I may have figured out the AI inflation problem in DW... [Mercenary ideas thread]

[yequr]

Against 1k carpet sieges, the merc spam strategy is actually not horrible though. As Bavaria, I've almost turned around a cascade dogpile war that already seemed hopelessly lost after I stupidly lost my single doomstack early (I don't remember how, but it must have been stupid) with it once because I was rich and could afford these mercs. Abusing military access, I managed to build a new, expensive stack, clean some of the sieges... and then I stupidly lost my stack again. The problem with the AI is that it doesn't diversify between 1k and 20k here.
I'm not fond of the suggestion of making mercenaries only available at war though, it would make many small countries that pretty much have to invest their starting ducats into mercs almost unplayable.

 

[Lynx190]

One thing that seems to be fixed since the OP is the AI keeping mercenaries perpetually; I was confused until I realized it was an old thread. In my experience the AI always disbands its mercenaries as soon as it peaces out. However there's the annoying problem of the AI perpetually deleting its entire army (and sometimes navy) and rebuilding it.