love the mod idea! how about for generic machine empires the vassal type be "organic auxiliary"giving X% monthly energy output.

Xenophobe surfs are usualy farmers or miners right? so why do they produce consumer goods?

Originally posted by BorisTheAnimal:

love the mod idea! how about for generic machine empires the vassal type be "organic auxiliary"giving X% monthly energy output.

I loved the name. I think I'll do just that and conjure up other subject types or different kinds of machines later.

Originally posted by Optimistic Hoagie:

Xenophobe surfs are usualy farmers or miners right? so why do they produce consumer goods?

Well, historically serfs were indeed mostly farmers and miners. But, on other hand, the term was always applied to individuals, not whole nations, so you shouldn't use it as a basis.

My intention with the xenophobe overlord-subject relation is to emulate the relation between modern european powers and its exploitation colonies. Some historiographical schools pose that there's a merked difference between the settler colonialism practiced in the 13 Colonies and the more exploitative, extractivist colonialism practiced in the caribbean and south american colonies.

Now, you may say that those exploitation colonies produced food and raw materials for the metropolis, but that was not the case. These colonies indeed produced food, but it was used in the internal market, and only for the purposes of subsistence. What these colonies really produced was cash crops and other non-essential but highly valuable goods: sugar, coffee, tabacco, indigo, gold (which was not produced, but extracted, but the sabe logic applies), cotton, etc. [Source: I'm a historian and live in a former exploitation colony]

Serfs should be just like those exploitation colonies of old: despised by their overlord but lucrative and essential for the production of some specialty goods.

Why not call them "exploitation colonies", them, instead of serfs? Because the game already uses the term "colony" for settled planets and I didn't want to overlap with it. I hope the term serf, however, encapsulates that it's a predatory, exploitative relationship.

Originally posted by BorisTheAnimal:

love the mod idea! how about for generic machine empires the vassal type be "organic auxiliary"giving X% monthly energy output.

I've added the Organic Auxiliary subject type to the game. I also allowed Rogue Servitors to create Autonomous Regions (which, despite the name, is not that autonomous, remember).

Absolutely astonishing mod, perhaps the most in-depth vassal/puppet mod I've seen in a while. I love the variety of different vassal types you can have, though I am also curious about the possibility of introducing a mechanic which could serve to further flesh out vassals and puppets in a way Paradox seemed to miss. Suppose someone has multiple vassals under their control, and they might want to interact with them as a group, rather than one-on-one. A good way to manage this might be to include an alternative form of Federation, consisting solely of the overlord empire and its multiple vassals, which could be called 'Hegemony'.

This Hegemony system would be a pretty efficient way to organize multiple subjects under a single overarching authority (permanently hosted by the overlord of course), making it easier for the overlord to administrate their various subjects in tandem, and perhaps decreasing the impact of the Relative Power of Subjects relation malus (thus making it less likely for individual subjects to revolt). In exchange for this, the overlord would be unable to integrate any of their subjects in the Hegemony, regardless of subject type. The overlord could also use this Hegemony system as a way to impose certain things on their subjects, like a universal fleet cap limit so the subjects don't become too powerful, ethics shifting to better conform with those of the overlord, and so on.

To keep it balanced, I could see the risk of a joint subject revolt becoming more probable following the establishment of a Hegemony. After all, the level of organization that a Hegemony would provide would not only make it easier for the overlord to coordinate with their subjects, but the subjects could more easily coordinate with eachother as well. If they're not very satisfied with how things are going, they could encourage eachother to participate in a unified independence war, assuming certain conditions are met. If the subjects are successful in throwing off the shackles of their overlord, the overlord would be kicked out of the Hegemony and lose all connections to their former subjects, with the Hegemony itself transforming into a Federation.

@TheBigE Interestingly enough, when the game was still in 1.2.1 I proposed the idea that there should be different types of federations[forum.paradoxplaza.com] in the game, including some sort of "autocratic federation" that resembles this hegemony idea of yours. It's sad to see that we're now on 2.3 and federations still suck.

Originally posted by lpslucasps:

Originally posted by Optimistic Hoagie:

Xenophobe surfs are usualy farmers or miners right? so why do they produce consumer goods?

Well, historically serfs were indeed mostly farmers and miners. But, on other hand, the term was always applied to individuals, not whole nations, so you shouldn't use it as a basis.

