actually historically this era was a battle of maneuvering...he who outmaneuevered his foe to get to the other sides cities and lay seige fastest won...pitched battles iun the fields were actually failry uncommon and even rarer as the era drew on...thats what made some of Gustavs victories so spectacular is because battles of that sort hadnt happened in a long time...the era was about he who was better at seiges and maintaining them...and the portugese have good seige ratings so why not use them?..although if one wants to make it more challening you coudl switch tags with helvetia 
let them seige like mad while you struggle without any advantages
its very hard to avoid any kind of abuse...using TOT tags for example how can you not abuse that? players are far more aware than the ai of colonial value and placement and how to use that TOT to favor them or hinder the enemies, loan exploits others use but i dont...its supposed to use up a diplomat but it doesnt and people abuse that big time,
map swapping..another cheeze people consistantly swap maps...even going so far as to keep asking even after the nation says no till they say yes....i tend to balance mysel;f on this by actually asking one time only and then reguardless of yes or no offering gift of 25 ducats in payment...this way a diplomat is expended and some payment offered for the maps,
army composition the huge numbers of arty people place in their armies far more than historcially could have been aquired in order to make short seige times...the computer doesnt build that many which gives players a huge edge in seige warfare..next youll be saying one shouldnt build more cannons than your neighboring computer players have just to avoid exploiting this
exploration...we all know where everything is and whats valuable or not...the whole strategy of going for india or asia first is in of itself and exploit sicne technically we wouldnt know its more valuable till much later
my point is almost everything we do is an exploit on some level by nature we are humans and capable of using adaptive strategies which learn from past games and build on this///computers however cannot truly "learn" thus never improve
I try to fight using basic tactics used during that era <many smaller armies maneuvering to cut each others supply lines while fewer small armies actually went to lay seige>, i limit my armies to reasonable sizes <uslally never more than 2 times max manpower, i always payt for map swaps, i never use loan exploit, i never use bankruptcy/loan exploit, I do not rest/reload when things go agaisnt me, I always go for colonizing whatever i find first that will support me rather than keep looking for best ones...moor in tune with what natiosn would have done...they didnt "save" up colonists till they found something better..it wa s arace and they grabbbed everything they could as they found it, I do not convert just for cash and colonists...tending to stay historical for conversions if provinces justify doing so, i do not switch to crc after its gone despite it ending too soon, i focus on what each nation does best and try to expand in the directions they histircally had claim to or made evident their desire to do in historyc...i avoid the badboy wars seeing that as huge exploit<limiting myself to max 6 badboy >... so all in all i think im a very NON exploitive person
let them seige like mad while you struggle without any advantagesits very hard to avoid any kind of abuse...using TOT tags for example how can you not abuse that? players are far more aware than the ai of colonial value and placement and how to use that TOT to favor them or hinder the enemies, loan exploits others use but i dont...its supposed to use up a diplomat but it doesnt and people abuse that big time,
map swapping..another cheeze people consistantly swap maps...even going so far as to keep asking even after the nation says no till they say yes....i tend to balance mysel;f on this by actually asking one time only and then reguardless of yes or no offering gift of 25 ducats in payment...this way a diplomat is expended and some payment offered for the maps,
army composition the huge numbers of arty people place in their armies far more than historcially could have been aquired in order to make short seige times...the computer doesnt build that many which gives players a huge edge in seige warfare..next youll be saying one shouldnt build more cannons than your neighboring computer players have just to avoid exploiting this
exploration...we all know where everything is and whats valuable or not...the whole strategy of going for india or asia first is in of itself and exploit sicne technically we wouldnt know its more valuable till much later
my point is almost everything we do is an exploit on some level by nature we are humans and capable of using adaptive strategies which learn from past games and build on this///computers however cannot truly "learn" thus never improve
I try to fight using basic tactics used during that era <many smaller armies maneuvering to cut each others supply lines while fewer small armies actually went to lay seige>, i limit my armies to reasonable sizes <uslally never more than 2 times max manpower, i always payt for map swaps, i never use loan exploit, i never use bankruptcy/loan exploit, I do not rest/reload when things go agaisnt me, I always go for colonizing whatever i find first that will support me rather than keep looking for best ones...moor in tune with what natiosn would have done...they didnt "save" up colonists till they found something better..it wa s arace and they grabbbed everything they could as they found it, I do not convert just for cash and colonists...tending to stay historical for conversions if provinces justify doing so, i do not switch to crc after its gone despite it ending too soon, i focus on what each nation does best and try to expand in the directions they histircally had claim to or made evident their desire to do in historyc...i avoid the badboy wars seeing that as huge exploit<limiting myself to max 6 badboy >... so all in all i think im a very NON exploitive person
