AI Naval invasions

I've noticed ye all tlaking about them and it coccured to me I've never been on the sharp end of one. I usually play big & Small maps, any reason why this would preclude the AI from doing same?

I have... but they are not as advertized.
If anything, they are weaker. And that is mainly because the AI attacked from the transports, without amphibious promotions, thus having huge penalties.

he tried to invade in a city with 2 defenders: a machinegun and an infantry, with ... mabye 4 galleons worth of units (lower tech, it's true, but he had cannons, knights, macemen and musketmen). he lost, ofc...

And I saw this thing more than once. This is pushing the surprise thing too far

RedRalphWiggum said:

I've noticed ye all tlaking about them and it coccured to me I've never been on the sharp end of one. I usually play big & Small maps, any reason why this would preclude the AI from doing same?

Click to expand...

If you've never been invaded, then you probably defended your country well enough (or were nice enough to the other civs) so that they picked other targets.

I usually see a couple of naval invasions in the course of a game, on average the AI attempts about two times per game to invade me. They usually unload their troops to a hill or forest, and then either attack, or fortify and wait to be slaughtered. I think they only risk amphibious assaults when there is no good defensive tile to unload their troops to (or when they have the respective promotion, of course).

Imho the AI does a pretty good job in assembling an army and bring it across the ocean, and it makes a decent effort to take one or two cities. What it doesn't seem to get is that such a war on another continent needs a permanent supply of new units. The AI doesn't provide this supply. They make take one or two cities (especially when invading another AI), but then just sit there, while their enemy raises an army and some dozen turns later throws them off the continent.

Imho, the AI ability to perform an invasion has been improved considerably, but the AI is still clueless about what actually to do with these conquered cities on a foreign continent.

My problem with intercontinental wars is that you have to capture about 4 cities in order for 1 or 2 coast cities to be able to work any useful tiles. If you want an inland production or commerce city to flourish, you better plan on capturing/razing every city in a 10+ tile radius. I don't like having to conquer most of a civ in order to free up cultural borders enough for a couple captured cities to grow and stop choking.

Relating to the topic at hand: The AI will never commit enough hammers for an intercontinental war to be successful for them. Even if they can manage to capture AND keep a coastal city or 2, your culture will choke it to death. It will only be able to work the coastal tiles. Often the human player will have enough culture to limit the captured city to having only a portion of the coastal tiles!

Most of the times, the AI will limit to razing the cities they conquer in amphibious invasions. They try to do more only earlyer in the game, when there is not much culture accumulated, or if the military gap is huge (you have on the entire continent fewer units than he's attacking you with)

Not in my last game. They landed, destroyed some improvements, took a port city, and then I obliterated them and took it back.