Straits of Sicily

[bakdal]

As both byzantines and italians, I have had the same negative experience in the straits of Sicily (isn't it called that?):

I have Sicily as an ally, and enter the straits of Sicily in order to establish a trade route.
Then, after 3-4 years, an information box appear, and explains me something like "the battle of straits of Sicily has ended", resulting in my ship being sunk.

Why is there a battle at all? We're allies, and there's no prior indication, that me entering his waters is a hostile action. In other sea regions, there's no probs about multiple ships from different powers in the same place.

Is there a good explanation, is it a bug (I don't play with the patch), or what?

Well, in both cases I wiped out Sicily, but that's one good harbour for trade less


Bakdal

[Cazbol]

There's certainly nothing new in that. Everyone hates the Sicilians because they're just pirates by nature. They can't resist seeing a lone ship in the same waters as their ships. They'll always attack before too long and they don't give a damn if it's a matter of breaking an alliance.

If you want to deter them from attacking, make sure you have at least 2 ships in a stack in any waters that you share with Sicilian ships. Three ships in a stack is even better. Other nations have the same tendencies but none as great as the bloody Sicilians.

[bakdal]

Thanks Cazbol. I guess those sicilians are nothing but a bunch of mobs, who derserves to get the butts wiped anyhow.

I just believe I saw in some strategy article regarding byz, that Venice and Sicily was mentioned as the most important regions to trade with, at least in the beginning of the game. If you need a stack of ships, then perhaps they're better used elsewhere.

Thanks again,

Bakdal

[Rising_General]

I encounter the say problem unless I use a stack of ships. damn the sicilians,they and the french cannot be trusted.

JS,


In war there is no prize for runner-up. -- Omar N. Bradley

[Red Harvest]

On expert the AI will attack you just about anywhere within a few years if it has larger/better stacks of ships in the region. Doesn't matter whether or not you are allied or if it is a suicidal move for the AI. The ship portion of the AI code is weakest since there is no strategy apparent. You can use a single stack of ships to piecemeal destroy the AI fleets. The Italians depleted their whole stack in Crete(?) one-by-one sending them to my much smaller stack in Greece. The AI will also charge deep into your waters with a single ship and attack weak targets if you don't kill it first.

In essence, the AI forces you to sink every boat it has, ally or not.

[TexRoadkill]

That's pretty funny. I started up an old campaign last night after not playing for awhile and sure enough the Sicilians started attacking every single one of my ships that they could even though we were allies.

The bastards will pay for this dearly.

[cugel]

"In essence, the AI forces you to sink every boat it has, ally or not."

This is just not true. The AI factions have certain sea zones that they regard as "home waters" and will defend vigorously if you put a fleet there, whether you are allies or not. For Sicily, it is the straits of Sicily, for Egypt, it is the Nile coast, for Spain it is the north coast of Spain (forget the name), for England it is channel. The Egyptians and Sicilians are most aggressive. The Italians don't seem to mind you parking a ship off Genoa, however they won't let you build a trade network unchallenged. Even if it's suicidal for them, they will attack you if you're not very careful.

At least on expert, all these factions eventually will attack you if you have fewer ships than they do in any sea zone. However, you can prevent them from starting a naval war by having a 2-1 superiority in every sea zone where they have ships (if you have a large stack of 6 or more and outnumber each faction in that zone by at least 3/2 they also won't attack you). You have to be vigilant about this. The bastards will sometimes shift their ships around to gain a local advantage so that they can attack. You may have to reload and move ships to forestall them. I often do this to avoid stupid moves by the AI that will ruin a game by precipitating a naval war the AI has no chance of winning.

It's not generally a good idea to wipe these factions out too early if you can avoid it, because you then won't have anyone to trade with and your trade income will fall to near zero. By careful management in my current campaign I still have the Egyptians to trade with although everyone else keeps declaring war on me and sending crusades against me. I was able to keep the Egyptians neutral by carefully watching where they send their ships (they have a lot in my campaign). In addition, since you can't get factions to accept a truce if you have any provinces adjoining theirs, (on expert it doesn't matter even if your king has 9 stars of influence - diplomacy just won't work, the AI will reject every proposal you make), you need to be very careful in declaring war. Only do this if you mean to totally wipe out a faction. Never let them linger on since they'll stay at war with you, basically forever. Rebels are especially bad at this. Once you go to war with them every rebel that appears during the entire rest of the game is automatically at war with you and there's no way to get peace with them, ever.

