Bizarre naval invasions

[PBI]

Anyone else notice that the AI seems to do some very odd things with naval invasions? In my current Scottish Britannia campaign Wales had four full stacks and were mounting a nice little invasion of England, when for some reason they decided to abandon it and send all four stacks to sit on the Isle of Man. They didn't even seem to be interested in attacking it, they were at peace with Norway and just sat there doing nothing for twenty turns except sending even more reinforcements from Wales.

I've noticed this in the grand campaign too, Scotland always seems to send all of its troops to sit outside Antwerp doing nothing while the English capture all their cities. The only way to get these troops to do anything seems to be to attack them. The AI seems to be incapable of aborting a naval invasion if it decides it can't take the target, and can't seem to either pull its troops out or send them to attack something useful.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

The weirdest is imo the Portuguese invasion of Wales in the Grand campaign. In almost very campaign they invade Caernarvon. Apparently the Portuguese have an interest in sheep. Beh, beh, beh

[Ratwar]

Yeah, I'm not really sure if the updates allowing for naval invasion actually help or hinder the AI in the game. I mean, Portugal does have that unholy obsession about sheep, and if they accept a cease fire, they just sit there blocking traffic for the next 20 turns until they attack again. This is also evident on Ajaccio. Whenever I take it, it ends up with like 5 armies on it (Pope, Sicily, Venice, Moors, Spain) none of which really do anything.

On another note, I really wish the naval invasions would be more spread out. How about the Portuguese coming around and hitting England in Caen? Or the Moors landing in Southern France? The only reason not to do it is the plain annoyance of a major landing behind your lines in an area which you don't expect, which in my opinion might make the AI worth something.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Yep Spain or more often Portugal tend to take Dublin and usually also Caernarvon more time than not. They also tend to go by sea to Rennes quite a lot.

Ajaccio is the worst for this, I've seen Papal, Milanese, Spanish, and Portuguease armies on it all at once.

[CynicalP]

What annoys me is the AI lack of naval invasion. Every time the Pope called a crusade somewhere in North Africa or Middle East most AI crusading armies would marched their troops across the land then rather use their navies for transport. I guess the AI can't figure out all it has to do is go to coast and buy a mercenary fleet to transport the troops.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Thought so too until i lost 2 ship flotilla with 18 elite units and my faction heir to the Egyptian navy (bloody 10 ship stacks) on their way to Cairo.

[CynicalP]

I have lost several fleets to the Egyptian navy. Since they have seem to no fog of war limitaion they seem to come out of nowhere and attack my traversing ships.

[Duke Bart]

The one thing that bugs me worse than AI naval failures are AI naval sucesses. Some faction, often it seems to be random, will get a massive navy and send it out to kill all of the players ships :(