In a recent patch the AI was given a small change that was supposed to help alleviate the player's ability to do timed attacks against mothballed border forts. Here's the situation:
The AI is notoriously bad at managing finances, so they would mothball their forts even as a very aggressive neighbor had an army at their doorstep. Player positions their army, declares war on 01 of a month, and before the end of that month, they march their army to the province. Forts under siege cannot recover garrison. So the 0 garrison fort would automatically fall within one siege cycle, or roughly 30 days.
Paradox's solution was to make border forts free for all AI countries to maintain. Sounds like a minor change to fix blatant player/ai abuse, right? But its not just border forts. It's any fort that border's another country, or any sea tile, and even *wastelands*.
So now we have this situation: Nov 11th, 1444, Ottomans. They have 4 forts and roughly 28 ducats/mo income. All of the forts border sea tiles or other countries. Seen here: http://imgur.com/a/wvCrT
So now we have what is already (just one of many examples of) a very strong country, with very high relative starting income, and 0.00 maintenance on their forts. As they expand on all the nearby cores via missions and reconquest they pick up another half dozen forts or more, and again almost every single one of them is 0.00 maintenance. When they upgrade the forts to level 2, or 3 or 4, they are *still free*.
In one of my recent campaign's with Shen, we counted up the forts that the Ottomans had amassed in ~100 years, and the number was ~27. How many did they have to pay for? Three.
My point in making this post is to call this type of balancing out. This is not Civilization 5. This is not a game where the AI should be balanced versus the player with AI cheats.
We deserve a better solution to the problem than this.
The AI is notoriously bad at managing finances, so they would mothball their forts even as a very aggressive neighbor had an army at their doorstep. Player positions their army, declares war on 01 of a month, and before the end of that month, they march their army to the province. Forts under siege cannot recover garrison. So the 0 garrison fort would automatically fall within one siege cycle, or roughly 30 days.
Paradox's solution was to make border forts free for all AI countries to maintain. Sounds like a minor change to fix blatant player/ai abuse, right? But its not just border forts. It's any fort that border's another country, or any sea tile, and even *wastelands*.
So now we have this situation: Nov 11th, 1444, Ottomans. They have 4 forts and roughly 28 ducats/mo income. All of the forts border sea tiles or other countries. Seen here: http://imgur.com/a/wvCrT
So now we have what is already (just one of many examples of) a very strong country, with very high relative starting income, and 0.00 maintenance on their forts. As they expand on all the nearby cores via missions and reconquest they pick up another half dozen forts or more, and again almost every single one of them is 0.00 maintenance. When they upgrade the forts to level 2, or 3 or 4, they are *still free*.
In one of my recent campaign's with Shen, we counted up the forts that the Ottomans had amassed in ~100 years, and the number was ~27. How many did they have to pay for? Three.
My point in making this post is to call this type of balancing out. This is not Civilization 5. This is not a game where the AI should be balanced versus the player with AI cheats.
We deserve a better solution to the problem than this.
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