Vassal Troops in Kingdoms - My Vassals will not give control of them to me

[rob_tomcat]

In trying to stop some my vassals committing harakiri, I set the toggle button on their diplomacy screen to ALWAYS DEMAND they give me control of their armies in a war. They completely ignore this command and send me an end of turn message saying they will not give control of their armies to me. One turn later they commit harakiri by attacking into a hill region without having adequate strength, whereas had they stayed in the hill region they were in, as I wanted to command them to do, it would have saved them and probably fended off any initial enemy attack.

What is the point of having a Foreign Policy "FULL CALL, ALWAYS" option which is then simply ignored? Very frustrating!

[SuitedQueens]

In trying to stop some my vassals committing harakiri, I set the toggle button on their diplomacy screen to ALWAYS DEMAND they give me control of their armies in a war. They completely ignore this command...

Remember that you have percentage chance that Vassals land you their troops equal to your current Relationships with them. So shower them with Gifts and Insult their enemies to secure troops that have half Maintenance, which is very lucrative.

[rob_tomcat]

Remember that you have percentage chance that Vassals land you their troops equal to your current Relationships with them. So shower them with Gifts and Insult their enemies to secure troops that have half Maintenance, which is very lucrative.

Thanks, I appreciate your response.

The relationships as Castilla to my 2 vassals that ignored my command to allow me to command their troops are 30 and 34 since we are effectively at the start of the game. Admitedly I have not given them any gifts as yet since we are only on Turn 4 of the Grand Campaign, but the game does state the relationships are Cordial.

Since you say there is a percentage chance that the vassals will give me command of their troops, this seems to contradict the game which clearly states "FULL CALL ALWAYS: Ask your vassal to join you in war, even if your relationship with him is under amiable." So I don't understand why these two vassals are not giving me full control of their troops.

[SuitedQueens]

Since you say there is a percentage chance that the vassals will give me command of their troops, this seems to contradict the game which clearly states "FULL CALL ALWAYS: Ask your vassal to join you in war, even if your relationship with him is under amiable." So I don't understand why these two vassals are not giving me full control of their troops.

That one refers to Vassal reactions, not to the percentile chance of them giving you troops. If your relationships are bad and you call them in the war they might flip on you, but its pretty rare and usually happens with France and HRE. Those options are mainly for Empries (previous title) players who used to the next mechanics:
1) Client States (Vassal) always join you in the war whenever you attacked or being attacked, and never defect + don't have control over their foreign policy i.e. Declaring Wars;

Alliances are reciprocal:
2) Defensive Alliance exists when Relationships with your ally below Amiable (50), so they only join Defensive Wars;
3) Full Alliance when Relationships are Amiable (>50) forces their hand to join all wars;

Kingdoms introduced chances of your Vassals and Allies turning on you, so you have these options. The most important part is that you can set policy to never help your Ally even if you have Full Alliance going.

[Pocus]

The sentence was indeed ambiguous. It is being changed to:

His army may come under your direct control, depending on your relationship with the vassal.

[rob_tomcat]

The sentence was indeed ambiguous. It is being changed to:

His army may come under your direct control, depending on your relationship with the vassal.

Thanks for the clarification and also to SuitedQueens for the input

[SuitedQueens]

It is being changed to

Pocus, I don't know how you did it, but thats magic. So I benchmarked the game to turn 150 in order to approximate what I have to compete against on Suicidal difficulty. I checked major peace deals and they mostly consisted from the very logical region exchanges instead of units + resources like before, so finally AI vs AI has weight to it.

One turn later they commit harakiri by attacking into a hill region without having adequate strength, whereas had they stayed in the hill region they were in, as I wanted to command them to do, it would have saved them and probably fended off any initial enemy attack.

Now see the quote by Rob above. This behaviour is fine and necessary, as I found mostly stems from AI eagerness to attack regions with poor Combat Power i.e. low Fortification, which was a thing since Empires 1.0. The problem is when I tweaked AI intrinsic resource gains for Empires by turn 100 they could form Fat stacks where composition inefficiencies were covered by merged numbers, so they always had cavalry and supports to cover the frontage.

In Kingdoms given the same artificial bonuses they reluctant to merge and blob so much. While force mixing is fine and they still able to hold down Garrisons and tight terrains because of that, when we are talking wide terrains they almost never have supports to cover the entire frontage, sometimes not enough cavalry if terrain is flank squares heavy. Can this be remedied somewhat? AI can blob only at about turn 250, and never to extend of Empires where at this point you can see 1000+ Combat Power stacks roaming around. Blobs also prove to be better at tight terrains where more Draws expected and can comeback right into the fray after taking a loss. Otherwise AI is better at target selections compared to Empires.