Bankrupting other factions

I am on my 4th campaign and noticed something...

Giving middle eastern cities as gifts tends to bankrupt those factions you give them too.

Playing as England - Right after I completed a successful crusade, I continued ravaging egypt, and sacking their cities for florins. After I "sold" off all possible buildings, I gifted the cities to The papacy, figuring I would up my standing(which I did). What I noticed is the wealth standings kept going down until after the 5th city, they were "bankrupt". Eventually they lost all their cities...

I then "gifted" the next series of cities to my past/future enemies: Milan/France/Denmark, right after a ceasefire... trying to improve our realtions I noticed a considerable drop in stacks coming at me from those countries, and a drop in units overall. This is when I made the connection that I was bankrputing them. Perhaps they were buying many units to fight off the egyptians and mogols or just buying buildings for those emptied towns...

This strongly feels like an exploit, so I am not going to employ it in the future... but wanted to hear your opinions...


*** p.s. how do you find where the pope is when they have no territory? I have seen papacy stacks but cant find a city anywhere.

In my experience other factions always are bankrupt. Playing on H/VH they buy all the units they can buy to go after me.

If the pope has no longer a region, he spawns near Rome or near the city he was controlling as his last region. In my Turkish campaign he spawned continuously near Rome every turn only to be killed immediately by my welcoming party. :grin:

it may have something to do with the fact they can only pull in low taxes and suffer all that corruption and distance penalties. I've seen some larger cities actually generate negative amounts of money, just to keep the population from rioting, so that may be the case here

Yeah, Since AI doesn´t have there generals with high Chivalry (crusaders) or lots of +law characters, income is low and corruption takes what is left.
And AI doesn´t usually make deals with the Turkish or Egyptians, trade i mean since they´re so far away.
Seen Turkish Diplomat go trough Italian regions, southern France to Spain but not HRE or Danes.

While playing as any RC faction, I may exterminate those cities and then give them to the Pope. I never sell the buildings . Most of the time I can get a rite of passage and alliance from the Pope. I do this for other reasons. If I want an ally when the Mongols come, I have one ready made in the Papacy.

This also helps with the conversion of the populations of those cities. Since whomever you took that city from will probably attack it again, this also keeps the Pope from allying with those Muslim factions (a major annoyance).

Generally, I just sack the cities so as not to get too many negative attributes.

What others say about the AI spending money on units is true. In my current campaign as Portugal, there were no crusades called to the Holy Land. Now the Timoriods? have arrived and I am making my way down there. I just gave the Papacy Antioch (first Holy Land Crusade) and he is marching his armies down to that area. I have been gifting the Papacy 10000 florins per turn for some time and he has some huge armies.

All of my Crusades prior to that were against other excomm. Christian factions and some rebel territories.

This exploit coud be use as an importat tactic if you are atacked by a stronger enemy which cand defeat you,or if you intend ataking a srtong enemy,but you don't have enough power to defeat him.First you could bakrupt him and the atack him.........:yes:

In my experience AI factions are always bankrupt, even if you just gifted them a huge amount of florins the turn before. What giving them territories that are difficult to hold does is force them to attempt to defend there, thus shrinking their field stacks in their home territories. I find that the best way to get Rome away from the Papacy without too much trouble is to gift the Pope a lot of the middle east, wait for him to reinforce it, and go to war with the Muslims, then snag Rome and buy peace with more ME territory and florins.

Makes more sense for the Pope to set up shop in Jerusalem anyway. ;)

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Originally Posted by Deutschland Uber Alles

This exploit coud be use as an importat tactic if you are atacked by a stronger enemy which cand defeat you,or if you intend ataking a srtong enemy,but you don't have enough power to defeat him.First you could bakrupt him and the atack him.........:yes:

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Good observation indeed. :thumbsup: