AI exploration on water maps

[Coffee Monopoly]

It seems to me the AI sucks at scouting on heavy water maps like archipelago and sometimes communitas with lots of small islands reachable by shallow water. While on land maps they find everything very quickly and actually make it hard for the player to even get ruins, they struggle with islands. This results in them missing out on ruins, city state quests and barbie camps, and they fall massively behind in the early game. Meanwhile I can grab all of that stuff for myself. I find I have to play on Deity for them to even have a chance, and even then just because of the handicaps. The VP devs have done a great job with the AI in general, but this aspect still needs to be improved.

 

[Polari]

I have noticed same problem but usually it's do to AI exploring water maps with trimanes not units since they can cover much larger area being able to cross ocean tiles. If AI finds Ruin close by on tile it's scouts can reach it will try to grap it but usually you can just reach them much faster if you explore by embarking

 

[ridjack]

It'd be neat to have something like @whoward69's Brigantine somewhere in the recon line, if that helped the AI with this sort of problem. Explorer is the obvious candidate.

 

[Omen of Peace]

I find the AI easier to beat on Archipelago maps, but it's not only a question of exploration. You have to focus even more on production on those maps since it can be scarce, and I'm not sure the AI does that well.