We just played a 4 player game of Game of Thrones and wondered a bit about the balance of house Baratheon. Unlike in the 3 player game where all of the southern zones are excluded from the game and can't be conquered, in the 4 player game all of those zones can now be captured with a relatively small army - there are a number of forts in those zones and house Baratheon is in prime position to take pretty much all of them simply by extending their fleet south a little bit.
In the game we just played I was House Baratheon and I managed to win fairly comfortably on around turn 5, despite not really twigging onto the potential of this strategy for a couple of turns. I also felt kind of cheap and so didn't really use this strategy as much as I could have done - it seemed that a player properly exploiting this strategy would be at a massive advantage.
Should some of these zones be excluded as they are in the 3 player game, or is simply intended that the other 3 players be aware of this and work together to stop house Baratheon from managing to do this?