Game Version:
- Build: replaceme
- Platform: Steam or Microsoft Store
- Operating System: Windows 10 or Windows 7 or Mac or Linux
- Gamertag: replaceme
Issue:
My wife and I play AoE2 DE regularly (almost daily) as two players against two AI, one on HD and one CD. A while ago the AI has become non-aggressive at sea. For example, in a game of Islands they don’t produce any ships (other than fishing boats and trade cogs), and never land any troops on our islands. Attacking them on their islands, they have loads of troops and are very aggressive on land. We’ve noticed this on other maps, such as Archipelago, Rivers and Highland.
Has anything happened to the AI ? It’s definitely changed and the latest patch has not fixed this.
We’ve run up over 3000 hours playing like this, so we’re used to how the AI should behave.
We’re on Steam, PC, Win10, running vs 101.103.10863.0 (#141935) 17957298
Reproduction Steps:
Multiplayer game, two human players, two AI
- (List the steps we can take to reproduce the bug ourselves…)
- …
ATTACHMENTS:
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2 Likes
Is this problem still present after the update yesterday?
Since when does this bug exist within AOE2DE? I think I read something about this around 2-3 years ago.
The problem arose again after the update of The Chronicles, the AI (CD version and HD) do not build any warships, only fishing boats and hopefully one transport ship. I think I reported the bug a week ago, so I hope you take it into account. Maps with water are boring these days. 
I’ve noticed the past few weeks? a significant drop in the # of boats they build for even ‘mostly land’ maps that have a river going through the middle (Highland), or some water around the perimeter of a giant land mass… which I’m fine with, to an extent, because they were spamming boats like crazy for a long time. I play “Moderate” AI difficulty.
It seems like they now don’t build military boats unless they see you building them or you attack them with boats. Like that’s a trigger for them to start building boats. That’s how it seems anyways; I don’t know if that’s reality.
Either that, and/or they maybe just wait much longer than before to build them at times… but yeah, some games they build none… which I’m okay with for most maps, but not on an islands map, if it happens there. I think the dev made some steps in the right direction, but probably just needs some tweaks.
I think a minor adjustment could be made to the AI to have them more prone to building a few more boats, at earlier and at more random times. But not spamming them non-stop until they have a ton of them like they did before. They used to go unrealistically crazy with boat building, imo, on any map with a decent % of water in it.
On the continental, coastal, island, team island, Mediterranean and other maps with large water areas, they only build fishing boats, no warships, unfortunately.
1 Like
Yeah, I thought that might be the case. Too bad. It’s probably all maps with a decent water amount
I played my own custom map a couple times the past week which has a wide river in it, but enemy only made 2 or 3 fishing boats, for a long time. Later in game it had maybe 5 or 6 military boats and 5 or 6 docks which was nice to see, but I think it may have been a reaction to me making my 3 or 4 galleys. Oh well. Fearing the potential spamming of naval units that the old AI used to do, I quickly made a bunch of boats and destroyed his water presence
I played a lot in these weeks against ai and it has become pratically dead in island maps.
3 Likes
I noticed this bug while testing a custom scenario by me, I even used the aegis/steroids (in return of Rome) to see how the enemy would go against me, but it did not build extra ships other than the ones I manually placed by hand through scenario editor. Can this be fixed, please? It’s an issue that implies a serious, negative impact in game experience.
1 Like
I haven’t played AoE II for a while. I usually love playing Islands map with naval battles. Previously I have seen how the naval experience being degraded with lesser and lesser power spent on ships. Now I see no ships, no ports, no amphibian operations on the AI side at all.
1 Like
How can something like this be overlooked? It is a shame not to have proper water-control by the AI.
If you build ships yourself and the AI sees it or you start attacking with ships, they start ratcheting up ship peoduction… in my experience
Maybe early in match, send a couple ships to them to fire a couple friendly warning shots to get them going 
If you build ships yourself and the AI sees it or you start attacking with ships
No, I completely wiped out three AI opponents. None of them even tried to build a dock.
Some updates to the marine thread.
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Now I can see AI ships in Island map. However, only one single opponent makes docks and ships. Others - not. This marine AI player can attack only one single target and ignores all other players.
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No amphibian attacks from AI.
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Embarking works extremely weirdly. I point a unit to the specific transport ship but the unit ignores my command and goes to another transport ship. So if I load a huge army with cavalry, artillery, monks and civilians, all units use completely random ships. And I should be very careful to load units, otherwise monks and civilians can be unloaded and thrown to battle before heavy cavalry. I need to get the old behaviour when unit loads to the specified transport ship only to have normal amphibian operations.
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Islands map has two types of islands, big with players and small without them. Previously small islands had mineral resources and forests practically like big ones. Now small islands don’t have forests, only couples of trees without any foresting perspective.
1 Like