Admin empires should always create tributaries when invading tribal and nomadic realms.

[peteoj]

Ai Byzantium currently seems to love conquering completely useless lands in the pontic steppe and into Russia which just seems entirely dumb that the devs had to create the "convert buildings" changes to help admin realms actually profit from those lands that they seems to mindlessly conquer for very little reasons. Instead I think with the coming of Khan's of the steppe I think this should be tweaked, Byzantium was famous for making tributaries and client states of nomadic and tribal polities all throughout its existence and I think this should be simulated in game, if the ai does attack nomadic or tribal polities they should be attacking them to create tributes and clients rather than to seize these useless lands outright.

 

[Furleppe]

AI Byzantium should create tributaries there, because it makes sense via gameplay mechanics aka Player would do the same.

If we gimp AI with this arbitrary rule, while the player will just conquer the steppe and feudalize it (long-term profit), then we will have another instance of player snowballing.

So yeah, I kinda hope for the same thing that you said, but in the way it makes sense for both AI and player. Just make the steppes really hard to "tame" as it was in this period.