AI's Navies better off w/out 'Escort' flag?

ZergMazter

Prince
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I was reading a message on the general forum and I never really thought about this.

You know how the AI treats naval units as escorts for transporters mainly? Could it be that the AI sees the need to produce naval units only because it requires escorts, or it does so because the 'Escort' flag gives the AI a higher priority strategy which deprives them from using naval units as we humans do?

Has anyone tried this? What would the AI do if suddenly there isnt a need to escort anything?

Will it stop making naval units as they will no longer have a purpose?

Will it build naval units and behave as we humans do, bombarding everything at the coast?

Or will it blend? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBUJcD6Ws6s
 
I quote myself from that other thread: ;)

In one of my games on an archipelago I was under attack by the Celts, who had an superior army (I had no rubber). So I used my fleet to intercept their troops transports and to disrupt their supply lines.

Since the KI moves their escorts only as some sort of shield and without attacking any enemies while on convoy duty, my fleet was able to shell them without taking hits themself.
I have no longer a savegame of that event.

But the celtic transport ships involved were the Carrack (2/2/4, Astronomy, flavor unit for Caravel, Portugese UU is relabeled to Nao), East Indiaman (3/2/4, Magnetism, flavor unit for Galleon) and Clipper (1/2/7, Industrialization).

Only the Clipper is marked as "need Escort", while both Carrack and East Indiaman (I need a short cut for that!) have checked "Naval Power" and "Naval Transport" in KI Strategy.

It seems to me that only loaded ships received an escort by the KI.

I have seen empty Carracks and EIM in an offensive or scouting role. Sometimes they are even pressed into the escort role for another loaded ship (I have seen an EIM escorting another EIM more then once).

The most ridiculus escort/transport combination were a EIM with an ancient Catapult Tetrareme (2/1/3, Mathematic) as escort. Guess who took the first cannon volley from my Cruisers and Dreadnoughts. ;)

On the other side I have never seen an unescorted Clipper. They are allways covered by at least one Warship (including Carracks and EIM ;) ).
 
Oh wow so the AI will use naval transports flagged with 'Naval Power' and 'Transport' efficiently? I always thought the AI was too stupid to realize this like when you flag a ground unit for 'Offense' and 'Artillery'. The AI will randomly pre-select one of the roles for the unit prior to building it, and it will be stuck with that role till the day it dies.

So what you are saying is naval units are smarter than ground units? They are able to switch roles depending on the situation if flagged for it? It would suck to have an aphibious assault ship carrying 10 units around and never unloading them :(
 
So what you are saying is naval units are smarter than ground units? They are able to switch roles depending on the situation if flagged for it?
If lets say a Carrack is used as transport and under escort, it will return to its home port with its escort. It will not switch during the mission from transport to warship.

On the over side escorts will switch to bombard or attack if their transport is destroyed and theyself are unharmed. The Aztec did that in my current game, then a pair of War Torora (2/1/3, Mathematik) lost their Galleon to a lone Corvette (3/2/5). They immediately shelled the next city (and nearly sunk the victorious Corvette in it).

Next round the Aztec apear with a pair of Armored Cruisers and a Frigate as escort for a Torora (1/1/3, flavor Galley) as transport with a single Swordman on board.

They obvious do not look at the statistics of their units, but only checked if "naval power" or "naval transports".
 
double post - sorry!

As this post allready exists, I can add a picture of a typical KI convoy.



Seaplane Cruiser HMS Tempest shadows an aztec Convoy. In order to find out, what their destination is (their is global peace currently).

Solution: the were heading home to an unpronounceable city. Halfway a US Destroyer joined them for the trip.

By the way, I really do not know how the KI handles Cruisers and Battleships with onboard seaplane squadrons. I have not seen seaplanes or helicopters on KI warships yet.
 
Ok, lets see for what purposes the KI uses their ships:

Scouting
- any ship without "need escort" flag.
- if warships available, they will be favoured.

Pirate Hunting
- any ship labeled as "naval power" (for obvious reasons ;) ).
- seems to have a higher priority than Combat Patrol.

Combat Patrol
- any ship labeled as "naval power" (again for obvious reasons ;) ).
- warships will hunt down enemy ships.
- favorite targets are single ships, especially badly damaged ships and/or transports.
- they will only melee attack if they are at least as strong as their target. Otherwise they will try to bombard the target (if they can).
- they will bombard enemy cities, but apearently not the country site (at least I have not observe them doing that).

