Please, please, make the AI delete forts

[alpaca]

My vassals will literally rather bankrupt themselves than deleting totally useless forts. In the screenshot below, I outlined the borders of Smolensk in red and Bohemia in brown. As you can see, both have tons of useless forts neighboring each other. They also both went bankrupt twice already, because I sometimes forget renewing the subsidies they need to finance this. That's not even talking about how the HRE princes could delete all their forts because they are surrounded on all sides by friendly vassals of mine.

The AI really needs to be programmed to delete forts if they are strategically useless and/or not financially feasible. Smolensk had 8 forts (Moskva still belongs to Muscovy) with an income of 8.4 - clearly not a great way to keep their head above water. They usually don't even mothball them when at war.

 

[sigeena]

I do see the AI deleting forts. Especially when they can no longer afford them. I had a Manchu-Qing game where Ming deleted 4-5 forts once they lost most of their rich provinces. So it might be unique circumstances that your vassals are still not deleting them.

 

[Retherz]

Strange, I built forts in every province of my march and it never went bankrupt..

 

[alpaca]

I do see the AI deleting forts. Especially when they can no longer afford them. I had a Manchu-Qing game where Ming deleted 4-5 forts once they lost most of their rich provinces. So it might be unique circumstances that your vassals are still not deleting them.

I don't think these are special circumstances. When a normal AI blobs, I also see them having way too many forts. Perhaps they are programmed to maintain the 1 fort in 50 dev that you need to get +1 AT per month. I usually don't see that much more than that ratio, so I guess I should amend my post to "please change the AI's spending priorities so they don't pay a ridiculous portion of their income for forts". Smolensk, Astrakhan and Bohemia are really the most egregious examples here because their provinces generally have a very high autonomy, so income is low and paying for enough forts to maintain 1/50 dev is beggaring them. There doesn't appear to be any budgeting code that says "ok, try to afford level 1 advisors at least, maybe one or two forts in very powerful locations, but prioritise army spending to fort maintenance. Also delete any forts without strategic value, even if you don't maintain your AT ratio"

Strange, I built forts in every province of my march and it never went bankrupt..

It's possible they get enough in trade to pay for this. An additional problem for my vassals is, of course, that they lose a lot of troops because they stupidly shuffle around and in total put 100k troops in a province, trying to reach a war that is over by the time they get there, but that would at least be easier to soak up if they didn't maintain so many forts they can't pay for.

 

[Retherz]

I don't think these are special circumstances. When a normal AI blobs, I also see them having way too many forts. Perhaps they are programmed to maintain the 1 fort in 50 dev that you need to get +1 AT per month. I usually don't see that much more than that ratio, so I guess I should amend my post to "please change the AI's spending priorities so they don't pay a ridiculous portion of their income for forts". Smolensk, Astrakhan and Bohemia are really the most egregious examples here because their provinces generally have a very high autonomy, so income is low and paying for enough forts to maintain 1/50 dev is beggaring them. There doesn't appear to be any budgeting code that says "ok, try to afford level 1 advisors at least, maybe one or two forts in very powerful locations, but prioritise army spending to fort maintenance. Also delete any forts without strategic value, even if you don't maintain your AT ratio"


It's possible they get enough in trade to pay for this. An additional problem for my vassals is, of course, that they lose a lot of troops because they stupidly shuffle around and in total put 100k troops in a province, trying to reach a war that is over by the time they get there, but that would at least be easier to soak up if they didn't maintain so many forts they can't pay for.

I doubt it, it was Albania and they didn't have many rich provinces or any COT but I think they take defensive so that might be it

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I have witnessed an AI vassal sit in bankruptcy (literally bankrupted twice) rather than delete forts, it was at almost permanent -3 stab. This is definitely a flaw in the AI logic. I don't care how good those forts supposedly are, they're not doing jack with a bankrupt-modifier army.

 

[alpaca]

I have witnessed an AI vassal sit in bankruptcy (literally bankrupted twice) rather than delete forts, it was at almost permanent -3 stab. This is definitely a flaw in the AI logic. I don't care how good those forts supposedly are, they're not doing jack with a bankrupt-modifier army.

Glad I'm not the only one. I guess it has something to do with our blobbing the vassals hard so they get a lot of forts and RR. They then increase LA and since we're nearly constantly at war and they have a low government rank, LA doesn't decrease again. So they go bankrupt because their low-income provinces can't finance all these forts.

I decided to enable scutage for endangered vassals after I blobbed them to size in the interim, but an AI improvement would still be in order.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Glad I'm not the only one. I guess it has something to do with our blobbing the vassals hard so they get a lot of forts and RR. They then increase LA and since we're nearly constantly at war and they have a low government rank, LA doesn't decrease again. So they go bankrupt because their low-income provinces can't finance all these forts.

I decided to enable scutage for endangered vassals after I blobbed them to size in the interim, but an AI improvement would still be in order.

I don't have CS because it doesn't offer anything I care about (and I don't want to downgrade Buddhism), so I can't even use scutage . I guess I could march them, like a parade.