Another point to watch: The AI can move a ship into a sea province 1 turn and attack the next, EVEN IF YOU MOVE YOUR SHIP OUT OF THAT PROVINCE THE NEXT TURN. You can't do this to the AI, if it keeps moving it's ship each turn you can never attack it. This means that you should never have only 1 ship in a sea zone if the AI has a stack in a next door zone, because it can move it's fleet into the zone and then you can't do anything to avoid a war. Even if you move the ship out of that zone, the next turn it attacks and precipitates a war. If you keep 2 ships at least in every zone, it generally can't do this.

Moral of the story: The AI stupidly sees single ships as easy pickings, even if you have a crushing overall naval superiority. This is a glitch in the AI, but you can work around it by having local naval superiority everywhere.

[Skomatth]

Isn't that where the Charybdis is? My mythology is rusty but I think that's the giant whirlpool. Apparently it was the personification on the strong currents there. Maybe it's actually a storm but since they is a higher occurence of sinking there it's programmed as a constant battle against a weak foe who gradually wears you down.

-Looking for an excuse to avoid his research paper
KenchiSko

[Exile]

All's pretty much been said - but I'll point out that the suicide attacks by the AI mostly happen when your ship is in a sea adjacent to your province. They are not as prone to attack your ships otherwise.

I suppose they are trying to prevent your launching an amphibuous assault on their prov.

[Red Harvest]

Cugel,

My experience and testing indicates you are incorrect on several points (although much of what you say in general is correct.)

First, if you have to reload to fix stupid AI ship attacks, I could rest my case about wiping out the AI ships right there.

Second, it isn't just home ports that they go crazy on. Why were the Italians so bent on sending one ship after another to my fleet in Greece? I had to kill the ship because from experience I knew that if they penetrated deeper with an equal speed boat, they would kill any single ship they found (on expert), allies or not. Build a single ship and you have begun an arm's race.

Third, if you have equal speed ships the AI will usually catch you and kill you if you try to flee. This rarely works for the human. However, if your boat is faster it usually (perhaps always) escapes. Ditto on the intercept assuming you have enough fast boats to catch them and then win the attack.

Fourth, I wipe out the AI shipping so that I can have trade. I target ports but won't target the other provinces if I can avoid it. I've tried to leave Sicily/Italy alone as long as I can. But I kill anything wandering into my sea zones that doesn't turn back soon enough. It is necessary to prevent unprovoked AI attacks in my vulnerable backwaters. I'm not going to keep 3-4 ships in every sea zone just to avoid a fight--costs too much and the fight will happen anyway--and they will be blocking my naval routes when it happens. In my Turkish campaign I'm trying to limit naval warfare to conquest rather than extending a large trading fleet. I'm keeping the three nearby islands around as trading partners for the meantime, although sadly, the Egyptians will have to surrender all of their seacoast based holdings in the next few turns.

As we've all observed: the AI handling of naval warfare and trade makes no sense whatsoever from a strategic view and seriously hurts the diplomacy model and economic model since the AI handicaps itself. Hope this is adjusted for the upcoming Viking Invasion pack.

[Red Harvest]

Meant to say I target ports WITH shipyards so that I can keep trade going (not ALL ports, LOL.)

[Brutal DLX]

It all depends on how far you stretch out. Generally there are three major naval choke points, these being The Channel, Gibraltar and Straits of Sicily.
From my experience, if you stretch your routes to more than one of these, that's when the AI will start its general (seemingly pointless) naval warfare. So, keep the trade route smaller, and you will have less trouble, and if you want the maximum traderoute, stack your ships (at least two), as the others said, also then it might be of benefit to you to secure one or more provinces at strategic locations so as to keep your ship support costs down. The Mediterranean islands, Sweden/Finland, Portugal and Ireland come to mind here.

