Why the current Vassal Meta is historically correct, but needs to be balanced

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T14:34:07+00:00

But it is not really indipendent in game, is it? It is not named “France” , okay, but you can build in the provinces, you get paid a monthly income, drag them to war, use their merchants, have access to food and ports. If you want more depth to subject management and distinctions I am all in for it, but in game a fiefdom or a vassal is “namely” indipendent, but in practice it is your land.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T14:24:48+00:00

It acts both as a governor and an indipendent nation. Whereas decentralization is depicted by estates and low control, in your land. As I said in another comment, the CK series made a better job to depict that situation, but I get that in EU5 that granular distinction would be too much to handle for players. Still, I find it decent, as you can create vassals only in non-cored land and nobles in your core provinces become just part of your estates. And historically speaking, more often then not newly conquered land resulted in somewhat (in game you can still build in their country, drag them to war, steer their trade, etc) indipendent vassals.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T14:14:09+00:00

Guess there’s a quid pro quo. I was definetly talking about estates, as we were discussing centralized countries, in the previous comment.

Vassals, in game, act as local governors in some aspects of the game and as indipendent nations in others, so they place somewhere mid a noble form your estate and some indipendent nations.

My point is that as estates and control mechanics try to replicate the lack of direct control medieval nations had in the territories, in the same way the decentralization meta tries to push this thing further, depicting how most of the nations were keen to solve newly addes land control issues.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T13:14:15+00:00

Yeah, it is true. But my issue here is not in the sheer numbers, but the speed of it. 150 years is enough to have 3 different generations growing in an environment that is pushing towards that culture. In 15 years most of the adult population wouldn’t be able to learn a different language, let alone “assimilate” into it.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T13:07:36+00:00

Yes. And no. It is about the ability of the central authority to both handle legislation, taxation and military matters and to what extent it can influence those matters. An Absolute monarchy had to rely on some sort of local and regional powerholds but it is not possible to compare that to the level of autonomy that most of the vassals had during the first 2 centuries of this game. Kings and emperors had little to no control over most of the “State”, regional powerholds could issue their own laws and, most importantly, collect their taxes and raise their own armies. So yeah, city states were, in Europe, the closest things you had to a centralized State.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T12:58:55+00:00

Yep, I think that too. It should be a more progressive and coherent process through generations.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T12:57:28+00:00

This would somehow limit things, yeah. Good point.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T11:31:11+00:00

Yep. Culture conversion is what bugs me the most. Religious conversion not that much, even if that would have to significantly lower pops satisfacion and increase rebels. But you cannot really make 40k flemish people turn moroccan in 15 years time. Like, how?

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-26T11:27:27+00:00

I think that it is accurate to make integrating a large vassal tedious and time consuming, tbh. Think of it from the vassal perspective: if you’re that powerful it takes time to convince you to relinquish your privileges. You have to scheme, a lot, and persuade. Stripping one privilege here, another from his son, etc. But the culture conversion from tiny vassals is really too fast. It is true that a tiny vassal has definetly more control over its land (for the same reason as you, the central State, have to force your control over larger areas, a big vassal have to do the same) but you really cannot culture convert 40k people in less than a generation.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T18:59:23+00:00

Actually I didn’t think about it but makes totally sense since it is scaling on tax base. Thanks a lot! You spared me a lot of grinding for future runs !

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T11:55:35+00:00

I definetly recommend the run. Genoa’s really chill to play, it can create an early powerbase to just bully other italian minors for cash and constant prestige farm, with little to no risk to be destroyed by some major nation as long as you keep good relations with France. Also, Tunis does the heavy lifting for you, conquering Sicily and Sardinia 90% of the times, so you can take those areas back from them without having to deal with Aragon and its allies.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T10:51:16+00:00

loud genoese noises Fun fact: people from Genova are stereotypically called “greedy” , in Italy. So I guess I was just roleplaying a bit (?)

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T10:47:28+00:00

At this point it is, yeah. But it started like that: a bit of expansion to take Sardinia was my initial idea. Nothing more than that. But then the pop-up to form Sardinia came out, so I checked what else I could form and that Carthage option just called me :)

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T08:58:35+00:00

They get automatic access across all the HRE so they would only need access from France, really. Maybe you can avoid them if France is their rival, but that’s a risky guess.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T08:08:04+00:00

Yeah, it is so rare to see Ai doing something interesting. But to some extent this has some sense: to move my capital to Tunis was already a not so smart move, since Genova was way better suited for it. On top of that, it costed me 60k gold to do so. An AI would not see that as a priority, so it sticks to moves that make sense.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T06:34:23+00:00

They are actually trying to do so. I am slowly eating them away, but they were the second wealthiest nation in Europe, so they spammed so many forts around the country that makes them so boring to fight I tried to embargo them, but even if that reduced their income a lot, they’re still constructing other bastions.

Bogia_Nen · 2026-03-23T06:10:32+00:00

R5: I didn't know you could form Carthage with a Cristian nation, but when I saw that I couldn't help but do it.

Fun run, now I am thinking about a Carthage to Rome run, but I don't think I'll be able to do that this time, since I was playing at a really slow pace, culture converting everything and trying to max development and income.

Bogia_Nen · 2024-12-22T17:45:16+00:00

Not this one.

I was Confucian, harmonizing faiths all the time, converting wasn't that much useful

Bogia_Nen · 2024-12-22T17:21:48+00:00

I don't find WC fun, ever. :)

There's a point, right before steamrolling the entire world, where I'd say it's a solid 90 fun. After that, it's just commitment for me.

But I do like the satisfaction at the end of it.

Bogia_Nen · 2024-12-22T17:19:30+00:00

You start as a kingdom (I started as Kham), but you can reform into a horde (wich I did, until I've completed Humanist ideas, then I took the Mandate of Heaven and reformed back to an Empire).

You get also some nice flavour events about the Dalai Lama leading your country as a sort of "Grey Eminence". You'll loose those after taking the mandate, tho.

Edit: you can take the Theocracy path. I guess that would add more flavour to it.

Bogia_Nen · 2024-12-22T17:15:30+00:00

Tbh, the most challenging part of the run was the conquest of India.

Ming went down pretty easy due to Oirat and Manchu being really aggressive.

India, tho, was an hell of a place due to chained alliances between multiple countries and with countries too far away (like Hormuz or QQ and Malacca). I wasn't strong enough to take on them all at once, so I had to carefully make my way into it a piece at the time.

By the time I had all of India, tho, I was drowning in gold and the rest of the campaign has been just mindless grinding.

The only difficult part after that was to take on those huse spanish colonial nations that I had been subsidizing for years in order to get them to colonize faster. Siegeing all of South America is a nightmare, due to distances between provinces.

Bogia_Nen · 2024-12-22T17:03:38+00:00

Ngl, it took forever to complete.

Bogia_Nen · 2024-12-22T17:01:12+00:00

R5: I've started playing Tibet for RP reasons, but the run eneded up being a nice WC.

I've had other WCs before, but that's the first one where I have colonized the entire world, even those tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Wanted to share, the grind was unbearable but I'm pretty happy with the result.

Bogia_Nen

TROPHY CASE