeah just a little bit of loyalty management sounds great.

[@dastardlydwarf6909]

I think if they make it easier for vassals to join up with other vassals and war against an overlord. Maybe change shared destiny so it only slightly alleviates the opinion modifiers. They could also make it so making a vassal happier is much harder and a unhappy vassal is taxing on the overlord because they have to divert recourses to effectively control them.

[@tbotalpha8133]

I like that Shared Destiny is so powerful. I'd actually make it so it's much harder to keep vassals happy without it (or the Feudal Society civic, which does the same thing), so it's a must-have if you plan to go for a vassal-heavy run. Make it actually feel meaningful as an Ascension Perk pick.

[@schwingedeshaehers]

Higher impact from taking resources is okay, or things like that. You can also have many vassels and don't be a greedy overlord, with reasonable contracts. And may make the power modifier bigger, if they are unhappy (maybe even add that if the people inside the empire are unhappy, it will lower there relation)

[@schwingedeshaehers]

And make federations more powerful

[@dann1295]

I was thinking that one of the biggest issue was the amount of resources you could get from your vassel, so maybe instead of getting basically all their resources maybe cap it at 20% or something. You could also maybe implement a sort of vassal tiers, kinda like federations, where you have to "invest" in leveling up your vassal contract, by for example putting an envoy to "work" on the contract, so you over time "unlock" new max cap or other things like in the federations, so if you want a better contract faster, you have to get more envoys to work on it.

[@colorblindwizard7200]

Yes, Yes they do.

[@azeria1]

More vassal events that change depending on what type of vassal they are

[@Fireballl14]

Make vasalization available only after going down domination traditions tree, and there should be max 3 vassals slots, one for each type. This will reduce vasalization dramatically.

[@cosmosyn2514]

Make an extra vassal slots tech in engineering to annoy meta nerds 🧠

[@ondrejbronec837]

⁠@@cosmosyn2514I am a meta nerd and don’t see how is that annoying. Engineering is meta anyway since you rush megastructures and other Voidcraft techs. Should be a society tech - that tree is still the weakest and it is more flavorful.

[@cosmosyn2514]

@@ondrejbronec837 engineering being meta is the exact point. making more needed techs be in the engineering tree would slow down players because they need to choose between two important techs.

[@funnelvortex7722]

I, for one, love vassals/vassalizing, even before the Overlord update I preferred to make vassals or release conquered territory as vassals so I could feel like I was running an actual historical empire like the British Empire (IN SPACE!!!) composed of many semi-autonomous provinces and territories rather than dealing with a giant blob of micromanagement hell. The current system plays into my RP style so well I had no idea it was hated. I think one way to balance it would be to keep loyalty dependent on sending envoys, after all as we've seen from history without representation the subject territory is more likely to revolt (1776).

[@OathOblivio]

One idea is to incorporate the representation system into the council system depending on your vassalization policy (benevolent vassalage has a vassal council rep of the vassal race, while oppressive vassalage prevents you from having a vassal council rep of that race, but maybe instead you can only have a overlord race in the vassal rep which will require some loyalty see-sawing)

[@u_n_owenscp6112]

the problem starts when you vassalize an AI empire. AI gets a lot of resources from hardest difficulty tier, and by vassalizing it ,you get a 75% share of it.

[@desuordie4856]

Yeah they really could just give the player resources before the AI buff is applied

[@exelenxius5832]

Solution is to not use difficulty tier, and use starnet or startech. I usually use captain difficulty and when i vassalize ai, they lose the bonus, but since the ai is starnet they are less braindead and the advanced start ai will usually be competitive even in end game

[@koolguy751]

Vassals should add empire size relative to their own size, that way those trying to play tall will have to either accept a higher spike on empire size or if someone is playing super wide, know that if by having multiple vassals their science+traditions will suck hard.

[@Conclusius68]

Perhaps something like a "We Want Our Sovereignty Back" faction could spawn automatically in any vassalized empire? Something like the Manifesti, but growing more powerful over time, making vassalized pops more and more unhappy.

