Anybody see a naval invasion?

Been playing quite a few games lately on different map sizes and templates, I'm just wondering: has anybody seen a single naval invasion by the AI? As a matter of fact I can't even recall the AI building and using a navy even just to help their ground forces along on smaller islands. I've literally never been bombarded by AI ships, aside from barbarian galleys.

Is the AI just completely incapable of putting together a significant naval invasion? It certainly had no problem doing that in Civ 4.

I've been playing with the TSL Earth map as America, and what's funny is I recall in Civ4 many times having to face an overwhelming invasion from someone in Europe or even Africa when I got too isolationist in my thinking and didn't build much of an army/navy. This has literally NEVER happened in 5. I've even played with ZERO military units just to test a theory and I've never been invaded.

So has anybody actually seen a naval invasion by the AI?

Yep. On marathon, large, continents, I have experienced a navel invasion. Sadly, it was meagre and poorly executed, but it did occur.

I was playing as England and around 1950 or so the Russians decided to attack me from their continent. They bombarded three cities, one down to zero and the other two down to about half health and then proceeded to send embarked land units to my continent.

Sadly the AI chose to send it's land units slowly, one at a time, so I just bought an artillery piece and a submarine and sank each unit before it could make landfall. If the AI had sent it's units en-mass it might of had a chance to take at least one city for a couple of turns, but it's 'trickle units to the enemy' "strategy" was highly ineffective.

Yes, I also had Russia DoW and execute a naval invasion right after in an early game--Catherine came with quite a large navy and land and sea units and my forces were depleted and fighting on the other side of my territory and she made quite some work of it.

In this instance, the AI was very effective and coordinated; the strategy and execution were quite good--Blitzkrieg sneak attack, appearing from the fog of war.

The AI (egypt) invaded me once en masse. We were at peace and in different continents (with right of passage as well), and suddenly I noticed like 8 units right outside the border of a coastal city. Sure enough, the next turn they declared war and invaded. I did not have any ships or artillery in that side of my continent, so they got their units in.

That aside every other time they were quite bad at it. Although the ability to sink any unit with just a trirreme is quite absurd imo.

The AI is bugged and cant plan naval invasions, it will be fixed in the upcoming patch

lietkynes said:

The AI is bugged and cant plan naval invasions, it will be fixed in the upcoming patch

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Your confidence in the patch is . . . well, it's higher than mine.

Back to the OP's question, yes I've seen the AI attempt a naval invasion. The Iroquois once tried a very large landing playing against me on a small continents map. They even landed attempted the landing in a blind spot of sorts for me-very near a city state at an isolated corner of my continent. My nearest ships were two or three turns away. Unfortunately for them, I had artillery and other units I was able to rush into position and several of their units were quickly destroyed. Before the majority could land, I had a destroyer within striking distance and they sued for peace.

I've never seen anything that looks like a naval invasion. It just might have happened that a destroyer or a cruiser or a floating land unit might have popped up on the shore, but i've never seen anything worthy of calling "Naval invasion", not even on deity level will you see something like that. The best you will ever see is a floating settler that might squeeze himself onto an alien continent. It's just ridiculous.

While we're at it, nobody has ever declared war on me the time i've played civ 5, not a single time at all. Not once, never. I've been the initiative power to do that. All wars is engaged by myself. Not on deity level will anyone declare war either. The offensive game just doesnt exist towards you, it might happen that they go to war with city states or other civs, but never have I had anyone declare war on me.

I have never seen anyone do anything against me, no trade embargos (I Dont think they exist anymore), no war declarations, nothing. The only thing i've ever had is a warning because I bought a tile that was owned by my neighbour, he complained, then I bought more tiles from him later, he complained and then I bought more tiles a third time and he complained that might lead to war, but it never came.

The AI isnt just hopeless, an AI in civilization 5 doesnt even exist.

And the hopelessness doesnt stop there, the AI will never fire nukes, it will never clean up pollution in its own territory and it will never put any airplanes on their carriers.

The pathfinding is there. The simple way to fix this for the AI is to allow embarked units to defend and possibly remove the 1-turn embarkation process needed to go from land to sea and vice versa...

I had liz send a bunch of units at an island city on immortal once. She was actually quite succesful, caught me buy surprise and had a Ship of the line backing her up. She managed to get the city to 1 hp but I fended her off with rushbought treb, walls and Frigate.

The main issue seems to be that they can't help but have their units slowly trickle in and get picked off. This is bad enough in land wars, embarkation only exacerbates this effect.

