Is the AI any better at naval attacks?

[bonafide11]

I just started playing Civ V again after not playing for over a year, since it initially came out. I know the game has been patched a ton and I've noticed many improvements and the game is more balanced than it was when I initially played. However, in my last game, I played a continents game with Alexander and I was pursuing a Cultural Victory. Washington had conquered his entire continent and taken all the capitals, and I kept expecting him to attack me since I controlled the majority of my continent and I was getting close to a Cultural Victory. We had about an equal size of military, but only because I was so concerned about him attacking me that I began churning out a ton of military units to fend off his attack. But as I waited, and waited, and waited... I saw him build the Manhattan Project, he went from Friendly to Guarded towards me, I started building the Utopian Project, and the attack never came. He was clearly going for a Domination victory, but once he conquered his continent, he never attacked anyone else.

I know when I played the game when it first came out, the AI was incompetent at naval attacks, but I assumed that had been fixed by now. Is that still the case? If so, there's really no point in playing a Continents map, and I should stick to Pangaea, hmm?

 

[Tokira]

Personally I am not familiar with all the patch notes, but since I started playing again a few weeks ago myself, I can say that from my experience they haven't gotten any better.

For example on my latest immortal game as Polynesia with tiny islands, the AI (Egypt) moves simply made no sense when I started conquering their main island. Somehow all their ships were gone somewhere and thus they didn't kill any of my embarked units. Also Ramses decided to embark every single one of his units just when my units arrived so that I had plenty of space to land on his small island + I could destroy most of his troops with my naval units. I guess they tried to reach my island with their troops, which didn't really make any sense to me at all.

Also on other games I have noticed that the AI civs wont really launch an attack overseas (if the sea is very wide, for example on a world map) under any circumstances. They might build more naval units than before though. At least Arabia seemed to have dozens of caravels in one of my games and I don't think that Arabia used to be a naval focused civ.

 

[Camikaze]

Yeah, amphibious attacks are certainly not the AI's forte. They seem to throw units into the water with reckless abandon, without actually preparing properly or defending effectively.

 

[Peng Qi]

They're not THAT bad when the continents are close together, but when they're far apart they just sit there confused.

 

[Haig]

Nowadays they usually move their ships as big "fleets", I've seen a fleet with seven frigates and caravels. They also use Carriers and load them with fighters, that's nice.

But naval invasions are rare, unless the continents are close together.

I wish they would do them more aggressively!

 

[ferzen]

Today Harold BlueTooth made attempt to conquer my city from ocean. He send two frigates, two cannons and five Norwegian ski infantries. But I have enough units for defense. I think that attacking another continent without great military superiority is difficult even for human against AI.

 

[The_Quasar]

I was pleasantly surprised the other day when a Nuclear Submarine popped out of a city and killed one of my ships... then popped back... they should do such things more often!

 

[Brigg]

I think it might be better. I watched Russia load up a massive wedge of units to invade Arabia (continents) and the front of the wedge was all frigates. Unfortunately for Russia, I was at war also and sniped units from the back edge with my lone caravel.