Improving AI sea invasions

[kettyo]

Discuss our ideas about AI invasion improvement and our own invasion tactics as well.

I think AI might aim for razing cities until victim's production falls below half of his and after that aim for taking cities.

Also i often use the tactic of landing an army with a pack of transports, fight (with sea bombard if possible), and then pull back to the ships and out to neutral seas, wait for healing and then land and attack again. This tactic works very well for me. It's easy to beat enemy antistack units and razing/taking coastal cities this way.

You have to use some tricks when invading a strong civ on another continent.

Of course amphibious attack would be good if the AI used it, too.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Discuss our ideas about AI invasion improvement and our own invasion tactics as well.

I think AI might aim for razing cities until victim's production falls blow half of his and after that aim for taking cities.

In my games, city razing is turned off, so that won't work as a general rule. And there are also mods out there that have slowed down the instant razing of cities. It takes a number of turns to raze a big city in these mods. And as far as I know, Blake and Iustus try to write a BetterAI code that is flexible enough to be used in mods.


I personally don't raze cities when invading (I can't because I switch city razing off in the pregame settings). For a succesful amphibious invasions of a civilization, you need a massive army. The army needs to be comparable in size to the flexible part of the defensive AI army and constant reinforcements are needed. The first shipment of units also needs to contain some defensive units to defend the cities that are captured in the first few turns of the invasion and some collateral damage units to defend the captured cities against stacks. These units can't be supplied in the second wave because the cities might be lost again at that time. That's the difficulty of an amphibious invasion. You need everything there at once because reinforcements will not arrive quickly. If this is not possible, then the AI should indeed raze and pillage or not declare the war at all.

When planes are available in the game, then the AI might completely bomb the defending AI into the stone age. It's not something I do because I want to take the lands intact. But the AI can't judge the defensive strength of the defending AI as well and is just less capable to hold the cities it captures in the amphibiouse invasion. So it might be an effective tactic for the AI.
The AI can also rush build an airport in the just captured cities to airlift multiple units per turn into the city. (You can airlift one unit per turn into a city without an airport and unlimited units per turn into a city with an airport. A city with an airport can airlift one unit per turn out of the city.)

 

[kettyo]

I usually invade larger civs to slow them down when they are too much ahead.
Sea war against larger and somewhat more advanced civ is not much possible without the razing method i think.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

If airpower could knock-out road lines then it would be much easier to isolate the landing zone, but so far they can only blow out other improvements.

I keep hoping that Firaxis will make that an official change.