Escort Duty
- any ship labeled as "naval power" (once again for obvious reasons ;) ).
- they will not attack enemies, but only shield the transport with their own hitpoints.
- any ship with troops or aircraft will get an escort if available, regardless of "need escort" flag.
- ships with "need escort" apearently will never leave port alone (even if their cargo is badly needed elsewhere).

Transport Duty
- any ship labeled as "naval transport"
- either for colonisation or invasion
- they do not know how to load troops back into a ship outside port, so if they landed troops, they will attack regardless of their chances.

Carrier Strike Mission
- I have myself so far never seen the KI loading Aircraft into Carrier (or even building Carriers!), but others have. ;)

Did I forget something? And how can we improve the KI Naval Warfare?
 
I have seen AI Carriers in one of my games on Regent just recently. I was in the Modern Era. What Egypt seem to do was, drop off some planes in some cities that they had just captured from Babylon who we both took out, which I was about to declare war or had just started war to take the cities from Egypt. Because next turn, I was being bombed from one of the cities, and when I took it the planes were in there.

The cities were through my territory going west, and then south to a large peninsula.
 
ı play at Monarch and ı saw it at least once that the AI using carriers , ı saw them coming in with carriers underneath . That the planes are B-17s are of course immaterial to this argument .
 
I see the AI using carriers in all of my games. I think maybe you need to give it time to get well into the modern era lol.

I am very diplomatic so my games spawn the whole tech tree. Maybe thats why I get to see it.
 
I decided to play a bit more of the normal game on a higher difficulty as I used to play on a lower difficulty.

Ive played a couple games but i got a little bored as my favourite eras are the ancient-medieval eras and those eras just seem to go by way to quickly on the normal game. And I just seemed to spend so much time on the industrial to modern era. Which is how I saw this AI behaviour with the Carrier as they used it more in the Modern Era.
 
I see.

It seems I should allow the KI more often to reach Mass Production and if they do, I should not cut of their oil fields with Secret Agents and Unmarked Cruise Missiles. ;)
 
The AI is completely dumb in using carriers with the normal C3C setting.

I observed the performance of this kind of unit in DEBUG-mod for many, many turns when creating SOE. Even in scenarios with preplaced carriers, the AI doesn´t use them as it should. Mostly planes that were preloaded on carriers were transferred to a landbase as quick as possible. In seldom cases the AI loaded a plane to a carrier itself - only to remove it in the next turn again. In very rare cases the AI made attacks with the aircraft based on carriers, especially when the distance to a landbase for a transfer was too large.That´s why I decided to give carriers another setting in SOE and CCM.
 
The AI is completely dumb in using carriers with the normal C3C setting.

I observed the performance of this kind of unit in DEBUG-mod for many, many turns when creating SOE. Even in scenarios with preplaced carriers, the AI doesn´t use them as it should. Mostly planes that were preloaded on carriers were transferred to a landbase as quick as possible. In seldom cases the AI loaded a plane to a carrier itself - only to remove it in the next turn again. In very rare cases the AI made attacks with the aircraft based on carriers, especially when the distance to a landbase for a transfer was too large.That´s why I decided to give carriers another setting in SOE and CCM.

This is a probably controversial approach, but I too have observed the Artificial Idiot most often using CVs as aircraft transports and nothing more; my approach: give CVs a Bombardment Strength roughly equivalent to the strike power and range of contemporaneous aircraft (I also give them capacity to carry ACs, as the shuttling of ACs seems sensible, although I've yet to observe the AI's using them this way.)

@r16 & Kirejara - the usual trick re: e.g., no B-17s on CVs is to flag the CV as "Carries Foot Units Only" and only give CV AC the "Foot Unit" flag.

-Oz
 
I see a lot of variation in the AI play. Just depends on the game. My most recent game I went back to an unmodded game to see what I liked and didn't. Emperor level, which I deem a loss as Korea had 9 space parts built at last check.

I got shellacked by multiple carrier groups for multiple turns, Indian and Korean, until I chased them down. Here are three Japanese carrier groups. Though they were headed elsewhere before I declared war. Enemy troops landed often but usually just 3-4 units at a time, despite their using transports. Transports, as usual, had two escorts. Submarines were out in force as well.

