Does the AI ever exempt provinces from tax? (When it's low on food)

[Fridge]

Just wondering about the food issues the big AIs seem to suffer, leading to the collapse of big empires and subsequent lack of challenge for the player...

We've all had food problems (haven't we?) - when conquering a couple of territories coupled with a sudden building splurge suddenly puts your food into the red. But that's not a problem, usually by this point you're making thousands a turn so it's an easy matter to exempt the biggest food eating provinces from tax (and thereby taking them out of the whole food supply equation). Just wondered if the AI was programmed to do this, and if there was any way of checking if they ever did do this? Might explain a lot?

[Bramborough]

Just wondering about the food issues the big AIs seem to suffer, leading to the collapse of big empires and subsequent lack of challenge for the player...

We've all had food problems (haven't we?) - when conquering a couple of territories coupled with a sudden building splurge suddenly puts your food into the red. But that's not a problem, usually by this point you're making thousands a turn so it's an easy matter to exempt the biggest food eating provinces from tax (and thereby taking them out of the whole food supply equation). Just wondered if the AI was programmed to do this, and if there was any way of checking if they ever did do this? Might explain a lot?

It's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer. My observation, however, is that for the vast majority of factions this wouldn't even come into play, as they rarely have more than a full province's worth of territory (and even then often not unified within an actual province's boundaries). A 7- or 8-settlement AI faction is unusually large (and rare). So if they were to exempt a province, that would be like half or more of their entire territory.

I'm not saying it's not a factor for the very occasional large AI (some of the far eastern factions do get pretty big sometimes). But the AI has problems much more fundamental, which if they were solved via patch, would benefit small and large AI faction alike.

[phred]

In one of my campaigns I took the Syria province from the the Seleucids.
I noticed before I attacked that they were having public order issues, and after I conquered the province I found out why.
They had upgraded most buildings to the third tier. The province was making a ton of money, but the squalor was out of control.
I tried to balance it but ended up tearing everything down (and reduced the province income by half or more).

I think the AI has trouble balancing income, food, squalor, and public order and probably doesn't have the ability to tear down buildings and re-balance things.

[Sociopsychoactive]

There is a way to monitor this in theory.

A spy close to a settlement will tell you all the pertinent information about it, relative to the province it is in and this includes income at a settlement level, and a province level on the province tab (though this is hugely innacurate more often then not if you don't have a clear set of information about all settlements in the province, and as the AI never gets big enough for corruption to be a major issue it is usually much higher than you will actually get.)

These numbers are pretty accurate at a settlement level and, in theory at least, should therefore tell you if the province in exempt from tax. I have never seen the AI do this at all, ever.

In responce to Bramborough's point about AI and provinces, I disagree. Carthage, for example, has loads of settlements that are the only one in that province they control at the start and ,if coded correctly, could happily exempt one settlement without losing a large amount of income and have that settlement still produce the right troops ect. This could work, but ATM the AI doesn't use it.

[Bramborough]

In responce to Bramborough's point about AI and provinces, I disagree. Carthage, for example, has loads of settlements that are the only one in that province they control at the start and ,if coded correctly, could happily exempt one settlement without losing a large amount of income and have that settlement still produce the right troops ect. This could work, but ATM the AI doesn't use it.

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".

[Sociopsychoactive]

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.