AI Navy

[MrBiscuits]

I've noticed the AI loves to build loads of ships which means that late game each turn you wait for about 30 AI ships to shuffle about from each wizard. 

It also makes moving your armies around difficult since you need to stack them with lots of warships meaning you can only fit a few actual troops in there. Is there any scope for making warships and galleys more expensive but more powerful so you need less of them? 

I realise this might completely unbalance ships vs flying/floating units so might not be possible, perhaps make triremes less powerful? It is just quite time consuming dealing with the navy late game, especially on smaller land masses.

Also galleys don't seem much better than triremes to me.

[Seravy]

It also makes moving your armies around difficult since you need to stack them with lots of warships meaning you can only fit a few actual troops in there. Is there any scope for making warships and galleys more expensive but more powerful so you need less of them?

That's the point, if the enemy controls seas because they have a much higher amount of ships, you should be at a disadvantage on the sea.

If ship movement gets too annoying, turn off "Enemy Moves" in the settings. Unfortunately, moving the ships, even if they don't do anything, is a necessary and important part of the AI that prevents them to block important points on the sea the AI needs empty.

Feel free to suggest different stats for Galleys in the races/units thread, I almost never use them either so maybe they are just too weak.

[Nelphine]

This is also exactly why I think water walking is so powerful in late game.

[MrBiscuits]

It also makes moving your armies around difficult since you need to stack them with lots of warships meaning you can only fit a few actual troops in there. Is there any scope for making warships and galleys more expensive but more powerful so you need less of them?

That's the point, if the enemy controls seas because they have a much higher amount of ships, you should be at a disadvantage on the sea.

If ship movement gets too annoying, turn off "Enemy Moves" in the settings. Unfortunately, moving the ships, even if they don't do anything, is a necessary and important part of the AI that prevents them to block important points on the sea the AI needs empty.

Feel free to suggest different stats for Galleys in the races/units thread, I almost never use them either so maybe they are just too weak.

When I mean "difficult" I mean more time-consuming and annoying to move troops around rather than being difficult to actually do. By stacking a lot of warships you can mop up the enemy ships each turn if you want, but it isn't all that much fun. Late game troop movement takes forever

If there were less ships overall due to more expensive unit costs you'd still have to invest in a navy just as much to transport units, it just wouldn't be so time-consuming to deal with so many naval units.

[Seravy]

If there were less ships overall due to more expensive unit costs you'd still have to invest in a navy just as much to transport units, it just wouldn't be so time-consuming to deal with so many naval units.

True but ships can be used on land with spells so they can't be more powerful.

[MrBiscuits]

If there were less ships overall due to more expensive unit costs you'd still have to invest in a navy just as much to transport units, it just wouldn't be so time-consuming to deal with so many naval units.

True but ships can be used on land with spells so they can't be more powerful.

Oh I didn't think of that. I guess ships on land is desirable gameplay? It they could be limited to the sea they could be rebalanced there.

Perhaps raise the cost of maintenance on ships, particularly the most powerful ones?

[Seravy]

Ships don't have, and cannot have maintenance, and yes, entering land is desired.

[Catwalk]

Best way to balance ships IMO is to remove ranged from them. There's no need to have it, and it would remove the silly flying warships. It's difficult to balance warships for naval battle and ground combat at the same time, Flight is easy to obtain.

[Nelphine]

Except ships need to be able to fight flying creatures when the ships don't have flight, since thats one of the only 3 unit types a naval unit can fight. Ranged is practically a necessity.