I have to say Vassal ruins the game. I played on civilization difficulty (normal +3). And I am the 3rd empire.

One day, the 1st Empire and the 2nd Empire declared war on me, but they dispersed troops to ransack my city. I managed to eliminate these vanguards one by one. After that, their military force is much weaker than mine, but I still need to spend some time to make their war support below zero.

Then I found that I had 200 points to use to declare force surrender, which means I could vassalize both of them.

They provide me 1.5k coins each turn while I can only produce about 100 at the same time. They provide me with 10+ luxuries which provide 100+ stability. 

This makes the game finished.

Yeah I was a little surprised by the vassal mechanic myself... I assumed there'd be some kind of drawback to it, because I could completely vassalize my neighbor after a single war and our empires were the same size. I never did see a drawback, though. Maybe there's something we're missing? 

Yeah, I got declared war from 2 sides on 'humankind' difficulty and I won 1 battle against first opponent and 0 on second (they even took out an outpost). Both are now my vassals and give me redicolous income. There is defintely something not right ;)

Yeah, vassalization feels really wonky. I mean, I can take on an empire the same size as me, beat them in a few sieges of my cities and then puppet them really easily without needing to worry about them ever feeling any smouldering resentment for me subjugating them like that or them having any desire to declare independence from me even though they are on basically equal footing with me. I would imagine I'd need to take a few cities and territories from an empire to knock them down a few pegs before I actually have any real chance to turn them into a loyal vassal, but apparently nah.

I suggest making the "make vassal" option limited to having all their cities and land occupied as a prerequisite before being able to vassalize. 

SecretSamurai009 wrote:

I suggest making the "make vassal" option limited to having all their cities and land occupied as a prerequisite before being able to vassalize. 

I think that direction is interesting. Maybe you also need to keep (up-to-date) military units in their territories. I really hope that in the late-game they plan to have something like a vassal revolt that happens if you don't liberate them after a certain amount of turns and that spawns a lot of military units that you have to deal with. Or having a huge diplomatic penalty with other civs if you have a vassal.

Another reason why vassals seem kinda off in this game is because the AI declares so many wars that they cant win. If they would be smarter there it would not be such a big issue.

I agree that vassal mechanic is not balanced out. Better AI could solve a part of the problem: AIs seem to ignore their war support – I did never receive a surrender or white peace proposal before I was able to force their surrender.

I understand the vassal component, but I wanted to eliminate a culture so that I could be the only one on the continent. This is currently not an option.

Also, when I did acquire two vassals, I learned later that my exploration points (First to discover [natural wonder]) went to them, instead of me....which made me want to not vassal again.

I agree, there should be some kind of "domination posture" (your units in their territory are at least as numerous, and have a sum value of 2x the target units' military value) or "submission posture" (I don't know what this would even be, it just came up that they might want to "give up" now for a chance to live until later) that's required for vassal.

You get the option to destroy other empires after you colonize the new world with a city. While I get that it keeps players in the game, the method of unlocking it doesn't make the most amount of sense. I mean historically all it took was a vendetta to wipe someone out, maybe that's how you could unlock the option upon release, get in enough wars or something.

In my 100 hours of playing I've only had a vassal rebel against me once. I had the traitor tag at the time and don't know if that was the trigger.