Naval game on AI

I got a bit bored of Continents and I wanted to play England. The two thoughts married in me playing a Large Islands map on King. But since I didn't want to autowin just because I play THE naval superpower, I made a deliberate effort to make my life difficult. So I preset the following people as my opponents:
Dido, Goku ( I didn't realise the whole world will be passable by Triremes, so I guess his UA wasn't that useful...), Oda Nobunaga, Isabella , Sejong, Suleiman, Bluetooth, Enrico Dandolo, William

5 of these are warmongers, all of them having some sort of advantage that can be used in a naval game (Japan is a cultural monster atm). I honestly tried to make it as difficult as possible, also grinded my teeth and put Korea in to make absolutely sure it won't be an easy win.

But so far, it looks way too easy.

I took Venice, and everybody started hating me (except Suleiman, but I'm sure he's just being deceptive), yet right now, I can just DOW anyone and sack a few thousand gold from their trade routes (ren era), and I'm sure that it's just a question of time before I start taking more capitals. Shooting at Triremes with SOTL is a bit cruel.

Apart from me attacking Venice (he beat me on Oracle with 1 turn. That pissed me off), there hasn't been a single DOW. None. And Bluetooth went Piety+Patronage (lol?).

So the following questions occurred to me:
Are island games considered to be easy(er)?
Can the AI not handle a naval game (even with a Naval-oriented civ and scripting)?
Is it because I'm playing on King?
Is it because I'm playing England? (and rushed Great Lighthouse, and adopted Exploration, hue)

Can somebody please clarify why I find this game so easy?

But even if it's easy for me, Dido, Suleiman and Oda all adopted Honor, Dido also got Exploration, yet the whole game is a hippy paradise where everybody loves everybody and I'm the only one who ruins the party.

Edit: Title wanted to be: Naval game on King, but my brain is broken. Much sorries.

Yes, it's best to move up 1 difficulty level when switching from Continents to Large Islands.
It will evenually build a navy, but it takes awhile, and the initial ships aren't much good for combat.
The AI will build more naval ships on this map type than on Continents.
The human though is much better at using fast moving ranged attack units than the AI.

(Play as Arabia / Mongolia and conquer your landmass with ease with your UU; it's that way as every civ when you're using your navy, and England's UA, building Great Lighthouse, and Exploration all increased the AIs pain)

Immortal+ will make it difficult on this land type to actually build Great Lighthouse.

I just went complete berserk by this point, inconsiderate of my warmongering levels. Just wiped off Kamehameha of this planet, everyone thinks I will bring this world into a new dark age and I-just-don't-care.

They STILL don't have a strong navy, I have 11 experienced ships of the line with 2 great admirals, and I could easily spam another 11 if I was forced (I started on a about 14 iron, and freshly colonised another 6). London and York builds one every 1-2 turns. Not to mention the 6k gold I'm sitting on.

Korea though has done something the AI never done before (this late into the game): he's 1 tech ahead of me!!.

He did steal like 3 or 4, but I've never seen the AI having an industrial unit that I haven't already got. So I think I will go for him right now before he gets out of control.

Island games are so much difficult than large land mass games because you have to have iron or oil to make a decent navy. Large land mass games don't always need iron or oil since you can use infantry or crossbowmen. Siege units don't even require iron.

Well, once you've got 3-Range-Ships you're pretty much invulnerable. Due to the "AI can't move and use Rangeattack"-Bug you're basically immune against ranged Ships and Melee Ships just won't do enough damage.

And even later you get Submarines. One of them can literally wipe out a complete navy force, because the AI just forgets that you've sunk a ship during your turn as long as it doesn't see your ship at the beginning of its own turn.

The Smart-AI-Mod solves some of these issues, but still... naval warfare in Civ 5 is much easier than land-based warfare.

Ryika said:

Well, once you've got 3-Range-Ships you're pretty much invulnerable. Due to the "AI can't move and use Rangeattack"-Bug you're basically immune against ranged Ships and Melee Ships just won't do enough damage.

And even later you get Submarines. One of them can literally wipe out a complete navy force, because the AI just forgets that you've sunk a ship during your turn as long as it doesn't see your ship at the beginning of its own turn.

The Smart-AI-Mod solves some of these issues, but still... naval warfare in Civ 5 is much easier than land-based warfare.

Click to expand...

Range promoted ships and logistics are great, indeed. Submarines can also easily wipe out obsolete ironclads and frigates.

Ryika said:

The Smart-AI-Mod solves some of these issues, but still... naval warfare in Civ 5 is much easier than land-based warfare.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I forgot on my previous post that I actually play with Smart AI mod myself. Without it, it's really abysmal on large islands / tiny islands. (If you as the human get first Iron and then Oil)

You may also want to consider a mod that adds a human ranged unit handicap.

Vajrajina said:

So I preset the following people as my opponents:
Dido, Goku ( I didn't realise the whole world will be passable by Triremes, so I guess his UA wasn't that useful...), Oda Nobunaga, Isabella , Sejong, Suleiman, Bluetooth, Enrico Dandolo, William

Click to expand...

Goku = Kamehameha

I just got it, LOL. Dragonball Z reference.

