I just fiinished a fully naval run (Phoenicien-Carthage-Norse-Italian-Siam-Swede) on a heavily ocean map, but as far as I could tell the AI didn't build any ships. Which is odd because 80% of my navy came from free ship curiosities. If the AI built even one ship and started exploring, they'd soon have a decent navy. Since I didn't have any AI to fight, I used them to support sieges where later models completely obliterate land defenders and protect from independent raids. I really want to play a heavily naval game, but it needs more development.

Really love all the comments here and that so many people are interested in naval play. (TBH, Humankind is already much ahead of Civ in this area, but basically the same problems exist)

Dayvit78 wrote:

I just fiinished a fully naval run (Phoenicien-Carthage-Norse-Italian-Siam-Swede) on a heavily ocean map, but as far as I could tell the AI didn't build any ships.

This was also the case in the betas I have seen - understandably the AI area of a mechanic should come last so it is tailored to all the mechanics. Consdiering how little is in place now, there must but a lot of changes coming to naval gameplay or I being overly optimistic :)

Dayvit78 TBH, Humankind is already much ahead of Civ in this area, but basically the same problems exist

Yes it is ahead of CIV bay far on land mechanics and also ahead of it in the way how bodies of land are shaped and resources distributed and indeed all the CIV games I have seen also had a catatonic naval AI

Interestingly this is a generally the cae for all strategic games

Consider 7 Kingdoms: and otherwise brilliant game with excellent AI and a production chain that has differentiated between raw and processed resources (te latter being worth much more on the market). They even had islands on some maps that held resources... but the AI refused to build a single ship :)

This pattern of lack of naval AI repeats throught Age of Empire (1 at least), Gadius and as mentioned above the CIV series and the reson for that likely boil down to three main points:

1. Most players do not enage with this mechanic of the games so it is constantly being deprioratized

2. Coding AI for naval behaviour is very different to land behavior and thus requires lots of resoruces (AI scripting being resoruce intensive as is)

3. Lack of historical knowledge why ships were relevant in reality

I suspect that hte last point pretty much drives the first as game mechanics are not designed around that

Example: ships were mostly relevant as soon as we can count oragnised society due to transportation. Before roads and land-based transporation has been developed (breeding animals for the task), the main transportation for all civilizations was via rivers so much so that if a culture didnt hav good rivers to connect their community hubs, they were pretty much doomed to stagnate.

Now this hugely important aspect is immidiately lost once we abstract rivers as a kind of land hex with modifiers

Naturally we dont need to change the level of abstraction and start simulating river movement and allow ships onto them but there are many such other historical aspects that can be considered for large bodies of water as well

I second this. Naval play is rather useless now. There's not much to go for at sea. The establishment of outposts by ships would be a simple way. 

But most importantly I think it is also tied to the overly simplistic trade system. I am hoping for trade to be expanded significantly in the future, including centers of trade & trade lines, improvement of coastal cities, harbors & production, and the importance of having a substantial navy to guard & maintain trade and economic power. 

Empire total war had piracy. Now that was an actual useful thing navies could do - Deny strategic resources/coin to your biggest rivals - The sort of thing that had huge impact on historical wars and relationship dynamics between colonizers.

The British navy's primary purpose for much of its existence was defending crown-sanctioned shipping from pirates and enemy navies. There were significant economic and political incentives to invest in seapower - those incentives are severely lacking thus far, as everyone else has pointed out. 

I also notice that we don't get privateer anymore.

Naval exploration should be interesting with new world conquest, piracy, and keeping the new colony safe.

Instead, we only get "whoever gets to the new world first". Just send one transport ship, and it can build a self sustaining colony fast, especially with colony model. It's even better than my capital.

As a heads up, harbor spam is a no-no, that's a lesson taken from the OpenDev. You can already get multiple harbors per territory with emblematic districts. I think a lot could be changed just by giving harbors ability to be anchors for districts, so they could serve as early (but more circumstantial) Hamlet.

I agree, there's more than enough harbors to place with ED's. You can plaster your whole coastline with them if that's what you want by chosing Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Norsemen.  

Enabling habors to connect to districts would be a good first step in giving them the relevance and the power they deserve  - and one that can be implemented easily. 

