AI naval ineptitude

I experienced some stupid behaviour in a naval battle the other day...

The Swedes were about to land a full stack in Brandenburg, which I probably could've dealt with, but I thought I might as well try to destroy the fleet and get rid of the stack in the process.

The fleet was composed of, I think, six 6th rates and one Sloop, though, and I had a single 2nd rate. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to win that fight, but decided to try.

So the AI begins by sailing at me in a line, I'm down wind because my strategy in these kinds of fights are to sail away from the enemy, turning to fire broadsides every now and then. Though this works better when you actually have the faster ships!

I demast the admirals ship, and somehow the admiral manages to kick the bucket in the process. Now his ships start to bunch up behind the leader because thye can't handle their line getting messed up, so I get to shoot a little at them before two 6th rates break away and start giving chase.

This is where the AI completeley messes up. All his ships are still going straight for my stern, all the time. Even though I'm absurdly outmanouvered and a lot slower, the 6th rates chase my 2nd rate without almost ever trying to fire at it when it catches up. As soon as they're getting a bit too close I slowly swerve and fire a volley almost point blank and turn again to sail away, and they just take it, slow down and still sort of try to get their ships side to side with mine.

The only ship that fired on me was one that went wide of my ship and happened to fire from afar a few times. After about half the timer had went out, I had dismasted or routed all of the 6th rates and comfortably went around the waves getting them to surrender one by one.

I've never seen a more worthless attempt at taking advantage of outnumbering and outmanouvering an opponent. :p I could easily have been surrounded by the quick 6th rates and shot up from stern and bow, but no. Although one on one I had vastly superior fire power and great hull strength, I should not have been controlling the confrontation like I was able to do, it should have been on the opponents terms as they had faster ships.

I guess this is a little "how to sink six sixth rates with a second rate" guide, as well as a little criticism of the naval battle AI. =)

Cheers!

I found the AI being more competent at sea than on land - they have a chance to actually kick my ass when fighting against approximately same-power fleets. But, that could be just me not being very good at it.
In my experience, in a situation like the one you described, a smaller&slower fleet would be quickly surrounded and rout/surrender without much of a fight - my sailors are quite a cowardly bunch.

AI sure does some bad decisions in naval battles, but as said earlier: with equal fleets they are a threat. I often solve this problem by concentrating all fire on their weakest/closest ship, rout/capture/make it surrender and then move on to the next one.
Often my plan involves having a Galley that sails at the biggest enemy ships max firing range, they can't hit it and it effectively nullifies that ship if you sail smartly.