AI Not Building Navy

[Aceman101]

Has this happened to anyone else.
I am versing the french and they arn't building any navy units.
I'm in the modern ages now and they still arn't building any navy.
Not even harbors. Though we are on the same continent the ai still should be building navy units to build cities on different continents.
Is This a bug???

 

[Turner]

Nope, that's just the way the AI goes sometimes.

Give them Ironclads, and they should start pumping out that unit. Assuming they have the resources for it.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

on low levels, the AI will often not build a navy or even a harbor.

ON Sid, they even build curraghs sometimes!!

 

[Aceman101]

I always play chieftain. So that's why they arn't building a navy.
But i suspect if it was a game on different continents they would build some navy units. Because If I declared war on them, how would they get across without a few transports???

 

[MAS]

I always play chieftain. So that's why they arn't building a navy.
But i suspect if it was a game on different continents they would build some navy units. Because If I declared war on them, how would they get across without a few transports???

ah, phony wars, I love those.
You can just declare war on some civ on an other continent, make alliance with their neighbour, then have the 2 fight and waste resources, while you do nothing and just invest in science, and culture.
You don't have to fear them, because they will never send a force over to your continent big enough to be even a remote thread.

But on chieftain, this wouldn't be needed, they AI develops so slowly on chief, it would actually better for your own benefit to help them develop faster.

 

[potatokiosk]

On chieftain, it costs the AI a lot of shields to build units, and they simply can't afford to use their shields on navies. It's a real shame because naval wars are fun.

 

[Noise]

Pending the civ's build preferences (I think Portugal and Byzantine will be quicker to build a navy), the AI has a pretty rigid build structure. It's far too busy building land military or city improvements to be building a fleet

On higher levels (emporer is where you'll start noticing a difference) the AI builds fast enough that it gets through the unit queue to the naval units further down. On diety, I've seen stacks of 40-50 frigates roaming around the seas.

It's a little bit to do with the AI's build preferences (which can vary from civ to civ) and a little bit to do with the difficulty level you are on. Unfortunately, I've really found with fleets that the AI becomes quite inept past magnetism.

 

[Aceman101]

40-50 Frigates on diety
I'd have no chance.

 

[Noise]

It's actually easier to combat the frigates than you might think... There really is no way to encounter them head on (since the attack/defence values in the sea are even... You can't really gain much of an edge there) which limits how you can combat them. Funny enough, the solution isn't to sink them.

Instead, you harass and wait them out. Frigates have an exceedingly condensed time frame that they rule the seas for in civ3 (which I don't much care for... Frigates should rule the seas for longer )... From Magnetism, which is often the last middle age tech I research, to ironclads is really only a 30-40 turn span (I find AI's jump to ironclads pretty quickly). Once ironclads are discovered, the AI's will disband the out-of-date frigates enmasse for you (it's often hard to tell since this happens before you can be spying on their military advisor screen, but the mass disband will cause a power drop if you moniter the score screen). All you have to do is bombard anything that gets to close to your shores (cannons work far better if they end their turn on the coastline) and let them retreat with the wounded units.

If you want to see an example of the power drop off from the AI mass disband, the Sid game I posted has it decently well defined (the disbanding of 400 cavalry leaves quite a bigger dent mind you)

After that, they are into modern era fleets... Which is back to the usual AI inept sea warfare style.

 

[Aceman101]

Why Would They Disband So many Units?
In my opinion that wouldn't really be smart disbanding 400 cavs.
Just because their obsolete doesn't mean there not useful.
I declared war on france and i destroyed 6 of their cities in one turn. But it was the cavalries that did it, because they were the only unit that could reach the French cities in one turn. Even the tank needed two turns to reach. And this was in the modern ages, a few techs away from getting modern amor.

 

[potatokiosk]

In many cases, 400 cavs = 400 gold per turn or even 800. They make units like mad on deity and aren't smart enough to use cavalry as effectively as you can, so it is better to disband and replace.

 

[Aceman101]

I guess thats why. Because of the gold.

 

[estrongblade]

If you want, you can create a scenario, keep chieftain, and program the civs you want through the editor (I recommend that you go up to at least warlord though because as was pointed out, the higher the difficulty, the better the AI creates units).

You should be able to handle warlord easily enough if you've played at least 3 chieftain games - it's not that much harder except for build -you can't swap from mil units to bldgs in your city screen production without a hefty penalty.

Anyway, as to the Navy - there is a selection of boxes for each civ in the editor where you can assign what units the civ AI will build. Select Naval units for the civs you want to build Navies and it should solve your problem.

That' all I've got for now. Cya!

 

[potatokiosk]

You should be able to handle warlord easily enough if you've played at least 3 chieftain games - it's not that much harder except for build -you can't swap from mil units to bldgs in your city screen production without a hefty penalty.

Wait, penalties for switching from units to buildings? That sounds like civ2, not civ3.

 

[estrongblade]

Yeah - But civ 3 does it too. You just need to go up to one above Chieftain and it starts - you know - if you're building a granery or something and then try to change it over to a spearman it takes some off what you've built on the building as a "penalty"? If you change from one building to another I think you're OK. Anyway - try it - you'll see. Cya!

 

[MAS]

Yeah - But civ 3 does it too. You just need to go up to one above Chieftain and it starts - you know - if you're building a granery or something and then try to change it over to a spearman it takes some off what you've built on the building as a "penalty"? If you change from one building to another I think you're OK. Anyway - try it - you'll see. Cya!

No, there is no penalty for switching!

What you refer to is just that you already have more shields in the production box than is needed for the spearman, hence, when you switch, the surplus shields will get lost.

But there is no penalty.

Say, you accumulated 30 shields, the granary needs 60, the spearman 20, you switch, 10 shields get lost. But if you accumulated 15 shields, then you can switch back and forth between building and unit as much as you like, and nothing will happen.

 

[estrongblade]

OK - Maybe it's 2 up above Chieftain, but I could have sworn there was a penalty. I may be wrong, but it seems to me every time I tried playing above Chieftain, I got that as one of the bummer aspects of it. Maybe I was trying Monarch or higher.

Oh, well. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Won't be the first time, won't be the last.

 

[Marsden]

Not ganging up, but it is exactly like that in Civ 2. 3 doesn't have any penalty, so you can turn that almost finished marketplace into a tank just like that! (Just don't mind the JCPenny's in the turret)

 

[MAS]

OK - Maybe it's 2 up above Chieftain, but I could have sworn there was a penalty. I may be wrong, but it seems to me every time I tried playing above Chieftain, I got that as one of the bummer aspects of it. Maybe I was trying Monarch or higher.

Oh, well. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Won't be the first time, won't be the last.

I'm sorry to bring you the bad news then, but yeah, you are wrong!

There is no penalty for switching production in Civ3 at all. (except what I told you about having more shields in the box than is needed)

 

[Tone]

if you're building a granery or something and then try to change it over to a spearman it takes some off what you've built on the building as a "penalty"

The only way that this happens is if yo have used civil engineers to boost production. Switching to a unit would then result in you losing the shields produced by the CEs as they cannot speed up unit builds. These specialist come with Replaceable Parts (and only with C3C) I'm not sure that 'building a spearman' would be likely at this stage but it could happen.

As said by others though, apart from this there is no penalty for switching between two different build projects.