[@zeekirill1177]

1. Vassals can start group rebel if even one of them has -50> loyality (3 vassals vs player) and give them great temporaly buffs 2. If you start war with equal enemy they could betray you (Low loyality or/and >2 Vassals) 3. They will give huge empire size debuf 4. Make much harder to get loyalty and make it event-dependent 5. If you're not empire or dictator they give stability debuf on planets and give a chance to spawn small fleet what will fight for independens (Even if they have 100 loyality)

[@justinsinke2088]

I feel like part of the issue with vassals is that they're also "set it and forget it" for the most part. I mean, you're sort of incentivized to make vassals loyal because you need loyalty to level up specialty vassals and can negotiate more exploitative contracts while maintaining positive loyalty if you get them to like you first (and once they like you a little, you can make fairly cheap trades for Pledge Loyalty to give it a further boost), but if you just want an economy boost, you can just exploit your vassal from the start and while they may be mad about it, there isn't really anything they can do about it other than swear secret fealty, and how often does that go anywhere? Once you get that initial vassal acceptance, it's not hard to just full exploit and forget. There's no real cost to maintaining vassals, outside of certain specialty vassal mandates in the contracts. Whether or not they like you/hate you or are loyal/disloyal is often largely irrelevant. Their economy and stability could be tanking under your lordship and it will only cause issues for the vassal empire. If Loyalty had potential complications like high crime or low stability, it might be more interesting, as well as making maintaining loyalty a bit more dynamic (rather than the current "the loyalty change is currently +4.1, I can set the contract to four points lower in my favor and still maintain a loyalty gain) and something that could fluctuate more. If you look at your vassals and have to think "hmm...their loyalty is dipping, I should do something about that before it gets worse", and there isn't a quick, easy, and cheap of doing so, it'll make having vassals potentially a little more dynamic. Especially if other empires can, say, use spy networks to sabotage loyalty to cause complications with vassals

[@ondrejbronec837]

Difficulty setting might help with this. I play with scaling modifiers and no scaling (Admiral for meta builds and Commodore for roleplay or niché builds). On these settings the AI almost never wants to be a vassal. Last game I had 3 and two of them were released parts of my Empire after a war in heaven. The last one I needed to fight literal millions worth of fleet power to get. Currently quite small sample size, but seems to make it a lot better. Also worth mentioning I add 3-4 advanced AIs to the large galaxy. They ussually vassalize a bunch of people making the system even more balanced and making for an exciting late game even with tons of vassals yourself.

[@gigasus3]

Vassals get a situation like rebellion where they can choose to remain loyal or fight to be free Examples: 1. Remaining as a Vassal requires the Factions to be at like 50% approval and Planet Stability at 50% as well and suffer from 'freedom fighters' which takes a toll on the Factions Approval and Planet Stability (not sure how this would work on Capitals) 2. Fight for freedom, similar how the Imperial Fiefdom Origin works when the ADV Empire starts to die. Cause use unique Espionage Missions like Sabotaging starbases or planets and diverting key resources like Strategic and Alloys

[@DestructivelyPhased]

Hey look, I made it into a Ep3o video! On the solution to the current meta, mods is probably the best answer. I’d like to see a video on Vassals expanded and reworked, though if it doesn’t work, maybe combine the trust mod and the border mod? If they’re compatible. Anyway, for paradox fixing vassals; a good first step could be that if you have disloyal vassals giving you resources where if they all stopped giving you resources you would go broke, they rebel. That way the overlord parasite isn’t as powerful. Other good steps are also limiting diplomatic vassaling, letting vassals fight back on their terms somewhat if they are disloyal (for example, if they have severe disloyalty let them only give a portion of the resources their contract requires, let them dissent in votes in the galactic community, if you’re at war with a 3rd party, let them launch opportunistic rebellions…). There’s a lot of room where they could go with preventing the overlord parasite playstyle by requiring more work than just “have big fleet”, which is needed as it lends itself so handily to “have big fleet”.

[@mikuba3394]

i am looking for this in tha whole internet and finally i found your video!

[@zoger3717]

The thing with the borders sounds pretty good, would be up for a Video :)

[@vKILLZ0NEv]

I'm actually planning a vassal themed mod. Let me know if you have any suggestions/reccomendations

[@michaelthayer5351]

Just play Fanatic Purifiers, I personally like how by mid game everyone is arrayed against me, either as vassal swarm or a federation, feels realistic.

