The AI Naval Power

[Zenstrive]

I have been playing Civ V since the beginning, and have been feeling empty on the sea side of things because, honestly, I am the only one that came out with frigates or destroyers and bombard enemy cities without much harassment from enemy Navy.

So I started playing as Arab (my fave civ for civ v) on King, normal continents. i ended up getting my own continents so not much opposition land side and I decided to fill up my continent first before expanding. After almost 80% of my continent filled up, i decided to brave the sea and see what else is in the world. To my surprised, Temujin is sharing continents with Mohandas and Ellie, and Temujin HAS FRIGATES mucking around his neighbours.

So I decided that I won't mess with that continent for a while. FRIGATES! Other continent has Georgie and Napoley sharing spaces, and they are deadlocked in the middle and mount no further efforts to whack each other. So I decided to whack Georgie since his cities are the closes to mine.

There is this one Island between my continent and his, so I put a city in there as a bridge for the offensive. I then mount my destroyers and started bombarding his cities. I took over one of his closes city and started bombarding Hanoi. His frigates then showed up but too late. I sunk them with my destroyers. Then I liberated Hanoi. With access to Electronics, I started upgrading my advancing riflemen to mech infantries while waiting for the cities to build battleships and mech infantries. I then took over his three other cities and eyeing for Washington.

To my surprise, THREE Destroyers came into view. They are Washington's. My destroyers need to go around the southern part of the continents to move to Washington and they are still three or four turns away, so I cancel my offensive to Washington least my mech infantries got pummeled unnecessarily. Washington has no more land units that I can see.

Temujin, Ellie, and Mohandas all have destroyers as well and they have been moving along my borders. This change everything. I need to think more on how to launch my offensives.

Naval powers of the AIs. This is a good surprise. If one of them finished with Science Victory, I for one will be glad. At least the game won't be boring anymore

Pictures will be added later.

 

[Bandit17]

That's really good to hear! I have only played on Pangaea since last patch so I've only had limited naval interaction. I have seen more tiremes and they were mixed in with the troops crossing the bay so that was promising.

I wrapped up a late game domination vs Elizabeth over the weekend when she foolishly invaded me. I had two naval flotillas and each consisted of two destroyers and one Battleship. I sent them each in opposite directions around the continent and the only opposition they met was one measly destroyer that was sunk by my land artlillery before my navy could engage. This was on King and I was really hoping for a large modern navy clash since it was England and all. Of course no air force as this feature is still missing. She was also filthy rich and the only thing she purchsed were a few artillery pieces for defending her cities. She died rich...

In my new game (king-Pangaea) I have seen a few large tireme fleets. So it is evident that early game ai navies are working better but I haven't been impressed on late game naval production yet. Think I'll try world map next to see if it makes a difference.

 

[Namaspamus]

They seem to produce larger navies now but still can't protect embarked units properly. It's certainly hard to program, so adding transport ships could help them and make ocean maps more interesting.

 

[gunter]

They seem to produce larger navies now but still can't protect embarked units properly. It's certainly hard to program, so adding transport ships could help them and make ocean maps more interesting.

I still have to give the patch a try, what do you mean by " They seem " ?

Before the patch the AI ignored the naval section existence, also planes were pretty much ignored.

Could you please tell me what's the situation now after the latest patch ?

Thx

 

[MadRat]

They do build ships now but they are absolutely horse pucky headed at using them. That fleet of destroyers wont do crap other than randomly zip around the map. I'm my current game as China I too am at war with old george. I found American fleets in random portions of the map while his home nation is being pummeled.

The AI builds navies but it moves them about randomly. If the military AI is dumb at dirt - the naval AI is its intellectually challenged younger brother.

It still embarks unprotected units - they just all sit off the coast and if you listen carefully you can her them snoring until you sink 'em.

Rat

 

[Namaspamus]

I still have to give the patch a try, what do you mean by " They seem " ?

Before the patch the AI ignored the naval section existence, also planes were pretty much ignored.

Could you please tell me what's the situation now after the latest patch ?

Thx

Sorry, I checked the thread only hours later. Alas, it's like MadRat said. For what I've seen even before the patch some civs could build a navy and defend their coasts a bit, but mostly made some "ship depots" at silly places. I'm in my first game since the patch but I see much more ships. It's not always dumb. Harun-al-Rashid is not hydrophobic, he's got a large fleet and he keeps most of it around his several recent island colonies, who have no land units inside.


Even with the next patch, I don't imagine the AI protecting embarked units efficiently. So transport ships, or allowing 1 ship and 1 embarked unit to share a tile could help.

 

[bryanw1995]

even better would be if they allowed embarked units to pretect themselves ala the songhai UA and give something else to songhai.

I've had several units mowed down by randomly appearing frigates/destroyers/caravels. haven't actually gotten into a firefight with battleships that I recall, however.

My last deity game I played inland sea. It's so demoralizing to see mech inf show up in a blanket of doom at turn 184 from both sides of you. And, of course, all you have is rifles. I stockpiled GS's and went stright down rationalism to get to mech inf by around turn 215 but by then egypt had just finished his 2nd spaceship part and arabia unleashed their Blanket of Doom on me. Everybody did DOW egypt after he built his 2nd spaceship part, also a welcome change from v 1.0

 

[Drakarska]

I'd have to agree as well. Played a game at a friends (post patch) just to see if it could pique my interest. Nope. Didn't. My Navy used the opponents for NGFS practice. And don't even get me started on the total lack of combined arms.. Sheesh, AI never heard of using air power to soften up a target before hitting it with troops?

