How AI handles fleets/naval warfare in BTS?

[mogilan]

Hi,

I think about switching to CIV4 after being completely bored by CIV5. So I have a quick question regarding naval abilities of AI as this aspect is really interesting for me.

Does AI ever uses any war ships? Does it escort transports when invading? Unfortunately I haven't found any clear answer on this in the internet so I asked about it on few forums. I want to invest some time in learning CIV4 (never played it before) but if AI is as dump as in CIV5 in this regard I think I'll give it a miss.

thanks for any opinions and suggestions (if there are a mods improving navy abilities of computer players)

 

[vincentz]

Yup. Ai uses war ships. And escorts too. Typically it will drop of the landing forces, and then send the transports home for new landunits, while the escorts stay and block trade or bombard.

 

[Tatran]

if AI is as dump as in CIV5 in this regard I think I'll give it a miss.

You won't be disappointed, the civ4 AI knows how to play the game.
Even at Monarch level the AI can surprise you with a 200 units stack of doom.
I prefer the civ5 naval combat, but the AI is too incompetent to handle the system
and has no answer to the overpowered civ5 battleship and submarines.

 

[mogilan]

Yup. Ai uses war ships. And escorts too. Typically it will drop of the landing forces, and then send the transports home for new landunits, while the escorts stay and block trade or bombard.

Even at Monarch level the AI can surprise you with a 200 units stack of doom.

Nice, it sounds challenging.

Do these infamous Stacks of Doom appear on sea too? I thought it is only a land army issue.

 

[Lennier]

In theory they can, but as naval units can't conquer cities, the naval stacks in and of themselves aren't as big a deal as a SoD on land. (However, if the naval stack has transports with land units, it could be a big deal.)

 

[Fractal Spiral]

From what I've seen the Civ 4 AI does try to use Naval units and Naval invasions if it needs to, but it isn't smart at how to use its Navy. Also on maps where there are tons of islands like Archipelago, the AI needs to be either late in the game with a lot of cities, or put the AI on high difficulties like Immortal or Deity in my opinion. It will be challenging with its Navy if you turn up the difficulty, otherwise the sea battles will be pretty dull because the AI doesn't make enough ships and doesn't understand about coordinating it's whole army to invade or developing a water empire (it will leave lots of islands unsettled or undefended, random ships will be alone, etc.) But you can definitely dominate with your Navy and use your ships much better than the AI imo.
It's always seemed to me that the AI is scary if they have land cities and military near me, and the AI is not scary if they are across water, maybe other people had different experiences though.

 

[Flipantropo]

civ 4 AI tends to build a lot more ships than a player would judge neccesary, which means defending your coasts and resources is a heavy task, they seem to like trading individual ships while ravaging your coastlines and this can be a huge pain the ass, as it tipically goes on all the way till the end of the war or until they cant build ships anymore (cause they lost their main shipyards, or access to oil).

About starting wars, aggressive/powerful leaders tipically have an invading fleet ready with transports and troops to invade their next overseas target civ or anybody they get in war with.

I have seen surprisingly clever maneuvers like a 2 galley filled with archers sneak attack on an undefended city (behind the borders, garrison was 1 warrior) by Ragnar. And the Vikings were in my same continent, they also sent a bunch of land soldiers to a border city. I ragequit that game soon afterwards.

 

[vincentz]

From what I've seen the Civ 4 AI does try to use Naval units and Naval invasions if it needs to, but it isn't smart at how to use its Navy. Also on maps where there are tons of islands like Archipelago, the AI needs to be either late in the game with a lot of cities, or put the AI on high difficulties like Immortal or Deity in my opinion. It will be challenging with its Navy if you turn up the difficulty, otherwise the sea battles will be pretty dull because the AI doesn't make enough ships and doesn't understand about coordinating it's whole army to invade or developing a water empire (it will leave lots of islands unsettled or undefended, random ships will be alone, etc.) But you can definitely dominate with your Navy and use your ships much better than the AI imo.
It's always seemed to me that the AI is scary if they have land cities and military near me, and the AI is not scary if they are across water, maybe other people had different experiences though.

Tbh I only play my own mod, but since I havent changed anything regarding naval AI, I assume its pretty close to vanilla BtS behavior, and I must respectfully disagree with pretty much all you wrote.

Imho the AI builds too many ships. Settles too many small, non significant islands, and does a pretty respectable job at naval invasions as well as almost always sail in group of two ships, making it particularly difficult to get an upper hand when trying to invade them.
Iirc losses vs wins in my last game was around 1:1 until i got tech lead.
(in all honesty it could also just be me, not being the best player, though I have had civ 4 for ten years now, and before that civ III and before that civ 2 Test of Time, and well before that it was civ I)

 

[Aristos]

1. Switch to civ4. Guaranteed non-disappointment.

2. Learn it, and then immediately download and install K-Mod. Far superior AI to the point of rage.

3. Play forever, as Firaxis will never again have a Soren Johnson on its payroll. They settled for the likes of Shafer. (although Ed Beach is probably as close as it will ever get to Soren...)

 

[lindsay40k]

Main problem is the AI doesn't understand intracontinental naval warfare. England will build a fleet and fill the transports with troops to conquer Calais, but Carthage won't attempt to cross the Mediterranean and invade Rome - and if there's a Mt Sinai in the way of an army marching from Egypt to Arabia, their soldiers will just stand around and do nothing. That said, this only emerges in rare geography, and a rival on the other side of the world with tech parity is generally a credible threat.

 

[mogilan]

Thanks for opinions guys.

Just installed CIV4, played for a bit... So far I don't see this game to be inferior to CIV5, even graphically:
a) tech tree is great! much better than in CIV5
b) graphics is cool... not as technically advanced as in CIV5 but it fits civ game much better! bird view (strategic view) is so great, everything is so clear and neat on the map. Even cities look much better (you can see every city improvement!).
c) the game was peaceful for me so far, but AI nicely colonized islands around him and certainly uses its fleet at least for exploration (I play on archipelago)

I'm, playing on noble and I'm way behind AI in everything.. :-(

What K-Mod is?

 

[Fractal Spiral]

Oh ok sorry some of my opinions about Navies in Civ 4 are definitely mistaken I haven't played that many games where ships were used or very significant, due to over-playing Pangaea maps I guess. Back when I did some Continents and stuff, the thing was when I would invade a whole other continent I could get like 20 Galleons or 30 Transports or such, I never saw the AI do this that way. Maybe it could happen though. Also the AI is definitely annoying as heck, with raiding ships and pillaging resources like Fish. The AI though seems to get a lot of ships, but I guess I didn't see it as much since I only rarely fight on the water. I usually just let all my Fish and stuff die, and then I whoop their land troops when the Transports land. Or invade them first, always prefer to invade them first Fighting other ships is hard because, you don't get any terrain advantages, you have to have tech advantage or sheer numbers. I guess since I usually played easy games on Continents I always had Destroyers or such when they have wooden ships, that's probably why my opinion of Navy battles was wrong too it seemed too easy.