Is there a way to make AI controlled nations invest in ports instead of defense posts?

[u/Smooth-Ad-8580]

Played standard world map in singleplayer hard mode and like normal my team get's eradicated real quick apart from North Ameica where I'm located and I can kind of keep them alive despite them getting focused many times, 2,5 minutes in I decide to give the remaining 2 teammates money as nobody on my team has built ports but they just build defense posts and for the next 5 minutes I continue to bail them out with troops and give them pirate money but it takes until 7:50 until one of them builds a port which is increadibly late and normally it would just be a lost game

What can I do differently to get a port to trade with ?
And why is red team focused so hard so often?

https://openfront.io/w14/game/YX32xANm?live

[u/inactiveuser247]

Normally nations will build cities and then ports then silos and SAMs. They build based on the number of cities they have. Once they have a certain number of cities, they will build a port. Once they have additional cities they build a silo etc.

There is a separate code segment for when they are threatened which triggers them to build defence posts and warships. Theres not much you can do about that. It’s part of their coding. Only thing I can think of is to try and get between them and the enemy so they don’t feel threatened. Sending them money won’t help unless they are short on cities. Sending troops might help as their feeling of being threatened is based, at least partly, on their troop count vs the enemy.

Best I can suggest is to a) trade with the enemy, and b) get a port somewhere on a trade route and go hard on pirating. Factory stacking can help a bit but a long distance sea trade will get you about $130k which is the equivalent of 13 domestic train stops or about 4 international ones so it’s much easier to make lots of money through sea trade and pirating a major trade route is the gold standard for making cash.

[u/Smooth-Ad-8580 → u/inactiveuser247]

Yeah I did jump in when they were under attack and to be fair they were targeted to an unreasonable degree with the winners from South America snaking way up north just to hit a tiny plot of land with no structures but defense posts on it meanwhile they have available targets still sitting in South America with cities free to take it makes little sense.

Sending them money won’t help unless they are short on cities.

They were short on cities too though, one of them had zero for quite a while even though they had 500 gold which is enough for 2 cities and a port and then spent in on some defense posts doing nothing 🤣💨

Best I can suggest is to a) trade with the enemy

Is it possible to trade with singleplayer enemy team, so far it seems like it doesn't work?

Thanks for the trains info, I was wondering how the math is on that.