[@Nightstalker565]

Maybe you should just have a video series testing out the different mod solutions you mentioned in an effort to find the best solution to vassal spam. Could be interesting to see if req borders or certain levels of trust are good enough solutions that if the devs used those, it would solve the problem or not.

[@albusvoltavern4500]

I’m shooting from the hip here but: 1) Vassals should not automatically be allowed to join federations, at least that should be the default stance and the ai should not want that law to change 2) valses cause a waterfall cost on influence; 1st vassal costs one, second costs 2 ect. This makes cost of a vassal be 1/3/6/10 ect 3) vassals don’t benefit from ai bonuses (this might already be true) and if vassals go in the negative resources they’ll implode/Balkanize 4) the strongest faction in your vassals empire should subtract from your unity income 5) let vassals infight 6) change feudal civic to be able to build only one sector, and anything outside of it will automatically become a hassle and let the game of thrones begin

[@davidk1308]

I think a combination of vassalization/federations requires trust/we require borders would be the best, most vanilla-like fix for gameplay. As for how to fix it in the base game, a solution I saw on the forums involved vassals giving you part of their Empire sprawl. But this would require a rework in sprawl mechanics to make it harder to get and stack effects It might also be useful that Shared Destiny reduces the maluses to multiple vassals, not removes them. Like you mentioned about Ceusader King's vassals needing a similar culture as you, Vassals could have loyalty debuffs if their ethics are opposite from yours, and could be amplified somewhat if other vassals have opposing ethics from them, like Federations get. So they could be more likely to declare independence.

[@cosmosyn2514]

I suggest vassal specializations be locked behind traditions or ethics similar to federation types. This means the more powerful vassal types require more initial investment on the players part. Vassal specializations could also be as a whole locked behind a tradition, similar to federations. This suggestion doesn't address the issues of easy diplomacy or simply squeezing resources from normal vassals, but it could be part of a larger solution with multiple components to it.

[@davidk1308]

Could be locked behind Domination like Federations are behind Diplomacy. Domination used to be vassal focused after all.

[@andromacdonald5216]

That sounds like a fair balancing to vassals

[@ondrejbronec837]

That wouldn’t help - tributary is the best type anyway.

[@krakraen343]

I hope they have a nice holliday

[@edgeofsky6684]

Yes they do or at least balanced. Because over the weekend during a rp game my friend had 9 vassals and they were impossible to beat with rest of the Galaxy against them. Like 80% of their stuff came from vassals. Like it was impossible. Like they need some sort of balance

[@archidor1944]

Option to disable vassalization or federation, or set it to a max. Like only three in a federation, only one vassal, etc.

[@morganbondlvl130]

I like the idea of "we require borders" sounds like it would fix the problem I often have of gearing up for war, and then my war target getting vasselized from across the galaxy by someone I haven't met.

[@isuckatusernames4297]

since I usually run my games to try to get an end game crisis and I don't play with the pop growth scaling (I like having every job on a planet filled in less than 300 years). I do tend to after a while, just scale massively and destroy like 3/4 of the galaxy after declaring a galactic purge. so I don't do vassals

[@cody1645]

I think something like increasing the loyalty cost for subsequent vassals and making it harder for additional members to succumb to vassalization could be a way to do it, but there would still be the issue of conquering to make them all vassals regardless. Maybe limit the amount of vassals each empire can have, like two from conquest, two from diplomacy?

[@chaoticcosmos7588]

I have three simple ideas to fix vassals. Make it so more vassals increase their disloyalty. Similar to how more leaders decreases exp gain and increases upkeep for all leaders. Make it so shared destiny halves that value. Make it so the percentage of energy and other resources is correlated to their loyalty. Something like the stability values but not nearly as intense. Maybe have the base zero impact at 60 loyalty. Maybe have shared destiny or civics or techs decrease it.

[@Alageild]

Those vassals mods sounds interesting, i would like to see it happen

[@kurozumi9834]

Funnily enough, i used to spam vassals before Overlord. When it came out, I immediately stopped using them. They made powerful and incredibly complicated to get and manage compared to before. I just don't want to have to manage my demands and all that when I'm just forcing every other empire into slavery. It's annoying.