Harbor spamming needs to be avoided as it can muddle up both colony building/balance as well as hurt naval gameplay (think of harbor spamming in Age Of Empires)

Harbors capable of building ships need to be limited to one per region to give them signifficance: If there is a balacned and interesting naval gameplay, harbors would become strategic targets and assets

There could be nuance though to the coastline improvements: some being able to produce ships and some only providing exploitation benefits

Ships need to be able to establish Outpost up to 2 tiles inland.
Ships need to be able to attack land units and cities/outpost in some way. Those with a range, use their range, those with melee need to be able to land some kind of unit like cities use Militia Units limited to 2 tiles inland.

Ships need to be able to ignore closed borders to allow early game usefulness. Could generate some grievance by not respecting their sea borders.
Ships need to be able to Ransack sea trade routes.
Neutral culture on the sea acting as pirates.

Because right now the sea game is subpar and it makes naval cultures unique units less interesting.

Wildhorn wrote:

Ships need to be able to establish Outpost up to 2 tiles inland.
Ships need to be able to attack land units and cities/outpost in some way. Those with a range, use their range, those with melee need to be able to land some kind of unit like cities use Militia Units limited to 2 tiles inland.

Ships need to be able to ignore closed borders to allow early game usefulness. Could generate some grievance by not respecting their sea borders.
Ships need to be able to Ransack sea trade routes.
Neutral culture on the sea acting as pirates.

I didnt think on longer range then one tile for establishing outposts: it would surely provide a wider range of suitable outpsot selection but if the post is estblished beyond the coastline that would prevent other ships from raiding and capturing them which is likely a good thing to have

Plus if they are only limited to the coastline, that would make establishing of the posts more challenging or make them much less effective which is both good as it is not just about sailing up to the coast.

I was thinking: if the player wants the post to have a proper productive location it would need to relocate it into the mainland which would take both time and make the relocation function usefull win:win :)

All in for militia units: we have been talking about having marine units but using milita shouldbe much more cost-effective (DEV wise) + make militia upgrades even more usefull and not jsut for defensive purpose

Yes ignoring closed borders is a must have: logically, there are and never were clsoed borders at sea anyhow :)

Ransacking trade routes was promised AFAIK but I dont think sea trade is functional yet at all so that we could see this (at least no trade outposts to ransack). But once that is done they should in theory be ransackable

Neutral factions to sail the sees: absolutely yes: both raiding mayor faction trade routes and establish routes themselves

Some of the problems have been adressed (naval siege, units production), but I still think the devs should take this under consideration.

The current beta adresses some important stability issues but it does seem to resolve the AI not building combat naval ships yet

Any idea when this is planned to be adressed? Maybe with the next large update?

Zolobolo wrote:

What difficulty level are you playing at?

Are you sure you saw combat ships and not embarked land units?

1.) I've been mainly sticking to empire. 

2.) Yes. I even had a 1v1 match against a.i on blitz, before this patch, where the a.i had at fielded at least 18 Ancient to classical ships for each war they had against me in both eras. It was even my first experience with that boarding ability in a real battle.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was around the pollution update, after launch, that I started to notice the A.I was able--at least for me--to competently field dedicated ships when they deemed necessary. Maybe it is not happening to everyone who owns HUMANKIND, but I have certainly seen and experienced naval engagements against the a.i with dedicated ships.

Changlini wrote:

Zolobolo wrote:

What difficulty level are you playing at?

Are you sure you saw combat ships and not embarked land units?

1.) I've been mainly sticking to empire. 

2.) Yes. I even had a 1v1 match against a.i on blitz, before this patch, where the a.i had at fielded at least 18 Ancient to classical ships for each war they had against me in both eras. It was even my first experience with that boarding ability in a real battle.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was around the pollution update, after launch, that I started to notice the A.I was able--at least for me--to competently field dedicated ships when they deemed necessary. Maybe it is not happening to everyone who owns HUMANKIND, but I have certainly seen and experienced naval engagements against the a.i with dedicated ships.

The AI needs to be able to build combat ships also on Normal but if it does build them then that means that it is likely an economic problem as you have suggested instead of bug or logical issue that prevetns them to research and produce them

Let me test a game in one difficulty level higher - there is also a small chance that on the highest levels the AI simply gets units gifted to it instead of researched and produced