Quote Originally Posted by Prodigal View Post
The two factions that start with units on trade spots have mixed fleets, the only logical reason the dev's would do that would be to provide fleet protection, which leads to the conclusion that trade spots were/are meant to be being raided. That they are not looks like a pretty obvious issue, bug may be too strong.

There are some other fleet problems that are probably considered more pressing, but trade spots attacks, and a tweaked fleet generation system that considered increasing faction wealth where a trade spot has been captured would be quite a major game improvement.
Labelling this a bug or issue is misleading and IMO irrelevant. It's a failure of the AI to perform what, to the Human player, is a basic, if not essential procedure. With the consequence of cippling the AI controlled factions and handing an un-merited advantage to the player.

Personally, I'd rank this as high as the inability to perform naval invasions. AI controled France, GB, UP, Spain and Protugal are all economically crippled by their inability to trade as effectivley as the player.