[2.3.4 - FMNO] The AI never raise centralization law

[Chuchup]

The title says for itself. I'm in a mid or late game, I check the desmene limit of others countries, and I see that none of them used centralization to raise their desmene limit. It is so very easy for the player to get 6 or 7 possessions when most of others lands only control 3 or 4, even biggest empires. It's a severe penalty to the AI's strength. Personnaly I consider that's a major bug, because the game has now very less challenge. I sure would play more and buy some DLC If I only had the assurance of a fix.

I play without any DLC nor mods.

I saw here that a guy had the same problem with older version 2.3.2 and reported here. I hope a upcoming patch will finally correct that.
Thanks

 

[Dracko81]

Oh oh, of course yes you really said that. You don't remember?

That is modifying the current AI, not adding new bot types.

 

[KhaineFH]

That is your opinion, based on how you play. The AI doesn't play like that though. It will never be happy to play king, it will look to fill its vassal limit and progress in rank. Increasing centralisation to having very few vassals puts limitations in place that makes that harder.

I think you still don't get it, OP doesn't want AI to hold all counties of its kingdom and seat still until the end of the game... on the contrary ! By giving the chance for AI to get a bigger demesne, you make it easier for it to wage wars, and so grow bigger (which is the point, you told it yourself).

At any start, there is not one single kingdom close to its vassal limit. In 1066 after a couple of months for example you have :
Seljuk : 19/36
France : 12/33
England : 10/33
Fatimid : 13/26
Hungary : 10/30
Needless to mention smaller kingdoms such as Poland and its whooping 5/34 or the impressive 6/32 of Scotland... ).

And for information :
Byz : 29/41
HRE : 32/43

The vassal limit formula depend of you rank, your diplomacy and your laws, for a random king it's such as this :
King Rank +20
Diplomacy : +1
Laws +10

And for a Duke :
Duke Rank +10
Laws +10

So if you neglect the small diplo bonus, you have roughly 30 vassals for kings and 20 (!!!) for dukes. And yet at the start, I checked, and there are only two kings which are barely above half their limit (K_Afghanistan with 23/31 and K_Maharastra with 18/35) then come Seljuks and Fatimids, then the others. And bear in mind most duchies don't exist at the start, so the number of vassals will eventually drop lower.

>> To sum up, most AI Kings and every Dukes can easily increase their centralization while keeping lots of room for new vassals, you won't have a limitation if you force AI to keep a reasonable margin (5 or 10 for example). AI would have a bigger demesne, hence better troops/income hence it would go to war more often. And if by any chance it's approaching the vassal limits, it's not as if it could not give its extra demesne to random courtier and lower its centralization.

In all my games, I rarely saw AI Kings/Dukes grew so big by itself that its vassal limit becames a problem. It may happen for Karlings, but if their are over their vassal limit because of their too high centralization, they could decrease it, just as they increased it before.

 

[Servancour]

I took this up with the rest of the team. Adding proper AI behavior to use Centralization is most likely gonna be quite complicated. So it's not gonna be something that gets added right now.

However, the AI should really be able to use everything that the player is able to use. As to not give the player any unneeded/unfair advantage against the AI. So this is something we will look into. But I cannot say for certain when that will be.

Hope that clarifies the situation.