[trader/warrior]

i once heard about ships dissapearing, but that one was still being paid for. it was a bug. check if youre still paying for it

[cugel]

"First, if you have to reload to fix stupid AI ship attacks, I could rest my case about wiping out the AI ships right there."

Hey, sink everything in sight if that's what you want to do. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/argue.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

But if you sink a ship, that faction is at war with you. I've found, at least playing on expert that you can't make peace with anyone, the AI factions just refuse every diplomatic initiative you make. You can't trade with anyone you're at war with. If you attack every ship and can't make peace once you're at war, how are you going to trade with anyone?

Supposedly, my Byzantine Emperor has 9 star influence, but it makes no difference whatsoever, the AI won't accept ceasefires or alliances, won't marry your princesses or let you marry theirs, NOTHING (after the 1st few years). This means that once a war breaks out, even through some stupid AI naval attack, there's no way to stop it, short of wiping a faction out completely (sometimes peace returns automatically after 10 years or so, if you have no provinces adjoining the enemy and don't have any ships off their coasts, but you can't MAKE peace). My last campaign, playing as the Byzantines, all the nations of Europe ganged up on me at once (I hadn't attacked any of them) and I had 5 crusades launched against me at the same time. My trade income fell from 200,000+ florins in the bank to -36,000 in a few years. The only income I had was from my trade with the Egyptians and Almohads. If I had sunk their fleet, I wouldn't be able to trade with anyone at all

I have to have SOMEONE to trade with, and if I sink every ship, then there's no way I can remain at peace with anyone"

"it isn't just home ports that they go crazy on. Why were the Italians so bent on sending one ship after another to my fleet in Greece? I had to kill the ship because from experience I knew that if they penetrated deeper with an equal speed boat, they would kill any single ship they found (on expert), allies or not."

I never said that the AI factions only attack in their home waters. My only point about that is that they are MORE aggressive there and will generally attack if they achieve reasonable parity there, let alone a superiority. That's not just my opinion, either. Both I and numerous others have all observed this phenomenon through much playtesting of mods. See the Dungeon for numerous threads on modding the the naval trade aspects of the game that discuss this and much else.

What I said about maintaining a naval superiority in every sea zone where there's another ship still holds. I've played numerous campaigns while playtesting mods and it works. The AI generally won't attack you unless it can get superiority or at least equality somewhere.

"Build a single ship and you have begun an arm's race."

Yes. You just have to make sure that you win it to avoid war http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

(I should say that I've modded the game to increase the AI's performance by increasing the AI shipbuilding preferences - so the AI factions build a lot more ships). You just have to accept that there's going to be a naval arms race and build enough ships to win it Yes, this is expensive. I don't see how you can avoid it though.

My presupposition is that if I attack everyone I'll have no one left to trade with, and consequently no income to support my armies. How people manage in this situation I don't know

Your point about the faster ship may be right. Maybe if you have a faster ship than the enemy you can retreat out of a sea zone when the AI moves a stack into that zone with the intention to attack. I only noticed that if your fleet is equal or slower in speed you can't escape. The AI can. I'm sure most of you have experienced the frustration of seeing the AI dance one ship from zone to zone interrupting your trade and you can't attack it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

[Red Harvest]

Cugel,

If I control the seas, then I can (and do) have a *greater* degree of control over diplomacy. After stomping the offending fleet I withdraw (if needed) to restore neutrality automatically. Trade resumes. Agree with your other comments about the lack of AI diplomacy.

Another problem with allowing the AI any ships in your sea zones is the crusade effect for non-Catholics. The AI will send a crusade against you out of the blue (often because the original owner was the target--not you.) Now you are in an unprovoked war. The opposing ships now become hostile (even if they can easily be killed on the next turn) will block your sea routes and it *always* seems to happen at an inopportune moment.

The problem here is still the lack of any strategy or even decent tactics for the naval portion of the AI. Last night I destroyed the Sicilian fleet one ship at a time after I tired of them attacking my Serbian/Greek coast repetitively. I merely sat with a small stack of ships in one spot for 10 years as the Sicilians sent one boat at a time against me. After naval mop up, I will withdraw and become neutral again then move back in and get trade the following year. I can use the superior stack suppression method after that to prevent war.