I get these steadily in many different ways.
It could be a simple attempt at scouting for more lands to settle in, it might even become a continual outpouring of coastal strikes at some cities.
The first hint of such an invasion pattern comes into shape when a few Caravels swoop near your borders, soon after Frigates try to spot themselves in tactical hideouts (bays & tight straits - for blockades).

War status is indeed triggering... pillage, trade routes cutout, direct attacks on multiple targets.
But it gets much more intense once *YOU* offer a worthy opposition to their Navy.

BomberEscort said:

The pathfinding is there. The simple way to fix this for the AI is to allow embarked units to defend and possibly remove the 1-turn embarkation process needed to go from land to sea and vice versa...

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Do you think pathfinding is the problem? ... like how if you set a path across water from a land tile, the pathfinder pre-determines that each turn the unit will cross only 1 water tile (which is of course untrue)...

Maybe that throws off the AI war strat programming, so they largely ignore the intercontinental war option...

I wish I could expect a naval invasion... in my current big game I conquered my continent, but was waaaay behind 2 civs on the other continent tech-wise...

Since I know I have no fear, I can take my time and build a modern army and navy, then invade on my timetable... a sneak attack would be a nice way to pass the time until I'm ready

I've sort of seen one, the songhai sent a large force to one of my island cities, even landed them in groups. However that island was only 2 or 3 sea tiles from their capital, Gao . Thats the farthest i've seen an AI go to invade over seas

trickofthehand said:

Is the AI just completely incapable of putting together a significant naval invasion? It certainly had no problem doing that in Civ 4.

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I don't think any civ game has had AI competant enough to launch a naval invasion. they even struggle with land invasions...

I have seen two "impressive" naval military manuevers from the AI in over 200 hours of game play.

The first was from Bismark on an immortal, standard, Huge, Earth map ... I was located in South America and Bismark had totally dominated all of North America. I conquered Helsinki which was located roughly at the Panama Canal and Bismark decided to declare just as I took the city. I had two frigates and a pair of Swordsmen ... he had 100+ Landshneckts and after about 10 turns of getting slaughtered in the funnel he began sending them "around" through the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately he couldn't seem to grasp that, with limited movement and no defense, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. This war went on for decades and I eventually brought riflemen in and with my 5 level 10+ frigates, took all except Alaska away from him.

The second was an Emperor, quick, large, continents game and Alexander of all people seemed to have over a dozen Triremes swarming to my north. I took my horsemen up there to see what was going on and he was surprisingly undefended ... easiest fight I have ever had against Alex and he hardly fired a shot with his boats (a few, but never used them in his cities instead of his hoplites ... such a waste).

All in all, AI needs some naval combat training. It is worth noting that it was either the last or second to last patch for CivIV that finally made its AI moderately capable at sea ... so hears hoping there were lessons learned and it won't take as long for 5.

I've played 260 hours and the closest thing to a naval invasion was mass embarkation around a choke point (protected by Frigates, so they failed completely). Keep to yourself and you'll never be invaded by enemies on another continent - the AI views it as too much trouble than it's worth (and they're probably right).

A question to the posters of this thread: how often do YOU launch a naval invasion? I find that beyond Emperor, it's just not worth it. And on Emperor, it's barely so.

(On the higher difficulties, taking your own continent takes longer and there are many more units to attack if you declare war on the other continent).

I colonized an island near France (but hell and gone from my territory) and Napolean swarmed me with musketeers.

attackfighter said:

I don't think any civ game has had AI competant enough to launch a naval invasion. they even struggle with land invasions...

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The problem in past civs wasn't the AI. It was the game's time scale. By the time units arrive on your shores, they're out of date--usually badly so.

Helmling said:

The problem in past civs wasn't the AI. It was the game's time scale. By the time units arrive on your shores, they're out of date--usually badly so.

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Not really. In Civ 3 they'd send single galleys with two units in them at a time, which were slaughtered the second they set foot on shore. In Civ 4 I can't really remember the AI ever really building a navy, they seemed to get a few ships (if that) and then just sitting around passively, even in regards to land wars they were pretty tame.

It is supposed to be possible to alter the game engine through dll's if im not mistaken, or at least that modding capability should be possible after the next official patch.

It have to be possible to alter the nature of the AI, if thats possible we could make our own AI, a true AI that will be hard to play against.

Whathisname from Japan sent a fairly large invasion force against my continent, but did this weird thing of landing a handful of units on 2 paths of neutral territory between my cities and a CS's territory. They hung around for 3-4 turns, I suppose expecting they would not be noticed, with the rest of the invasion force sitting offshore, then after I had positioned all my land units to slaughter them, THEN they declared war. I had this mental image of hundreds of samurais standing in an open field, holding their arms at angles and hoping they would be mistaken for trees, while my units got ready to cut them down.