On topic: I really enjoy water maps and the civs that do well on them, but raising the difficulty or using Smart AI mod (if you don't care about Steam achievements) may be necessary.

The ai is terrible at all forms of naval warfare.
1 3 range frigate can kill hundreds of ai frigates.
Play with smart ai mod.
Being England just means your navy is where it needs to be, any civ can crush the ai navy

I play England a lot, but I rarely play island maps any more (usually Continents or Terra). The AI is generally pretty woeful at sea, but you do get the occasional fright like when you're bombarding a city and some fleet suddenly shows up: I remember attacking Rotterdam once and my SOTL were suddenly surrounded by sea beggars (I thought I'd cleared them all out) - that was a hell of a good battle, had to limp my ships quite a way to safety, thought I was going to lose them.
But sadly it doesn't happen often, and by the time you have range and logistics they're invincible until subs/flight come along.

That's sad, I really hoped this game would be more interesting. But I still don't understand why the AI is so peaceful. It's now the Industrial era, and I'm still the only one who ever declared a war.

I also don't understand why don't they Embargo me. Literally everybody hates me, my relations are all Guarded, Hostile or Denouncing.

And I know for fact that they do vote for people to be Embargoed. I've seen both Shaka and Dido getting embargoed without me initiating it.

That's BNW, AI is very friendly. With exceptions. They probably hate you for 1 of 2 reasons: You've done too much warmongering, or you're just too far ahead.

You could use mods to make them more aggressive:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239794296

Of course they hate me, I already have 4 capitals and attacked pretty much anyone who bothered me. Danish prophet on my second island? (used to be Venice). Complain to Bluetooth, he says f off. No problem. DoW, capture the prophet, burn him at a stake. Make peace 5 turns later (also getting some luxuries in the bargain).

But more seriously speaking: On continents game the AI wages a lot more wars. It's usually the other way around: Before Industrialisation I declare no more than 1 or 2 wars and I aim to end them quickly. They on the other hand go full berserk as early as turn 100. I had one game where Cathrine steamrolled her entire continent, eating Carthage, Venice and France alive. Why is it different in this game? All I've seen so far is Oda Nobunaga and Dido poking some city states.

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Vajrajina said:

But more seriously speaking: On continents game the AI wages a lot more wars.

Click to expand...

Border disputes is the main reason the AI starts a war. On an island map that hardly ever happens. Moreover the AI needs to have a far bigger army before it decides it has enough to wage war on something oversea.

You can expect almost no war on an island map happening until very late in the game, once they all have an ideology and all the land available is taken.

On my last islands map, I did a random start and my strategic resources I think got set to Legendary. Oh, and my original 3 cities had exactly 0 iron. None of the CS's had iron either. I eventually found a source of 6 iron to settle my 4th city at and went to town on SOTL. I never declared unless someone pissed me off, like the Dutch. Friends for awhile, DOF, etc, then out of no where, they denounced me. I hadn't done anything for like 20 turns. Fine, Took his capital and 2nd largest city. Left him one city on another island. That's my favorite punishment on these maps. LEave the civ, but leave them with their smallest city on the most remote island with no resources. Then I found a reason to go after Japan (they had 12 iron around one city). Now I have 2 fleets of 8 SOTL, and 4 Privateers each. After that it was easy to maintain two wars with my fleets.

Tough part now is keeping my cash flow up since so much of my GPT comes from trade so I have to watch my routes prior to war.

Easy part is I can snipe the largest cities and capitals with ease. I've had a few where I could only squeeze 2 SOTL within range, but that's been about it.

Remember, when you have no iron you can always buy it. If you have none there's bound to be a civ that has too much. you just need about 6 frigates and a few privateers then you go and conquer some cities that have iron and you are fine.

I think that there's probably at least three main reasons, among others, that the AI is bad with their navy. And the AI having a poor navy is not specific to Civilization, I think it's that way for most strategy games. But anyway, as far as Civ goes, here's my take:

1: The higher level equalizers that the AI is given mostly helps them get a jump start, and then you equalize the game yourself as the game goes on. Obviously the navy and the air game starts to pick up later in the game. So at this point you should be taking off.

2: This goes to most strategy games where a human plays against the AI. Computers are programmed to do a task, but cannot yet think like a human, and have trouble with strategy that isn't in a confined space, like chess. They want to build Wonders, attack, and defend, but have trouble with concepts like protecting your attacks, and getting units just for a specialized task. They ignore horses for most part because they can't figure out how to use them. They usually only use Triplanes or Bombers for attacking, and will often use of their move instead of intercepting, and will almost never use them for airs weeps. They underutilize subs probably because can't attack cities or land units even though they can completely dismantle your foes navy and gives you dominance of the sea.

3: I guess that this kind of goes along with the first one, but I'd also say that when you're on maps with more water and less land generally help humans as well. Especially if you can find yourself on an island. Pangaeas are very unfavorable for humans because you not only have to catch up for the AI, but have to build up a huge army like you're going Domination so that you won't get invaded. Interestingly enough, some Civs that have pedestrian UA's can actually be good Civs due to their starting position.