Does/Will the AI ever attack by sea?

[danfda]

Sicily is prime for taking those islands, while only sharing a border with venice, and pretty safe with the papal border. Has anyone ever seen the Sicilans expand? Especially with Corsica and Sardina just a hop skip and a sack away from Sicily.

No, Sicily is always excommed within the first 20 turns because they ignore the Med and try to go up the Italian peninsula. Taking on the HRE, Milan and Venice to start is just silly, and completely ahistorical (I know, lotsa arguments there, but to start I think the AI is supposed to try and follow history). As such, I've not yet seen Sicily expand beyond their starting provinces. Heck, I've only ever seen one Sicilian navy.

[Barny Bangs]

I've seen:

- Egypt invading Antioch (Rebel at that time) from Alexandria by sea. Maybe to avoid crossing through my provinces (Jerusalem / Gaza)?

- The Moors invading North Italy (?!) by sea. Not sure why they are doing this, but one of my spies ideling in Florence witnessed a full stack being unloaded at the coast.

- Venice sending their armies by sea to Rhodos

- The Danes sending a full stack to England by ship.

And that's after one hundred years with fow on...

[Daveybaby]

Judging from these replies, it seems like the AI has no problems utilising sea travel in order to fulfil its objectives, but it does seem to have problems with *setting* those strategic objectives for itself involving overseas provinces.

So things where the trigger is focussed on a particular province - like crusades, rescuing stranded troops, or retaking provinces which have been captured by an enemy - will work ok, but when deciding where to attack next, and faced with a large number of potention choices, those involving sea routes will always come last.

It is quite possibly linked to the prefers_naval_invasions field, which would explain why britain never gets invaded, since the nations most likely to do so (france, HRE) have it set to 'no' (though the danes have it set to yes).

However, sicily has it set to yes, and as has been noted, it seems very reluctant to cross the mediterranean.