The game cheats

[Zom]

Unless I plan to keep a city, I sack it. When I sack it, I stay a few turns to make sure I can convert every building to gold. That big city gold smith becomes a village gold smith after the first turn of sacking, and can be sacked again until there is no gold smith left. After a couple turns, when there is nothing left to sack, I move on. But I leave my spy behind me.

I notice that on the very first turn after the sacked city reverts to the enemy faction, it generates all the basic economic structures that I just sacked. Immediately, without it taking turns to be built. That is cheating, since it take me time to build my structures.

And it makes me wonder if the game is charging the enemy faction the gold that it would cost to make those instantaneously appearing structures. A double cheater?

[debux]

Remember the AI isn't human: it isn't as smart as we are I just can't think of the advantages it has to build up these industries, because the AI wasn't originally built to follow the complex building trees this mod has (the AI behaviours of this kind are hardcoded, and it simply can't be modified legally). Therefore, I'd guess the dev team has added somewhat of a script that generates these already developed industries, so that the AI doesn't have an unfair disadvantage against you I'm not certain of how the dev team achieved this (if they actually used scripts), but I'm pretty sure that this is what happen.

So actually, the game isn't cheating, in that sense. It's the dev team cheating against you but for a greater good (so that it's more challenging for you, and the game doesn't turn into a steamroll you see in vanilla). But hey, at least you got a few handfuls of denarii in your sacking, so it didn't turn out that bad.

[Muizer]

Actually, we're not cheating against you. If the AI sacked your settlement, the same thing would happen As a consolation, the buildings that are placed by script don't confer any significant bonuses. They still need to be upgraded to have any impact.

The AI does get support though (there's a money script), so the impact of a scourged earth policy has limits.

[Zom]

If the AI sacked your settlement, the same thing would happen .

I have unfortunately had a city sacked by Gauls (for which they will pay dearly). They are noobs when it comes to sacking. They did not convert all the buildings to cash, only slaughtered the populace.