We are trying to add different test mechanics to keep game world keep running properly. So if any problem happens these auto test systems will give alerts. So company can find which addition broke game. For example we are counting how many towns / castles change hand in first 20 years and we find average town / castle hand change per year, currently this average should be between 3-7.5 for both castles and towns. We are counting how many raids happening each year and find an average, it should be between 30-70, success rate of raids should be 40-60% (so if any lord started raid it should completed without problem with 40-60%). We also count gold amount in towns and poor clan leader's ratio (with money < 30K) and tier1-2 troop distribution (should be between 40-55%). And so many things like these...
If in future something is broken and this town / castle change hand per year average go above 7 or go down 3 or raid counts go out of limits or raid success rate go out of its limits these test systems will alert. So even I am not here they can find out which addition created problem and broke game world balance. Also these test systems calculate snowballing scores and it should be between 10-50. If score go out of this range test again give alert. We count militia count averages, garrison averages, starving towns, rebellions per year. For example last tests show rebellion per year average was below limits then we lowered decay effect of loyality to increase rebellions (it was (x - 55) * 0.0125 now it is (x - 50) * 0.01), so if loyality go down decay effect will give less positive loyality bonus. After this change rebellions again be 1.5 per year so it is a number between expected limits (limits for rebellion average per year is 1 - 1.75). We also count successfull rebellion ratio and it should be between 15-45%, this ratio was nearly 1-2% in 1.5.9 and we give some bonuses to rebel clans to increase their survival chance after they rebel (+1 garrison per day to town rebelled, more initial money, 100 initial militias to town rebelled, food stocks of rebelled town is now filled).
So before I leave (August 1) we are trying to completely finish this system so this system will try to keep game world running properly without need to anyone. If any change damage anything in sandbox world these tests will give alerts. I do not think but if still there happen a big problem which could not be solved for a long time I could help team but I do not think it can happen.