Sea Combat

[Case]

Has anyone got any tips on getting the AI to fight effectively at sea? (eg to mount long range patrols, etc).
I'm making a scenario about the Battle of the Atlantic in WW2 and, as you can imagine, I really need the AI to fight agressivly.

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[This message has been edited by Case (edited January 31, 2001).]

[jcarkey]

No. Just use the move unit command.

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[Gothmog]

Limit the types of ships the AI can build. I'm doing a Seven Years War in the Carribean scenario right now. Originally I had three types of capital ships (sloop, frigate, man-o-war (destroyer, crusier, battleship probably in your context). The AI would built a lot of sloops and do suicide attacks because they're the cheapest. I dropped the sloops, and now the AI builds more of the other two and seems to be more effective. The sloops weren't strong enough to do anything other than attack transports.

For your situation, I would recommend four types of ships that the AI could build: transport, submarine, cruiser, battleship.
Even so, the AI will probably act stupidly by bombarding coastal cities. Make sure they can survive t hat. Big movement allowances might help aggressiveness.

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[Admiral PJ]

I'd suggest trying to get the AI to use a 'destroyer' type unit, fast and maybe with subdetection/2square scanning then it might want to at least go and search for things , and find the enemy

[Patient English]

Case,

Good luck with it. I tried to do a WWI scenario that depended largely on American and Canadian re-inforcements and food supplies to Europe. Getting the AI to attack convoys was next to impossible or, if they played as the English, to do convoys at all.

However, my Colonies III scenario seems to have had better luck. The AI doesn't convoy much, but it does attack human convoys, even in mid-ocean. By the end of the scenario, the AI can build brigantines, frigates, men o' war, two- and three-deckers, plus transports, and it still makes a fair go of it.

I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I think that making the American side of the Atlantic fairly well off for cities and population generates a large degree of AI "patrolling" between America and Europe.

Anyway, I suggest you get a copy of Colonies III (it's on this site) and pull it apart.

Hope you make progress. If you do - please tell me how you did it!

John

P.S. The MOVEUNIT command never appears to work properly, in my experience.

[BeBMan]

I´m just building a scifi scn for FW or MGE, I create lots of naval units with events at different points, and they seem very aggressive. Perhaps their attack values play a role?
But I´m afraid cannot help you with the patrol thing...

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[Henrik]

quote: Originally posted by Patient English on 05-01-2001 08:26 AM P.S. The MOVEUNIT command never appears to work properly, in my experience.

It only works if you repeat it every turn (or atleast for a long period) and units who allready has orders arent affected (the move unit really gives the go command to the ais units).