Is the AI really terrible on water maps?

Leathaface

Leathaface

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Like Archipelago, Contintents, etc?

I am thinking of playing a Water type map but am put off by people saying the AI is crap on them. (Emperor difficulty BTW)
 
yep, its crap. Especially on Archipelago. It keeps building many land units, that have basicly no use.
 
It's horrible with water-based maps. But if you're only playing on Emperor normally, use the immortal-AI instead and you might get a decent experience. You'll still see them sacraficing whole embarked land-armies into your cities and fleets though.
 
Like everything else, this is flavor driven.
So some of the AIs are ok with it, others suffer horribly.

AIs whose flavors are building centric (Korea) actually can do really well if none of the warmongling AIs are in position to kill them early. (In addition, Korea's naval UU is actually worse than the base unit since it can't enter ocean to explore anyway)

Pretty much all AIs who have a naval UU have a high flavor for it; so these are the ones that will dominate the nearby sea against the other AIs.

However AIs whose flavors are designed around an early game conquest will really suffer economically if no one is on their landmass and they'll build that large army anyway.

Above was at a strategic level, at a tactical level, it suffers from wanting to retreat threatened siege units / red lined units into the water. (This is actually the reason G&K gave all units some embarked defense)
 
It's better than it used to be. Give it a try. Upping the difficulty level might be a good idea though.
 
I think the average Ai does best with pangea but G&K/BNW ai does ok with water maps.

Pick the civs you'll face to make it more challenging.

One thing I found odd in BNW is that they don't exapnd like they did in G&K, or maybe it was the mod I was using. Hmmmm. But you can grab nice locations in BNW well into the late middle game. Found that suprising.
 
qemist said:
It's better than it used to be. Give it a try. Upping the difficulty level might be a good idea though.
Click to expand...

Exactly. It's bad, but not as bad as it used to be, and is better on higher difficulties.
 
Let me put it this way: I steal workers and then embark them. The AI runs its Triremes into the ground fighting my workers at sea, and when my workers are wounded all I do is land them. They make great cannon fodder for city bombard attacks, too. Yep, that's right: the staple of my navy is workers.
 
Use the Smart AI mod...it allows AI to move snd shoot with ranged units, which means they use frigates and subs much much better.
 
It's all over the place. In some recent games, I saw the Ottoman execute an excellent naval strategy and wipe out 3 civs before I was forced to intervene and beat them back.

Conversely, the Swedes played one of the worst naval games I've ever seen. While systematically taking them out, I encountered an entire fleet of triremes and galleases on the other side of the planet. How'd it get there? Why were they still paying maintenance on them in the 20th century? Mysteries of the AI.

HB
 
What joncnunn said. I just came off a series of water maps because I had not played most of those leaders. I seeded the games only with AIs with water UU and/or UA and the games were quite interesting. I finally saw decent competition from Askia, Theodora, and Denmark. I am still hoping for a game where William presses with those lovely Sea Beggars, but I ended up taking him out of the rotation.
 
tetley said:
Let me put it this way: I steal workers and then embark them. The AI runs its Triremes into the ground fighting my workers at sea, and when my workers are wounded all I do is land them. They make great cannon fodder for city bombard attacks, too. Yep, that's right: the staple of my navy is workers.
Click to expand...

I'm sure Lenin would approve but it seems to me that embarked units are way OP vs naval units. In RL people in unarmed transports are virtually defenceless against naval units yet in CiV they are almost as strong as fighting ships.
 
Definitely. I love water maps, but land-based civs lose their minds on them (much as in the reverse.)

For a good challenge on a naval map, try:

Polynesia (will meet everyone first, so if you're not them, you might want to make sure you get Printing Press first.)
Netherlands (will rock during their era, at least)
Carthage (will spread out early and be able to defend themselves)
Byzantium (will probably get that religion, so watch out)
England (oof. If they get the Great Lighthouse you'll never catch 'em)
Portugal (exploration/economics powerhouse)
Venice (Great Galleas is a bigger part of their strategy than is normally mentioned)
Ottomans (Germans of the sea.)

Pick one for yourself and have fun!
 
It seems it has some trouble on mostly water maps. I remember Shaka was a runaway Civ, eating everyone. I was very weak, but decided I had to go to war to cripple his power somehow. I carefully put together a fleet and declared war. To my surprise he sent one main fleet, I defeated it and after that he never sent anything decent, just bits and pieces of warships. He had the power to wipe me out, but never put anything together into a coordianted force.

I took most of his cities one by one (navally) while he ponced about.
 
Socratatus said:
It seems it has some trouble on mostly water maps. I remember Shaka was a runaway Civ, eating everyone. I was very weak, but decided I had to go to war to cripple his power somehow. I carefully put together a fleet and declared war. To my surprise he sent one main fleet, I defeated it and after that he never sent anything decent, just bits and pieces of warships. He had the power to wipe me out, but never put anything together into a coordianted force.

I took most of his cities one by one (navally) while he ponced about.
Click to expand...

That sucks. I thought Firaxis would have made the AI better.

This is really putting me off trying off a water map. Many people play contintents, but i'm not sure now. Might stick to Pangea.
 
Leathaface said:
That sucks. I thought Firaxis would have made the AI better.

This is really putting me off trying off a water map. Many people play contintents, but i'm not sure now. Might stick to Pangea.
Click to expand...

Continents/Small Continents is all right. There's enough land that they can get by just fine. Only problem is runaways on the other continent you can't deal with early.

Also, you can cheap-kill pretty much any overseas empire; if you declare war, they'll embark all kinds of things for free kills for your navy. They're not good at massing Frigate groups up or anything.
 
The game is balanced for standard-sized continents map and standard speed. The further you venture from this setup, the more confused AI gets.

Also, due to very limited I factor in AI, computer-controlled players just focus on creating carpets of units and then mindlessly sending them against you. It's pretty obvious that such carpets will suffer on water.

Let's also not forget that AI is completely incapable when it comes to using airforce and submarines. Both these elements are extremely important on naval maps.

Last but not least, AI doesn't consider safety when it comes to establishing trade routes. Put a boat of any kind just beyond venetian line of sight and make huge $$$. And as for their great banksters, just use two archers.
 
Even though the AI might suck at naval warfare and invasions across water, i think it has improved tremendously since Civ 5 vanilla. But still it lacks aggressiveness at sea. I have often wondered why the AI dont just put all of its hundreds of free units into the sea and just move them all against me all at the same time. That way it could overwhelm me with sheer numbers and become a real threat, no matter how dumb the AI still is.
 
When I was lazy once I did attempt a naval invasion on an AI Civ with lots of ships and troops ships. the AI sent a whole mass of aircraft against me that sank everything and blew my invasion...

But once you learn to protect your ships then it`s unlikely to happen again.

I just wish Devs would go to some effort to make a good AI, I`ve seen older games successfully manage it.
 
Whilst it builds navies that appear scary in scale, it's absolutely useless at using them effectively. It has no idea about building up Ranged units, nor does it use Prize Ships effectively, nor prioritise the important parts of an enemy fleet, nor protect the important parts of its own. Occasionally its sledgehammer fleets happen to attack a city where you've not got a scalpel to hand with which to take them apart.
 
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