STW2 AI not recruiting larger ships?

[Jarmam]

Positive. I never research the Way of the Sea-Art so I am incapable of building Fire Bombers - I steal them from my enemies.

Medium Bunes might have been mine.

[Jacobin]

Well just finished my Hojo campaign - in 220-odd turns fought (or rather autocalced) 90+ sea battles and in not one was there an AI ship larger than a bow kobaya.

Weird.

[Jacobin]

A long Mori campaign with many, many sea battles in which I've only used bow kobaya myself and I have seen a very few firebomb kobaya and heavy bunes turn up in enemy fleets - but not one medium or wako bune (the wako only ever field trade ships and are thus no threat whatsoever to my trade whereas before they were a constant menace).

There is clearly something very wrong (or right? - I am winning a low more battles on autoresolve since fielding only BKs than I did with fleets of medium bunes or bigger so maybe they are the most cost-effective naval unit) with the AI naval recruitment priorities.

[Jarmam]

There are definitely more Bow Kobaya fleets roaming around than before, which is absolutely excellent for me as BKs have a fairly high upkeep-to-cost ratio, leaving my enemies with significantly fewer units on the field. It also makes me cheer in excitement as I think of all those blasted Christian Battlecruiser Trade Ships that are no longer able to rout entire fleets at a time and are now even more likely to get burned to a capitulation. Good riddance.

I do however run into Fire Bombers and Medium Bunes fairly regularly as the game progresses. I also see Heavy Bunes now and then, although they are few and far between. The risk of getting barraged by actual fleets of real ships has indeed significantly decreased. I have also noticed a strange lack of Wako Pirate Ships apart from their trade vessels, which has rendered them fairly pointless - 1 Bow Kobaya can now win you entire fleets of trade ships from the once-annoying pirate faction. This does smell like a pretty severe bug.

[Jacobin]

Yes middle game I no longer need to recruit new trade ships and send them half way across the map as I know a couple of BKs lurking around the western nodes can capture 10 wako traders in far less time.

The AI also seems to be fielding many more small fleets of BKs (although I may have underestimated the presence of FBKs due to the similar card icons).

[Narcisista]

Just finished a Normal Oda Domination campaign.

My observations:

Bow Kobayas and Trade Ships seem to be the most frequent ships in AI navies.

However I still encountered a fair number of Medium Bune and probably maxed out Fire Bomb Kobayas (I don't think I needed to recruit any FBK, I just captured them).

Wako fleets seemed to consist exclusively of Wako trade Ships. If I recruited 20 trade ships the entire game it was far too many.

To my utter astonishement, the Kitabatake captured the Black Ship.

My post RD vassals were more than willing to launch naval invasions. Several of them made atempts on Shikoku, and the Uesugi sucessfully conquered Hyuga, Higo, Satsuma and Osumi.

Auto-calc seems to favour BK a lot. I had to fight many naval battles because the AI considered my medium and sengoku bune inferior to bow kobayas. I don't remember if this was the case before the latest patch.

[Yosh]

Yeah I have been kind of noticing this. I was playing as the Shimazu on hard difficulty. I had already taken over the main Shimazu island, and had just taken over the Chokosabe's small island. As I geared myself to ferry my troops to the mainland for the final glorious push to Kyoto, I found that my navy was attacked by a very large fleet... of the Takeda's bow koboya.

I had a few medium and heavy bunes (as well as a small number of fire/bow koboya), but it was still a close battle, because the AI had so many freaking koboya.

But yes it does seem strange that AI clans don't have an especially diverse navy. Somehow they still have a strong navy compared to mine >.>... But maybe that's just me.

Edit: I ended up running away from the koboya in the end, and nobody won.