AI not using ships/building hordes on islands

[Housman]

I have tried using the search option to find another thread with this topic, but I did not manage to find one. Basicely, I am wondering if I am the only one having this problem. I have had it in 6.1 and 6.2; the problem is the AI just doesn't seem to know how to use boats effectively.

In my campaigns, England will often just give up on the mainland and build huge stacks of militia spearmen on the Brittish Island. Scotland and Norway, likewise, will not use their ships often, prefering to just build tons of stacks without doing anything with them.

Here's a screenie from a current campaign. The Roman faction is clearly defeated, having just a few islands left. If the AI would just give it a try though, I suspect it could make a nice come-back.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Is anyone else experiencing this a lot?

[Caesar Clivus]

The AI never knows how to use boats properly. I've done a bit of testing with AI navies for my Battle for the Baltic submod. The AI will only very very rarely build boats. The main problem seems to be that the AI rarely recognises when it needs to build ships. Even when a faction has the "prefers_naval_invasions" attribute, they rarely do naval invasions. That being said, naval invasions do happen a bit more often under SavageAI campaign AI. You might try installing that (check the submods forum. And it is savegame compatible).

[Housman]

I might look into that, thank you.

[Caesar Clivus]

Dont expect miracles but in my experience it has helped

[Fomalhaut]

Interesting. I've found that in most of my campaigns in early era Scotland will land an invasion force near Bruges or England will land one near Antwerp. I've also seen Norway do that too sometimes. But I haven't yet seen France invade England on its own.

[sbroadbent]

In my campaigns, England will often just give up on the mainland and build huge stacks of militia spearmen on the Brittish Island. Scotland and Norway, likewise, will not use their ships often, prefering to just build tons of stacks without doing anything with them.

From my experience, the AI does know how to use ships, but it rarely uses them as effectively as the player can or with any sort of tactics (or rhyme or reason).

One person on here complained about the constant stream of naval bound Norwegian stacks against Gronigen: Norway loves Gronigen.

The Scots have been known in the past to grab Bruges. I think this was toned down a bit, though it does happen still on occasion.

The Irish have been reasonably effective with naval invasions in my All Roads Lead to Rome AAR.

The Moors sent Jihad armies to Constantinople in Skantarios AAR.

It's routine if a Jihad is called on Palmero, for a half dozen Moorish, Fatimid, Seljuk, Khwarez stacks to gaze longingly across the sea on that strip of land just east of Tunis/southwest of Sicily (why the Moors didn't seem inclined to use the dozens of boats to move their troops over is anyone's guess... although I'd have to check I think there is a pic regarding it in my Temple Knights AAR

The Moors routinely grab Palmero, and if you try to take it away from them, they'll land stack after stack.

Sicily is probably one of the more effective factions to utilize naval invasions (Cagliari and the other island, Tunis, as well as even Arta).

Don't be surprised if Castile lands a force in Southern England...

Although Byzantium tends to send armies by land, in my Temple Knights AAR they have on several occasions attempted to take and retake Iraklion and Rhodes.

Ultimately it depends I think on what targets the AI calculates is either a good target, or one that it wants. If targets that require a naval invasion are lower priority than those that they can reach by land, they'll probably focus on land targets before they go offshore. Although this may not be accurate, it's the best way to look at it.

The reason England perhaps doesn't focus on the mainland could be perhaps that they got more regions on the Isles, and they may consider the Scots a greater threat, and so concentrate more of their power there. When the Irish join the Scots in tag-teaming the English, then the AI probably says, to hell with fighting the French. More often than not, the English/Scots are relatively balanced such that neither really gets an advantage over the other, though a few battles may end up swinging things to one side. More often than not I see the AI stalemate over dozens of turns with nothing of any sort of consequence happening up there.