[@ATacticalWaffle]

I'm curious how much a simple trust update will fix the problem before larger overhaul changes. As for your videos, I'd prefer if you come up with challenges that exclude vassals by definition (see montus 100 pop challenge or some of your own custom galaxy challenges)

[@Jernsaxe]

Shared Destiny is nice, but since Defender of the Galaxy was changed to +200 relationship you don't even need it, and you would much rather have Defender in the late game. I think lowering the max. resources you can take from 75% to 25-50% (would need testing).

[@schwingedeshaehers]

Maybe 10, 25, 50, with a higher penalty for 50?

[@Jernsaxe]

@@schwingedeshaehers I don't know what the correct numbers are. The issue with 75% tax is that due to AI bonusses on high difficulties taking a large tax off an AI vassal goes substantially more resources than taking their planets, even if you set them up correctly (which like the video mentions, takes a lot of effort).

[@Charles-wu3lh]

I too am sick of vassal spam. I'd like to see a mechanic to destabilize or foment vassal rebellion through espionage.

[@freewyvern707]

I think more needs to be done with Dialoyalty. It doesn't feel worth considering. So a fre of my suggestions. Disloyal Vassals will vote against you in the GC, and during war will not cooperate with your fleet. If a vassal is more than 50% Disloyal for a certain amount of times, they will get a rebellion equivalent to their disloyalty and drain on their economy. During this rebellion, the vassal will be unable to pay 50% of their taxes to you. If a vassal is more than 75% Disloyal for a time, the entire vassal will declare war against you. Add a small delay so if other vassals are close to the 75% mark, they will cooperate with their rebellion granted the vassals have atkeast neutral relations.

[@schwingedeshaehers]

For the GC, I would say it should depend on the terms. Less taxes sure, but I would say that the lost taxes go into the void (lost production from sabotage,...)

[@MGoogle3146]

Option C + we need borders, maybe there are some good ones out there to give devs idea

[@krait5645]

Something you could do is change the difficulty to normal (or at least something lower than grand admiral) and avoid/limit vassals. The AI will still vassalize but they will be less powerful due to the difficulty, and you won’t have as much result if you have vassals, since their difficulty threshold would be lower

[@dracish123456789]

you can also make sectors vassals

[@Slowpoke3x]

My favorites moments are when AI's stupidly get there fleets destroyed and all I have to do is ask with my fleet power of 7k and they roll over.

[@PanHaszaman]

On top of everything vassals should add bunch of random "problem" events, where you are forced to help them out in order to sustain them as reliable source otherwise they would give you temporarily lesser bonuses or even negative ones. This would create interesting dynamic and vassals wouldn't be just a free source of resources, but rather an active companion who you have to take care of in exchange for all the tributes.

[@potato88872]

It's not just vassalize, most of the time it's the AI that ask to be a puppet

[@nightroad3132]

Vassals Expanded and Reworked is the same as vanilla in the spam department but I would suggest that you use it along side We Require Borders I do and it works really well together and makes it better overall

[@gbadspcps2]

I personally wish that there would be vassal specific events that happen depending on what kind you take or are. It just feels stale and lifeless even if it was balanced.

[@jammerjansen]

I'd like to see paradox adding an attrition system the further away you are from your borders. Things like increased upkeep, reduced stats, desertion. Perhaps a fleet coherency? This could scale over time so you had to fly your fleets home or they would be useless. This would make it easier to defend against grand goals like making someone a vassal.

[@cosmosyn2514]

Also an indirect buff to slingshot to the stars/quantum catapults because there is no way that the origin or megastructure wouldn’t negate a significant amount of attrition.

[@jammerjansen]

@@cosmosyn2514 Yeah that origin needs some love anyways. Ofc there should be other ways to offset the debuff like a logistics admiral trait, tech, support ships maybe. Good use for the juggernaut

[@user-zx6fg9lv4d]

NO! Just no! Screw that! There were an ethics divergency system back in the old versions that made the game so annoying I dropped it for some time before they removed that diabolical stuff and put it back to hell.

[@dalsha6748]

What about just playing on a lower difficulty like Commodore or regular Admiral? I play on Commodore and I don’t find I need to rely on Vassals since I can compete with the AI overlords of the galaxy in fleet power, tech and economy thanks to my superior human intelligence allowing me to properly set up planets, habitats and manage my empire to a level the AI can’t. It is still a challenge because normally I get 0 vassals, I only make them if the other empire comes to me asking to be subjugated or if for some reason I don’t actually want to own the territory after a conquest war such as if there is a perfect location for a bulwark to be set up as a buffer between me and a rival power. Outside those rare exceptions where I do make 1 or maybe 2 vassals I can stand up to the AI’s own vassal spam fairly easily with a defensive pact or two and/or a federation with my fellow friendly empires, offering trades for materials such as alloys whenever I need more resources right now.

