Naval warfare

[Tora]

Admittedly this was with The Lordz NTW mod but....

After 110 years of running the Polish Empire as a purely landlocked concern I stuck my head out the door to see what was going on in the outside world using .matteowotsisname.
Instead of the colourful chaos that normally covers the ocean about this stage of the game there was only one faction per sea province and with 3 exceptions only one ship per province.

Is it the case that if the human player has no participation in naval affairs then the AI can't be bothered either?

[Apocalyp$e]

I was wondering about this myself... I am just wrapping up my first campaign and to be honest I have maybe seen 20 enemy ships the entire game, now I have the whole ocean. and the is not a single other ship out here... actually there is one german ship off of sicily, but that is it. It has been there for like over 100 years and hasn't moved i have not even seen a single ship better than the Level 2 upgrade. Is this strange? I mean, there are islands out here with the Byzantines, Turks, and Sicilians. the sicilian island has a king and like a million princes and former princes, not a single unit has left the island since the start of the game I would guess... but now they are all upgraded and they have ammased quite a large force... I think I might just assasinate instead.

[Don Corleone]

I think there's a time based trigger. I'm playing as the Italians and pretty much mopped up the Mediteranean & black sea. The Eggys and Elmos never seemed to care to go to sea, and I had taken the Spanish, Byzantines & Turks out of the game (for all intents and purposes). Then 1205 rolled around and blam, the Elmos started building boats, and the English sailed on down to Gulf of Cadiz (SW Iberia). Even the HRE, which is on its last legs, launched a boat and dammit if they don't manage to duck my patrols every time I see them. The only folks who seem to not have put a tub in the water is the French, they're busy whoopin up on the HRE w/ me.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-surprised.gif