"Here, have some pretty trinkets" - Buying cities from the AI

[phonicsmonkey]

hi all,

does anyone else find buying territories from the AI like bartering with the natives for colourful beads and shiny trinkets?

in my Moors campaign i've been trying to take over the world without declaring war or taking any non-rebel settlements

so I've been relying on a combination of stone-cold killers bumping off whole royal families in one turn, and bartering with the AI for their provinces

the second option has so far yielded the far greater number of new settlements, but appears to be too easy

1) the AI will accept laughably small amounts of florins for a settlement (providing they have more than three remaining in total after the transaction)

2) once you have agreed a price and done the deal, the auto-garrison script will give you a bumper crop of new, high quality troops in the settlement..for free!

for example, I bought Staufen castle from the HRE for 10k florins, itself a bargain...but I also got 8 units of merc crossbowmen which are worth around 6500 florins...so essentially I got the castle for the knockdown price of 3500 fl!

it's way too easy and attractive to just buy up the whole map this way.

does anyone have a suggestion as to how to either make the AI look for higher prices for settlements or (my preference) mod the files so that only the AI gets a free garrison when buying a settlement? or both?

i'm happy for them to get it, they need all the help they can get and are too stupid to position a garrison stack nearby in preparation for the purchase...