[@DoglasBubbleTrousers]

There should be a special vassal screen that would allow for vassals to complete special projects, and communicate with other vassals. These projects should provide competitive advantages and the ability to utilize their casus bellis with other vassals to return to independent status. These special projects should also allow extra diplomatic weight by providing galactic union support from other neighboring empires who want to help the vassals or stealing a part of a fleet, maybe making the fleet engage itself (100 ships -> 10 converted to pirates -> 90 vs 10). I have no clue what I am talking about tho, just spewing, I am a filthy vassal spammer lololol.

[@slipknottin]

I think using federations is still really powerful. What I do is once I grab a couple vassals I create a small crap empire make it a vassal, then release it, use it to start a federation, then kick it from the federation and vassalize it again. Then you have all your vassals tied in as federation memebers so they can’t revolt at all.

[@descuddlebat]

And you can also give the vassals an "all subject wars" term and they'll love it despite being stuck in a federation where offensive wars are voted on! Fedjugation is insane

[@slipknottin]

@@descuddlebat yea exactly. As long as the vassals in your federation are only allowed to vote with you then they can’t even declare war on anyone. You can definitely jerk them around more when they are federated

[@ScorpioneOrzion]

They changed this, if they rebel and they can rebel, nobody in the federation can help you, you can use this in pvp to just wreck someone in a federation, you submit and immediately send a indepence war, they lose their federation bonus.

[@psykovideos]

I think mods would be neat, in general I like full modded runs.

[@Kurotarosama]

The biggest upside to vassals being changed/nerfed is that GA won't be a complete steamroll. Although I will say advanced start GA on half, with advanced neighbors off does maintain the challenge, but its completely subject to spawn rng. If an advanced empire is within 2 empires of you, you just slingshot to OP. Real fun to need to reroll to maintain difficulty.

[@xoxxix9808]

Personally, I think having limit on vasal similar to leader capacity would be good (Like 1 at start and different civics, traditions, ascension perk increases the limit). And going past the limit has like massive empire size effect like 50% cost increase per vasal or something.

[@jode6543]

I like the idea of having vassals impact empire size. Maybe rather than a hard limit, a percentage of your vassals' size is added to your own, with the percentage increasing with each vassal?

[@IDGCaptainRussia]

I think the mod that limits Vassels to two is onto something: What if you needed something to increase your vassel limit, like say: a tech, a civic, and an AP point. You could also do stuff like lock non-border vassalization behind the AP.

[@Ariel_Alpaca]

As a hearts of iron 4 player seeing other games within the paradox interactive market, it's strange to see different game culture

[@StarboyXL9]

Some better mechanics and AI behaviour surrounding independence wars might be in order. Right now vassalizing a nation to easily prevents it from being a threat. If having more than one vassal requires both constant wariness and specific investment to maintain as the status quo it would make vassal runs more interesting, and more difficult, without ensuring nobody vassalizes.

[@Samuel034]

Vassals should be asking to do stuff like integrate, or have needs and rewards system similar to mercenaries.

[@jeremy9416]

Maybe a start could be a removed buff, like 5-10% max instead of 75 50 ecc

[@GalaxyStar99]

maybe make differences in ethics and distance between empire be bigger factors in a vassal accepting

[@benoithudson7235]

Idea for a video: be alone in the galaxy. Can’t vassal spam if there’s nobody to vassalize! Then race to max tech or first ecumenopolis or first megastructure or beat 25x crisis quite early or whatever. Without vassals or friends or even enemies to steal stuff from, the game is a lot slower.

[@descuddlebat]

Loyalty is just way too easy right now IMO: shared destiny is OP, loyalty loss from taxes is comically low compared to loyalty gain from positive relations, and relative power penalty combines all kinds of power into one - so the AI won't account for that since your power comes from fleets, you'd be screwed if they were to deny you taxes. I really wanna see much heavier loyalty loss - and neutral terms (expansion permitted) should be 0, not positive - but also more tools to manage it; I'd love tax to be on single resource level, and for each singular resource to have about 2x the loyalty impact of what currently a resource group has

[@ih4286]

The vassal mods look good. Have you seen 'Civic: Organic zealots'? it's a mod that want's you to wipe out all ai in the galaxy or something like that.