My intention with the xenophobe overlord-subject relation is to emulate the relation between modern european powers and its exploitation colonies. Some historiographical schools pose that there's a merked difference between the settler colonialism practiced in the 13 Colonies and the more exploitative, extractivist colonialism practiced in the caribbean and south american colonies.

Now, you may say that those exploitation colonies produced food and raw materials for the metropolis, but that was not the case. These colonies indeed produced food, but it was used in the internal market, and only for the purposes of subsistence. What these colonies really produced was cash crops and other non-essential but highly valuable goods: sugar, coffee, tabacco, indigo, gold (which was not produced, but extracted, but the sabe logic applies), cotton, etc. [Source: I'm a historian and live in a former exploitation colony]

Serfs should be just like those exploitation colonies of old: despised by their overlord but lucrative and essential for the production of some specialty goods.

Why not call them "exploitation colonies", them, instead of serfs? Because the game already uses the term "colony" for settled planets and I didn't want to overlap with it. I hope the term serf, however, encapsulates that it's a predatory, exploitative relationship.

That's an excellent point, thanks for the clarification. A more historically accurate name would be crown colonies. I am studying to be a history teacher in the U.S., so I enjoy talking about these nuances.

@Optimistic Hoagie To be honest, I never saw the term "exploitation colony" being used in the north-american/english historiography, it seems to be much more in vogue among brazilian historians. Another reason why I didn't name xenophobe's subjects like that.

You think there could be a civic added to the mod based around vassals like for every vassal you own you could get a certain bonus like with naval capacity or unity.
maybe add a unique type of fleet called a Imperial fleet which would act similar to a Federation fleet only this fleet would be made up of ships from both the master and the masters Vassals.
Also it be nice that in thee foreign policies or rights screen maybe you could set the rights of your vassal say you want one subject to be mostly autonomous like a Dominion with the acception they will share there tech with you and they'll have to go to war but you'll do the same while you could also set them as something like a colony (I don't think the term colony would work here cause it's used to describe a system that you own that isn't your capital but the idea still stands) where you'll take most of there resources from them but it'll hurt there opinion of you and make them want to revolt against you if they feel they can take you on with the help of a foreign power or another type which is basically a puppet state where for the most part you control most of how they run and can take control of there fleets but like with the colony idea they'd also be disloyal.
Also it be nice if as one of the policies you could have you could chose whether or not you directly control there fleet which if you did would allow you to directly control your vassals fleet but it would make them disloyal as stated before really I feel this could be an entire DLC that Paradox could really take advantage of as it would add more depth to the game instead of having only 2 real types of subjects that the player can have where a Vassal isn't really as good as Tributary other then the fact you can intergrate them.

I think that puppet states should be protected by their overlords. Historically, attacking a puppet state was a great way to incur their overlord's wrath.

I think there's a potential balancing issue with the Spiritualist and Materialist vassals. In the base game, Unity and Research outputs are designed to correlate with the sprawl of the empire making them.

For instance, imagine if you were a tall empire with a large, but very research-poor Jr. Partner. Even if they were so much worse at research proportional to their sprawl, they might still shoot their overlord's tech into the stratosphere because the absolute value is balanced for a large empire, not a small one. The same goes for Unity. This is why in the base game there aren't any ways to trade science and unity points between empires, because the value of a single research or unity point is tied to the empire that produced it.

I'm not sure how to fix this. The only thing I can think of is some system where you get a percentage boost to your research speed / unity gain, and the magnitude of the boost scales with vassal research / unity values. But that's really complicated and who knows if it can even be modded in.

could you make a new vassal state for the feudal realm civic? (and any other civics that seem like they could benifit)

It would be cool if vassal megacorps could still have branch offices inside their overlord (and outside, for the vassal types that allow independent expansion). It would lend a neat Holy Roman Empire flavor to allow "free cities" to exist for the unique economic benefits. Any chance you could make that possible?

On the subject of authoritarian puppet states, should overlords really have an opinion penalty with them if the elites are handpicked? Perhaps instead these puppets should have a domestic stability penalty reflecting popular unrest. Authoritarians could then intervene in those wars to put down revolts, real world examples being Soviet intervention Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Also, on the subject of federations, this idea[forum.paradoxplaza.com] takes what you were proposing and adds a mechanic to gauge and use federation integrity. Bonuses take the form of federal "civics", which provide benefits but place more demands on members. I don't know if any of it is possible, just thought I would put it out.