 

[nebux]

on one of my games i was england on archipelago, russia got few ships and got a city on a near island very early in the game and i thought damn now the ai it's improved i would need to fight for islands. that was her only city made off shore for the rest of the game. next to her was mongolia separated by ocean. later in the game he builds lots of frigates etc, and i say let's declare war on russia with his help. he didn't even scout all that damn map. apart for 2 city states he didn't knew any of the others civilizations that were quickly assimilated into mine.
naval ai it's still crap and will always be in civ v no matter what as units are unable to couter attack they finish near other batlle ships and get owned. this is a good improved, thanks firaxis!

 

[GenericPlayer]

Even after the patch I don't see the AI build anything besides Destroyers. No Battleships and No Carriers. I did see one or two submarines to be totally honest.

I have not seen a destroyer take a shot at any of my ships, but I have seen them bombard my troops that are attacking coastal cities. Even then I sent a couple of submarines to deal with them. The destroyers just ignored my subs and kept bombarding land targets. Wasn't long before I sunk them all. I figured with the anti-sub attack bonus they would prioritize enemy submarines, but that is not so.

Its the same issue with Air Power - even since the Patch, I have not seen the AI build anything other than cruise missiles, so no true air units. At first I thought the game did not ship with a WWII scenario because it was being saved for an expansion or DLC, but now I know its because the AI completely fails at combat in the modern era. Any WWII scenario with the current AI will be extremely easy.

 

[Java]

I've seen the AI use destroyers and submarines as well. Haven't seen any battleships, cruisers, nuclear subs, carriers though. And of course, the AI has never once built or used aircraft since I got the game a couple weeks ago.

 

[timtofly]

I played (King) as Darius against England on one continent and Arabia and China on the other. Arabia had Battleships surrounding his shores and he won the science race at 1700 AD. I was attacking England's tanks and gunships with knights and longswords. Obviously I need to learn how to play Civ 4, so I can do a better job with Civ 5.

 

[Banjo]

In my game, India has a frigate in a one hex landlocked lake.

 

[Drakarska]

In my game, India has a frigate in a one hex landlocked lake.

really? you got a screenie? because that would be hilarious.

 

[geeP]

From what I can tell I think the AI's love for triremes may actually be detrimental--the AI always seems to have tons of triremes but few or no caravels. I think they build a million triremes and then decide "okay I have enough ships" and end up way behind on exploration because they take forever to send out caravels.

While AIs will build respectably sized fleets, they don't have a lot of initiative with them. The pattern I've seen is that they basically spread their ships all around their own coast and then hardly ever do anything with them unless there's an enemy in range. They might send a couple out at a time to raid your coasts but they don't seem capable of conductive naval offensives. I've seen some effort to protect troop convoys (and they can launch some huge invasion forces) but I think this may have mostly been a coincidence, since most of the time the AI relies on the "let's ship the troops out to sea when there are no enemy ships around and hope they don't find us" method.

Tactically they seem reasonably capable; against an AI enemy with parity (or better) I have to think a lot harder in naval battles than in land battles. AI destroyers do not prioritize subs, though, which is a big mistake.

Nobunaga will build Zeroes and uses them for interception. Other than that I have never seen any AIs build planes. Oil is an extremely scarce resource most of the time, though, which might explain both the lack of planes and the preference for destroyers over other modern ships.

 

[zub]

In my experience they actually build a decent amount of caravels which they upgrade to destroyers.
I never fight in the seas so I can't tell how well they use it, but I did once lost a coastal city to three destroyers. It was on pangea and thought it was safe with only an old enemy horse unit nearby.

 

[gunter]

Thanks mates for answering, I will wait to play for the next patch therefore.

I could live with an AI not using naval units in the vanilla but cause after the patch it keeps on ignoring them ( moving them randomly ) I would give the second patch a try only after having asked to you, precious mates.

Thx again

 

[Bob1475]

AI is truly naval challenged. They do build units and they will engage your naval units and will bombard your cities but not in concert with anything else. This has been an AI weakness in every CIV game. I think the concept of creating a protected invasion force is too complex for the AI. You can program them for to build a mix of units but the higher level reasoning of planning an invasion across seas seems to be beyond the programmer's ability or the code conflicts with other concepts.

So, ALWAY build frigates, destroyers, etc. You can use them better than the AI.

 

[V. Soma]

This might be the sad case that we, players want a gameplay feature (proper naval force) but then AI cannot use it.

I would much prefer a simpler civ game but with AI that handles rules and features well...

Of course I also dream of a good AI that would handle all things I myself envision for civ

 

[MadRat]

Interesting observation: the AI does build an duse air units - IF they are that civs UU. I have consistently see Japan and the USA build zeroes and B17s respectively. They dont build any other planes and no-one else builds planes at all.

The last patch merely moved to AI from completely brain dead to a deep vegetative state.

Rat