Why does my vassal republic build so many castles?

[lststc315]

I hadn't play for a year and just came back. I, as the byzantine emperor, created the Thesaloniki republic as a vassal. Aftere several decades in game, I found that they built all of their slots to castles! why did ai do this? And this looks a pretty new change to me because iirc republic vassal preferred city to other holdings before and now they just flood the castles.....

I don't think castles are as good as cities for republic. Why does a republic need so many baronies? It seems a waste because all of its counts are coastal provinces and cities have the highest income. Is this a new change or it's just a bad luck?

 

[Xenrek]

yeah, i see the issue alot aswell, everyone build baronies, theocracies build baronies, republics build baronies, feudal builds baronies. i suppose the AI looks at their current troop compliment, and what the different holdings give, and since everything in the game just checks how many troops you can throw at it, they go with baronies.

problem is, this USUALLY ends up with entire kingdoms where every duke has upwards of 10K troops, but even going to war sets them to like, -25.0 gold, and you end up with just mass areas of the map being filled with all the county-modifiers for bankruptcy/robber-bands/etc

 

[hagagaga]

Because the AI is dumb.