[@daftmi9hty327]

I need to actually get a vastle I just never do it in the end I just become the crisis

[@arcana5625]

Another way to promote other ways to conquer other than vassilization would be making AI not stupid with building so that I don’t have to spend an hour fixing there problems.

[@westernbody]

What about nuclear wessels?

[@TheArklyte]

Ah yes, can't wait to see everyone play only Driven Assimilators once again.

[@tobiasbayer4866]

Imo oppinion vassals should be an early game investment that pays off in the mid to late game. Conquering should be the option with a better short term payoff for aggressive builds. I think it could be a good idea to severly increase loyaltie penalties but to maybe also tie it in with already existing systems like positive/negative oppinion modifiers. Maybe make it work like the penalties in a federation where opposing ethics generates tension/ makes vassals more likely to not cooperate. In addition to this it might be interesting to rework federations to match the strength of vassals. Federations are good but they lack the ressource modifiers that make vassals op. Give federation members the option to also choose specialisations and get bonuses. That way there would basically be a "nice" vassal system that involves diplomacy and an "evil" vassal system that works like the current one and is based on subjugation instead.

[@RealCodreX]

Given the recent CK influence in Galactic Paragons I would not mind more "inspirations".

[@ThePigMensToes]

Make vassals need to have an envoy or they rapidly lose relations maybe multiple envoys. Shared destiny only reduces the damage of multiple vassals instead of mitigating it all together. Make hyper relay connections necessary for most economic bonuses and even maintaining relations. Have a percentage based hit either or both influence and unity production based on the number of vassals.

[@Bdubuc0401]

I wish federations were a bit better. It would be nice if you didn't need to take the diplomacy tree just to form one as the other members theoretically get an equal benefit (i know this can change later by changing succession types) but you are the one that needs to make the sacrifice by going diplomacy. Like why ever make a federation when you can just join one and not have to slow yourself down?

[@purplepason]

Remove diplomatic vassalization with just a button. Remove it being just an opinion number. Make your intention to vassalize a neighbor either entirely through war (Then give it penalties to slow down snowball) And add other ways to actually bring vassalization other than a button. Maybe civic or something.

[@Hypersend]

Play a hive mind, I'm new and I did a hive mind with the empath civic because thought help me be friendly. I got vassalized in about 30-40 yrs lol.

[@alicesundelin3094]

I'm not very up to date on how vassalization works, but shouldn't it cost influence to have vassals, and shouldn't influencing those vassals also require influence? Influence is one of those resources that I thought was meant to restrict expansion bot through allies as well as with just straight up expanding through starbases. Wouldn't it make sense to have an influence upkeep that got higher the more different from you the vassal is or the more demanding the contract? Putting a kind of soft limit on how many vassals you can have. And wanting to change their ethics or similarly should probably also be like campaigns or edicts you can pursue that have either unity or influence cost, or both?

[@prolbononsence6602]

We need borders sounds nice but a bit illogical, maybe requirement of few jumps can be used. Trust required also good thing. Makes sence. Maybe it can be used as acceptance modifier to vassalize pact. And you basically need at least 50 to make the shittiest vassal contract. Vassals expanded sounds ultra interesting but I have my reservations about it.

[@tomduke1297]

can this not just be modded? should be easy enough to reduce the resource-slider to a 20% max(aka a heavy tax) and add some diplomatic hurdles.

[@hi117117]

The mod route is definitely ideal. Personally I would say the "no vassals" mod, since the other methods have their own cheese and downsides, and until a proper fix is in place it might be the most interesting to just completely remove the feature.

[@Aptianedicts]

We require borders sounds like it would improve the game a lot in general. There should be exceptions, if there was a "Coalition of the willing" mechanic that allowed short term alliances to tackle Genocidal races.

