Brigs, brigs, brigs and more brigs!

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Does the AI ever build any ships other then brigs?

I've seen the Spanish and Portuguese field some Galleons, the Spanish two or three rated ships but otherwise I'm seeing nothing but brigs. It's even worse then the peasant armies of MTW. I'm well in to the 1770s now and I've started a war with every nation on the Atlantic just to have a look. Dozens of stacks, 6-10 brigs per stack and nothing else.
At this point the biggest threat to my fleets of 2nd raters is brigs blowing up close to my ships!

[Dayve]

Those ******* pirates with full stacks of galleons and 2nd rate superships that seem to have armour as tough as an M1A1 Abrams tank and guns as powerful to go with it. They build stuff other than brigs!

How is it that pirate 2nd rate ships always have better accuracy than and absolutely dominate my identical 2nd rate ships in battle, even though we both have as many chevrons of experience and identical stats?

IT'S WRONG I TELL YOU! WRONG!

[Polemists]

Some morocco's fleets have 5th rates, though how many I am unsure, same with Ottomans.

The main fleets though, Sweden, England, Spain, and France ususally go brig heavy, the dutch sometimes toss in a different ship here or there.

Then again the Ai goes for quanitity over quality. That is how by the time you get to the trade spots they already own 92% of them.

[Zatoichi]

I've just had a few fights against the Prussians, and they had several 2nd rate ships which caused havoc to my fleet due to my innovative tactics which generally revolve around trying to make the enemy run out of cannonballs or die laughing.

[Vlad Tzepes]

Spanish always bring better fleets than me. I faced Heavy First Rates when I was with 4th rates at best. They brought in steam ships, rocket ships, second rates, everything. I expect them to throw in the first submarine, too.

So yes, the AI builds lots of different ships.

[anweRU]

I actually had a captured dhow glut in my Maratha's game, thanks to Persia spamming dhows and using them to pirate my trade lanes!

Then again the Ai goes for quanitity over quality. That is how by the time you get to the trade spots they already own 92% of them.

The reverse in my latest game as GB - I own 4 out 5 spots in every trade theater. I simply sent as many sloops, brigs, even my Home Fleet (2 5th and 2 6th rates) to the trade theaters to occupy every single block, and then spammed Indiamen to start trading & releasing my ships for combat / privateer duty.

You can pretty much use the same approach as the Dutch. The French and Spanish might be able to do the same, I haven't played them yet.

Everybody else is out of luck. As the Maratha's I declared war on the Persians(!) to claim their trade fleets & spots. Even the pirates had ships in two spots, one of which was a single galleon (captured and put to use immediately).

[rossahh]

The largest ships I've fought against were 2nd Rates from Mysore of all nations. Unfortunately for them rocket ships can make them surrender (one full hit and the white flag goes up) long before they can get in range of my frigates.

[Shahed]

Largest ships I've fought are 2nd rates, and plenty of them too. About 8 in one single French fleet, many of them captured as trophies and parked in Rotterdam.

[PBI]

There seem to be a lot of people using 2nd rates. Am I missing something here? I thought 3rd rates were meant to represent the best balance of cost and firepower, and the 1st rates the way to go if money is no object, so why build 2nd rates? They would seem to represent a pretty unhappy medium between firepower and cost effectiveness.

Same goes for the AI; the unit description even says that only the British really bothered with 2nd rates, so surely the AI should rarely build them?

[Marquis of Roland]

Does the AI ever build any ships other then brigs?

I've seen the Spanish and Portuguese field some Galleons, the Spanish two or three rated ships but otherwise I'm seeing nothing but brigs. It's even worse then the peasant armies of MTW. I'm well in to the 1770s now and I've started a war with every nation on the Atlantic just to have a look. Dozens of stacks, 6-10 brigs per stack and nothing else.
At this point the biggest threat to my fleets of 2nd raters is brigs blowing up close to my ships!

I'm not really sure but I think the AI stops building ships once it reaches a certain number. So whats happening is, they'll spam brigs early in the game (basically before they can build anything else, and it is the most powerful 1 turn build time ship) and will max out their ship quota. As the AI cannot disband its units, they're stuck with the brigs until someone destroys them.

This keeps happening to me in my campaign. Some faction would declare war on me (britain), so I sail out a squadron and wipe out their navy of mostly frigates, brigs, and sloops. In as many turns as it takes to build the ships they're coming back at me with 4th, 3rd, and 2nd rate.

[Mister V]

Ergh. The Ottomans did nothing but spawn galleys and brigs in my game. There was no place left in the Mediterranean. I saw fourth rates in some Danish fleets, but that's about it. The AI's spamming hasn't improved much in this case.

[Bob the Insane]

I think it is because a lot of factions only have (start off with) Trade or Fishing ports and as such that is all they can build...

[Darth Venom]

There seem to be a lot of people using 2nd rates. Am I missing something here? I thought 3rd rates were meant to represent the best balance of cost and firepower, and the 1st rates the way to go if money is no object, so why build 2nd rates? They would seem to represent a pretty unhappy medium between firepower and cost effectiveness.

Same goes for the AI; the unit description even says that only the British really bothered with 2nd rates, so surely the AI should rarely build them?

The AI does build them because when upgrading docks the hospital becomes available before the steam dock. The build them and are stuck und 2nd rates forever. I haven't yet seen neither an AI 1st rate nor an AI build steam dock.

[Ordani]

There seem to be a lot of people using 2nd rates. Am I missing something here? I thought 3rd rates were meant to represent the best balance of cost and firepower, and the 1st rates the way to go if money is no object, so why build 2nd rates?

Campaignwise you can get to the 2nd rates decades before the Steam Docks depending on your tech crawl. It's possible to have Hospital Docks in the 1720s, but unless you play a stellar reseach/theft game getting to Steams Docks that early is impossible or impractical.

[Marquis of Roland]

Started new GB campaign (last one crashed on turn 93), trashed Oxford religious school for an actual school, exempted rupert's land from tax and got 3rd school in 6 turns. 1719 right now, and I will have steam docks in about 16 turns

[Ordani]

1725ish to research + 4 turns to build puts it at 1727ish as an early onset for that, yeah, although I'm not sure who else besides GB or maybe Russia/India is going to have the starting position to do that. Point being if you have to do that, the AI likely won't have it for decades more; Now if you want to make the game more fun by giving all that tech away .. that's actually not a bad idea.