Spoiler :








Admittedly, not every game turns out like this. My personal opinion on the matter of AI navies is they need targets, whether the player's navy or artificial (non-nationality) threats from auto-producing buildings.
 
Thanks both of you!
the usual trick re: e.g., no B-17s on CVs is to flag the CV as "Carries Foot Units Only" and only give CV AC the "Foot Unit" flag.
I am allready using that trick for seaplanes aboard of cruisers and battleships (see screenshot above). ;)

The four-engined-bombers (including the B-17) can carry themself foot units, so they can not loaded into carriers. I think, that I can live with non-carrier-aircraft such as P-38 or Blenheim on my carriers. ;)

But I am using the "Tactical Missile" flag. Hmm, I must test if both versions work for carrier aircraft and seaplanes.
 
my approach: give CVs a Bombardment Strength roughly equivalent to the strike power and range of contemporaneous aircraft (I also give them capacity to carry ACs, as the shuttling of ACs seems sensible, although I've yet to observe the AI's using them this way.)

That is exactly the setting in SOE and CCM.:)
 
Ok, I must think about the CCM-attack for Carriers. But it feels somehow not "right" to let empty Carriers have a striking power superior to a Battleship.

In my finished game I used the editor to experiment with some naval action in an ongoing war between Mongolia and Austria (replaced America).

So I gave poor and underpowered Temujin some Battleships, early Tanks and Aircraft. Austria has developed Flight on its own, but is limited to its existing Armored Frigates and Monitors (both Ironclads) as their main naval power, because I no longer trade them iron. ;)

To my surprise the Mongolians did an airdrop with their lend-leased B-29, despite the fact that I disabled the Airdrop action button in the editor (so that the B-29 and other four-engined Bombers are only able to ferry troops between cities).



And the cheating KI even airdropped Tsar Tanks! :eek:

I think, that I have either to disable the "air transport" strategic check box or at least limit the heavy bombers to foot units. :confused:
At least this explains some shipless invasions outside of my sight in past games.

Aditional I was able to observe that the mongolian Battleships behave very strangly (marked as "naval power" and "naval carrier", as they are intented to carry seaplanes): They just sit outside of Bischofshofen and let austrian convoys pass by them and take bombing runs by the austrian airforce. A Mongolian Heavy Cruiser was even sunk by a successive attack of two Armored Frigates.

After replacing them with older Dreadnoughts and Armored Cruisers ("naval power" only) they steamrolled the convoys as they should be.

So I guess a dual role Battleship/Carrier is not working for the KI. :(

EDIT: Unfortunatly I am unable to continue this savegame as the Mongolian pillaged the coal next to Almarikh and the game freezes in the same interturn. I do not know if there is a context between the coal and the freezing, but this is very irritating. :confused:
 
@r16 & Kirejara - the usual trick re: e.g., no B-17s on CVs is to flag the CV as "Carries Foot Units Only" and only give CV AC the "Foot Unit" flag.

ah , but then that wouldn't lead me to dabble in pencil drawings on disused notebooks to design a carrier with Navy career 17s . So is it possible to add tactical missile flag as well and have a Harrier Carrier as well ? (Edit : The answer seems to be yes , apologies for not reading the whole page .)



also ı have long failed with the foot unit thing , am ı ticking less than required boxes ?
 
I believe you can't have a transport which accepts air units also flagged as foot units.

Therefore to restrict certain air units to carriers, they can only be flagged as Tactical Missiles, and carriers only flagged as Transports Only Tactical Missiles.
 
I believe you can't have a transport which accepts air units also flagged as foot units.

Therefore to restrict certain air units to carriers, they can only be flagged as Tactical Missiles, and carriers only flagged as Transports Only Tactical Missiles.

I have not tested "foot units" for aircraft jet, as I am using the "tactical missile" for my seaplanes onboard Cruisers and Battleships, while my Carriers can carry all standard aircraft (except Heavy Bombers, who are transports themself, but now with disabled KI transport strategy checkbox :rolleyes: ).

But the Seaplane must then be marked as "Tactical Missile" and the transporting ship must be marked with both "transports only aircraft" and "transports only tactical missiles". Again I had to remove the KI strategy checkbox "naval carrier" for my capital ships, as the KI was unable to use them proberly.



Seaplanes have also their hitpoints lowered, as they are fewer planes in a Seaplane Squadron than in a normal Fighter or Bomber Squadron.
 
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