[@malikto1]

I usually don't use vassals but maybe I should to make life easier. 🙂

[@qrzone8167]

Voluntary subjugation should be very difficult. As in you would require the diplomacy tradition and the empire needs to be inferior with extremely high relations. At the current moment the AI will only resist if you have polar opposite ethics, or they are xenophobes. If the player was forced into more vassalization wars, it would nerf the snowballing of getting vassals with equivalent power without changing how vassals work all that much. Currently if you want to metagame very hard, you set the game difficulty to grand admiral with mid-game scaling, turn off all enforcer and clerk jobs and allocate pops to industrial districts and research. You will be able to research rush while building up a good enough navy to vassalize your neighbors peacefully. Once you get a vassal you can then destroy your food/mineral/energy districts and fully focus pops on research/unity/industry and continue to snowball. I was able to get mega-engineering by 2250 in one run because I was able to scoop up 5 vassals and got lucky with tech picks. I don't even have the overlord DLC, so if you could specialize vassals you could extract even more value out of them without their contract being nuked by converting into a protectorate

[@Uranos84]

Aside from Vassaling - I would like to see you run a game with maximum hyperlane density. Have fun! :-)

[@inoroth2001]

What about reverting back to an older version of the game that doesn't have Vassals at all?

[@bobbyflynn6352]

Some sort of rebellion mechanic for vassals once you have a few of them would be interesting. Maybe your vassals don't like you taking all of their resources and not giving anything in return.

[@Rickus316]

Do videos on each mod - see what happens

[@entertheunknown3554]

LET ME VASSALISE FALLEN EMPIRES

[@melegorth3342]

I kind of like quick vassals, but if the IA gets them quick then its impossible to win the score game. This is really annoying considering I often play determined exterminator and have to declare war on the whole galaxy every war after the mid game

[@Brotrooper360]

I don't know how Paradox can fix vassals, I'd imagine it's going to be a complicated solution to match the complicated problem... I only hope they don't get nerfed into being useless, because even though they're broken now I do enjoy taking one or two for flavor in my games.

[@cenivel1874]

Also remove the ability for vassals to join federations. Bc u can just abuse it in the treaty: u join all their wars and they join none yours but anyways because of federation they will have to join your wars.

[@EvelynNdenial]

vassals have just replaced the old way of a single federation owning 2/3 the galaxy.

[@bishopglobe]

Reduced amount of resources you can get from them or something all i will say it better then the old vassal system

[@Juhnte]

Have factions become more unhappy when vassalized by an Empire of opposite empires, and have vassals get less loyalty overall, so vassals will both have more chances to have revolts of any sort against their overlord, both internally and by themselves.

[@PerfectAlibi1]

The more disloyal they are, the more they will try to not pay you the set tribute. Or maybe adds events like explosives rigged shipments of tribute, causing damage to your economy?

[@jtillman8251]

This is only tangentially related but I think they need to rebalance/rethink midgame events to shake up the state of the game. Specifically I think there need to be new midgame scripted events that aren't extermination wars against things like the chosen or the nanite swarms. Things that might change loyalties and shake up the diplomatic equilibrium like the Khan and maybe cause some of those huge vassal networks to crumble through attrition, rebellion and whatnot.

[@archidor1944]

I mainly dislike that the ai subjugates other ai constantly. That combined with federations and you have to fight like six people at the same time. Should be harder to vassalize, with a harder negative for multiple.

[@GreenBaji]

Call me new with my 200 play hours. But taking specialized vassals costs all my influence upkeep. Like -3 every month. This vassal spam never happened to me before. 3 is the highest I did see. Can you explain what is happening? I don't get it. Do I need ALL dlcs for that to happen? I missing 3 of the recent ones.

[@Orzacle]

Friends are temporary, vassals are forever

[@dhjerth]

I am bored of vassals, but I will never get bored of Earthbound OST

[@Darlf_Sevil]

I WANT they be op but alos i want they have somting deep, like meyby many events, bad decision and your vassal attakc you, but suprie suprise he not give you some resrose and game create a new fleet for him ect. More interection. YOU can be not big but rich empire who have many vassals but you almost entire game need spend on do vassals dyplomacy, you and them and them and them. Something for something

[@samuelcrow4701]

Me who has almost never used vassals

[@jamesgoines4635]

Being an Overload is op and being a Vassel can be op

[@berkaltuglu8140]

No we don't. Have a good day

[@povter1089]

seeing my comment in the video is a very wired feeling , but yes i stand by what i said ha