I know in the past naval warfare has always been a weakness of the AI, but in my current game as Portugal (immortal/standard/standard/continents++) I am finding that the AI is plenty competent and in fact I feel like I have more of an advantage on land than at sea. I believe the problem with the AI before was that they were weak in terms of tactically moving their ships around in order to get all of their attacks in but I am finding that they now act much more like a human where they are able to intelligently use their movement points to get all of their ships to attack and focus fire my navy down.
Note that I'm not necessarily complaining here, just making some observations that were surprising (to me, at least!).
In any case, on land I am able to outsmart the AI mostly using terrain, superior positioning with zone-of-control, citadel/forts, and being more conservative with my units in order to overcome their number advantages. I feel like land warfare is me playing chess while the AI plays checkers, but they have a lot more pieces.
On the water, though, there really aren't a lot of terrain advantages to use. You can try to use narrows/straights to combat a numbers advantage but that's not always available. There are no citadels/forts to sit on in a defensive position to gain an advantage. Even zone-of-control and positioning can be difficult to use when naval units have so many movement points. Ideally I try to protect my ranged naval units but oftentimes the AI smartly uses its movement points to thwart attempts at defensive positioning. It feels like both myself and the AI are playing checkers, but they have twice as many pieces.
In the end it feels like the numerical advantage of the AI is much more difficult to overcome on the sea and tends to make me favor ceding control of the water. I just take too many losses in naval battles that don't seem to be avoidable. Is it best to just have a token navy (maybe just used as escorts) but on the whole take more advantage of land armies? This of course means naval trade routes can be very difficult to maintain, and also means one should avoid settling cities which allow too many sea tiles access to attack, as such a city would be very difficult to defend when being dominated in the water. Is that the general strategy at higher level play?
Note that the one big advantage to having a navy this game is that the AI is still quite poor at escorting its land units across oceans when attacking. I've picked off a TON of embarked land units from Sweden and the Aztecs. However, even if those units had landed at my shores I feel fairly confident that I would be able to use my land armies to defend my cities anyway.
Also, somewhat related- having enough coal to support numerous seaports, factories, train stations and then upgrading corvettes into ironclads is really difficult before coal plants are unlocked. I went a bit overboard with Naus (all that free money/exp!!) but I am left with a bunch of corvettes that I can't upgrade into ironclads yet. I should have recognized this issue sooner and unlocked coal plants ASAP but I really wanted to get my corporation up and running. In the meantime, though, my corvettes are getting killed off whereas if I had the coal available to upgrade them they probably would have performed better.
Note that I'm not necessarily complaining here, just making some observations that were surprising (to me, at least!).
In any case, on land I am able to outsmart the AI mostly using terrain, superior positioning with zone-of-control, citadel/forts, and being more conservative with my units in order to overcome their number advantages. I feel like land warfare is me playing chess while the AI plays checkers, but they have a lot more pieces.
On the water, though, there really aren't a lot of terrain advantages to use. You can try to use narrows/straights to combat a numbers advantage but that's not always available. There are no citadels/forts to sit on in a defensive position to gain an advantage. Even zone-of-control and positioning can be difficult to use when naval units have so many movement points. Ideally I try to protect my ranged naval units but oftentimes the AI smartly uses its movement points to thwart attempts at defensive positioning. It feels like both myself and the AI are playing checkers, but they have twice as many pieces.
In the end it feels like the numerical advantage of the AI is much more difficult to overcome on the sea and tends to make me favor ceding control of the water. I just take too many losses in naval battles that don't seem to be avoidable. Is it best to just have a token navy (maybe just used as escorts) but on the whole take more advantage of land armies? This of course means naval trade routes can be very difficult to maintain, and also means one should avoid settling cities which allow too many sea tiles access to attack, as such a city would be very difficult to defend when being dominated in the water. Is that the general strategy at higher level play?
Note that the one big advantage to having a navy this game is that the AI is still quite poor at escorting its land units across oceans when attacking. I've picked off a TON of embarked land units from Sweden and the Aztecs. However, even if those units had landed at my shores I feel fairly confident that I would be able to use my land armies to defend my cities anyway.
Also, somewhat related- having enough coal to support numerous seaports, factories, train stations and then upgrading corvettes into ironclads is really difficult before coal plants are unlocked. I went a bit overboard with Naus (all that free money/exp!!) but I am left with a bunch of corvettes that I can't upgrade into ironclads yet. I should have recognized this issue sooner and unlocked coal plants ASAP but I really wanted to get my corporation up and running. In the meantime, though, my corvettes are getting killed off whereas if I had the coal available to upgrade them they probably would have performed better.
I've been hoping the AI would kick my butt on the sea at last, so I'm looking forward to see this happen...