Quote Originally Posted by Bramborough View Post
I would agree that that Carthage is an exception due to its decently large/rich but fragmented starting position (which may be one reason why AI Carthage usually fails pretty early in the game...too many sea-separated settlements to adequately defend with starting forces). Other island-start minor factions such as Knossos, Syracuse, or Rhodes may also have a higher tendency to acquire single settlements in a number of different provinces. In general, however, most factions are a bit more contiguous. Hence my use of the term "majority" rather than "all".
Fair point and well made, but again I respectfully disagree. The norm of very small factions is indeed true, and for those you are indeed correct, exempting would cripple the economy and the whole faction, but the factions that expand beyond that tend to follow a similar pattern, and tend to be a similar group of factions, one of which dominates the others. My examples are all from the south-west mediteranian, but similar paterns are seen in other area's when playing as other factions.

Syracuse has very often risen to become a medium player in my none-roman campaigns (I usually wipe them out as rome pretty early on). They have struck out pretty randomly and while they often end up with one complete province, the rest of their holdings are almost always one settlement to a province.

Sparta often grow to be a medium power (I would normally call them major, but almost no empire ever gets large enough to be a major power under the current AI) and again, while it may well hold two complete provinces, it's gains further afield are almost always one settlement of a province.

The other allies of carthage (Carthago Nova and Libya), who more often than not outlive the master faction, also not only start with but tend towards conquering a province or two at most and nibble at the edges of other provinces, conquering a settlement or two.

While all of these examples are sensative to circumstance, they happen often enough to be the norm rather than the exception, and a none-roman game will tend towards one of these three becoming as large as any other AI faction in the game sooner or later. In these instances the faction would almost always benefit greatly from exempting a province from tax sometimes to relieve food shortages.

The flaw here however isn't the AI not doing just that, the flaw is the AI STILL not building in a reasonable way even with Patch 4 targeting this specifically. It will consistantly build minor towns up to level 3 and 4 (presumably for the income boost) and end up with major food problems, or at very least not having a reasonably food surplus. It then builds high level military buildings for the troops. Normally this mix would lead to public order problems, and in Bramborough's norm this isn't an issue as the AI park it's main stack in it's only province and the public order issues practically go away. Bad AI prioritisation of buildings is the problem still, and this would be a sticking plaster aid at best.