After the Naval Overhaul I was hoping the AI on water maps would finally improve. Unfortunately, several problems are still very noticeable, so here is a structured summary of what I’ve been seeing:
Ship Micro & Combat Behavior
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AI ships often make very strange micro movements (constant turning / stop-and-go).
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They frequently ignore incoming fire completely.
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Sometimes units just sail past my fleet one by one without even shooting.
Naval Unit Composition
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The AI builds almost exclusively galleys.
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It rarely or never tries to counter with fire ships or demolition ships.
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Civilization-specific ships also seem to be unused:
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No Korean Turtle Ships
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No Portuguese Caravels
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Transport & Aggression
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Naval landings are basically never attempted anymore.
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Before the update there were at least occasional transport attacks, but now it almost never happens.
Docks & Pathing
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The AI often builds docks extremely close to each other.
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This causes ships to get stuck, especially transport ships.
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Those transports then frequently never get loaded and just remain stuck for the rest of the game.
Economy
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Fishing ships are built very rarely.
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Water resources are generally underutilized.
Late Game Economy
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Very often in the late game villagers simply stop working even though resources are still available.
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The AI sometimes gathers nothing for several minutes.
Land ↔ Water Interaction
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Land units almost never try to defend themselves against ships.
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Instead they run around in a very uncoordinated way.
These issues have existed for a long time. That’s exactly why I was hoping a major naval update would finally bring noticeable improvements. Right now, the AI on water still feels very weak.