Discovery of the day!

This is my Discovery of the day!

We all have these form time to time and I thought I would share this one as it has plagued me for ages, and I know I am not alone.

There is often an issue with a theater’s trade being blocked and or pirated and there is no one obviously doing it…

Well the little thieves can hid! In the Map Edge Area at the edge of theaters the trade route line is there but if someone is sitting on it you can’t see them because they are off the map as it were. You have to send a fleet to check those spots.

When you get close they show up…or at least when you hit their zone of control you stop. I found a mid size Spanish fleet sitting at the very edge…I could not even approach them directly but took some strange rout to the attack…It was u shaped or maybe even an s...wierd..

That might explain some of those mysterious blockades many of us have suffered.

It was also a tough fight against galleons and such, but that is another story.

In my GB campaign I kept being annoyed by a band of Ottawa Native American Rebels that would suddenly pop up in the densely wooded area west of Quebec and across *north of* the river from Niagara. They were just a little farther out than 1 turn's march could reach and causing *devastation* to Quebec's province wealth. I'd send a small force to deal with them, have to hit "end turn" being unable to quite get there. Next turn they'd be gone and wouldn't reappear till I marched off. Must of been the Whack-a-Mole tribe...:smash::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4: hold still u varmint.

Kind of like you taking a region where your ally or neutral has blockaded (not taken) the port and even when this region changes to your ownership, it still counts as blockaded and the only way to break it is to attack that neutral/allied faction...

In fact, you can still be blockading your own port that way...and lose trade income for that theater.

I've got a couple of annoying situations in my current British campaign.

1) The French have parked a fleet in the Dutch primary trade port, effectively blocking all trade with the United Provinces. Its probably just a sloop. The Dutch have a hude army at their capital (1 hex away) and a huge fleet parked in the Flanders naval base just down the coast. But they do nothing to free their port. I have my own army just outside the port, but I don't want to start a war with France just yet, and don't really see why I should when all it needs is a single militia unit to solve the problem.

2) The Danes and Swedes are at war. I trade with both. But each has contrived to park a fleet on its opponents primary trade port, and neither seems interested in freeing its own port from the enemy blockade. The two fleets are literally parked opposite each other, but both are pretending the other isn't there.

Not very clever AI.

This is just another example of the AI doing or being programmed to do stupid things.

Spain has the same problem with a Barbary fleet sitting in their one trade port. Denmark and UP are likewise blocked. But if the player puts a fleet in some faction’s port then they kick you out. Why?

Why allow an AI faction to do it but stop the player? There is obviously something more to the behavior.

Spain had no problem attacking my blockading fleet or kicking me out of port in Cuba and Hispaniola. Your example is typical when it is an AI faction that blocks a port, however. Usually it is a trade partner. Is this something it is programmed to do or allow?

Well it reinforces the arguement that the AI factions are not programme to look after their own best interests but are merely designed to 'screw the player' whenever possible and at whatever cost.

Really, lazy design and bad AI programming.