AI needs to stop fleet spamming :)

Yeah, the AI has problems here and there, but the one that annoys me is the way it spends cash needlessly on numerous and humongous fleets. I captured most of Egypt and they had three full stack fleets - in the Red Sea for heaven's sake. Who were they going to fight there? I won't even get into the Julii's inability to conquer Gaul in my last game because they enjoyed looking at multiple full fleet stacks parked outside the province of Venetia. Those ships must be very pretty, they build so many of them :) Geez, the AI build priority for fleets needs to be cut by 90% - they waste far too many resources here. Then again, I think we saw the same thing in MTW, though it seemed to be toned down for VI. CA, fix this :)

Grifman

Subscribing to this opinion.

Another stupid thing with ships I noticed. There are a lot of AI ships got stuck in some bays. There is enough room to maneuver and go out but they just stand here from turn to turn and do nothing. And such crowds often consists of single ships of same faction. Why don't they merge into one fleet?

yeah its amazing how fast they can churn those ships out, as the GCS fighting the Macedons I killed them fairly quickly, however they still managed to somehow produce almost a full stack of ships to terrorise the seas. Every Ai faction, even when hard pressed for cash, just want to keep 'em coming. Maybe they're trying to rebuild Xerxes bridge of ships, except across the entire Mediterranean this time?

Yeah, having more than a boat or two in the Red Sea is nuts. One or two could be useful in some situations. The AI wastes a lot of money on upkeep of massive fleets.

Egypt had almost a full stack of ships in the Red Sea in my game. They also had more than a full stack in the Aegean doing nothing. It was so far away from any territory they had.

Carthage seems to have the biggest porblem regarding fleets. They just keep on churning them out. At one point there is almost no free space at all near Carthage. If Carthage spent more money on units instead of sihps maybe they wouldn't get trounced so badly by the Scipii.

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Originally Posted by Grifman

Yeah, the AI has problems here and there, but the one that annoys me is the way it spends cash needlessly on numerous and humongous fleets. I captured most of Egypt and they had three full stack fleets - in the Red Sea for heaven's sake. Who were they going to fight there? I won't even get into the Julii's inability to conquer Gaul in my last game because they enjoyed looking at multiple full fleet stacks parked outside the province of Venetia. Those ships must be very pretty, they build so many of them :) Geez, the AI build priority for fleets needs to be cut by 90% - they waste far too many resources here. Then again, I think we saw the same thing in MTW, though it seemed to be toned down for VI. CA, fix this :)

Grifman

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To top it off they dont even group em they leave them all by themselves which makes for a messy map. If CA wants them to have that many ships at least group them all together more often.

In my campaign the scythians had a ful stack in the kaspian ~;) . It really nrrds to be fixed.

In any campaign so far, the only threat the enemy poses at medium/medium difficulty(i never play any harder or easier than this) are their initial army stacks, after that you can conquer any faction provided your back is secured and you have a decent economy and infrastructure.

However one thing i noticed, they love to build ships.. when i fought the greeks as the brutii, they didn't stop attacking my ships, and aimlessly wandered around the peninsula. Even when they have only 1 city left, they still seem to have a sizeable fleet wich is pretty anoying.

And i agree with Grifman, they need to make the AI to recruit more land units than sea ones...

The MOST STUPID thing about naval combat is the "can't withdraw from naval combat" crap....

Perhaps CA should cap total fleet sizes based on the number of ports and upgrade level? This might reduce the AI's arms race to produce ships for no practical use. Consequently, if you had the max # of boats, and the AI captured one of your ports, you would lose the lowest upgrade boats until you were in under the cap. Alternatively, you could keep the boats but build no more, and upkeep would double on the "excess" boats.

Imagine Egypt's extra money/army production without unneeded boats in the the Red Sea. Scarey!

If CA makes the AI more likely to blockade then those many boats are going to be unmanageable for the human player.

Yes, the AI seems to love building ships wether they actually need them or not. I saw the same thing with Egypt having 3 full stacks in it doing aboslutely nothing. The AI didn't even blockade my ports while I was conquering them. Unless the AI fleets while actually do things(the only thing they seems to be wandering around randomly attacking enemies) then they don't need to build nearly as many of them.

Also, why you might see alot of individual ships is because ships with command stars can't be in the same stack. One of the fleet bugs I think, along with the problem of not being able to repair ships groupped with one that has command stars.

Edit: Yes, a limit of some kind would be good, it'd stop the AI from bankrupting itself in ship upkeep and make ships more useful. Also, if you lose the ports required to support the ships just have the lowest tech ones not covered slowly start losing sailors. So it could get repaired, but it'd be a constant drain on your economy to sustain the ships.

And on a sort of unrelated note, I really think ships need to move faster. It takes years to sail from Egypt to Italy. Slow movement wasn't a problem in MTW when armies could easily be transported, but managing a big empire in the endgame is annoying because of the long voyage required to go anywhere.

In another thread I suggested requiring blockades to take more than one boat...and to also be dependent on port upgrades. A big port would be tougher to effectively blockade. After all, a single boat can't seal off a port in most cases.

Another idea would be to have some risk of blockading boats being sunk. I might start a new thread about proposals for a stronger naval system.

Well its my understanding that 1 boat represents a small fleet since army sizes are scaled down to about one tenth. So that bireme with 80 men is really 800 men with 10 ships. So when you lose 30 men from a Bireme, it is representing you lost 3 ships and still have 5 ships left in that fleet.

But yes 1 ship per port town or at least 1 ship per province would greatly scale this down. Now if the A.I. actually did some aggressive blockading, blockading on 5 or 6 ports not just 1 then it would be a different story. 1 ship per teritory would be better as it would'nt inhibit those few mainly landloced nations to live a life of being permanantly blockaded by the human

As far as the Caspian sea it either needs to be limited to how many ships 1 faction can have in there or just make it so that you ca'nt build ships there. As sea battles there would'nt be a game winner.

I think where part of the problem is in the beginning game sea battles are happening everywhere keeping the sizes down, but then all the sudden surviving faction are at a deadlock and you are mowing them over, while there fleet remains

As far as losing men if you do'nt have the ports to support them anymore is only hurting the comp.

Another thing admirals need is stars for themselves not just retinues so you do'nt have 5 ships that ca'nt join your main fleet.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

Perhaps CA should cap total fleet sizes based on the number of ports and upgrade level? This might reduce the AI's arms race to produce ships for no practical use. Consequently, if you had the max # of boats, and the AI captured one of your ports, you would lose the lowest upgrade boats until you were in under the cap. Alternatively, you could keep the boats but build no more, and upkeep would double on the "excess" boats.

Imagine Egypt's extra money/army production without unneeded boats in the the Red Sea. Scarey!

If CA makes the AI more likely to blockade then those many boats are going to be unmanageable for the human player.

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That's not a bad idea at all I think. Ports/levels define your capacity, but you still have to build them to have them. I like that. It limits both you and the AI. Makes a certain sense too since you have to have the capacity to man and support your fleet which would be tied to the ports you have, not just your money. Good idea.

And yes, once at war, blockading your ports - or protecting theirs should be an AI priority - though amphibious invasions would be nice, I don't see the AI do it alot - though it did happen once. The AI will invade islands it seems, but doesn't seem to try strategic invasions on the mainland very much.

Grifman

Grifman

I was at war with the Greeks and they have a full stack somewhere and a few single boats here and there. They chose a single unit, already depleted, only 18 men left ship (either bireme or trireme) to launch an amphibous assault on Kydonia. Needless to say, I attacked it and the AI lost 15+ units of hoplites, armored hoplites, etc.