Someone else in the other thread posted an interesting idea: why not stop ships from travelling past the supply range? I would add to this n say there only allowed to travel past supply range if they have an explorer leading the fleet.
Unlimited naval range for AI
- Thread starter Cormac
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Yeah, you could include a hidden annoyance meter. When things go really bad for the AI in the game, like losing wars that should be cake walks, or gets out-witted tactically and has its entire army destroyed, or it finds out that the human player always manage to grab the most valuable colonies first, it fills up and when it reaches a certain level a bot program kicks in that starts posting rants on the forum.
I'm no coder as well, but might I ask whether implementing options about AI naval Attrition would be possible?
For example (just like AI Handicap, AI Aggressiveness):
1- AI suffer no naval attrition
2- AI will not send fleet past the naval range unless he has an explorer
3- AI will suffer limited naval attrition at any time, but it will always be half the human player, or not for the first month, or the attrition scaling will be at a lesser rate than human players'...
I do not think this should be a handicap setting. Especially since if you set it to 3 the AI will probably just send ships out to die, which wouldn't be much fun. Until the AI has been coded to understand naval attrition it has to be disabled for the AI, before that you have to have some rules like your rule 2 which prevents the AI from going crazy with their ships.
That may make for bad gameplay, since as a human it is possible to send a fleet/invasion force a bit behind the attrition limit in a bold move.
But what would be, I think, simple, and not nerf the AI in any way: AI suffers no attrition in those zones where a player could send a fleet, would suffer attrition, but could still explore stuff or have his fleet come back, that's fine. But when you're so far beyond naval support range that your fleet would die before even reaching its destination, then the AI should be just forbidden to go.
In short, no ships at all past supply range for the AI, but supply range considerably greater than for human players. Why not implementing this, Wiz?
I'm not knowledgeable about coding, but about the #3, wouldn't a "if your attrition is above X%, immediately dock at the nearest port where you have access" followed by a "Do not allow ships to start getting attrition if their average repair state is below 80%"?
If you set that to the right percentages, given a modicum of playtesting, the AI could actually become more skilled than the human, as it knows perfectly and beforehand how much and which kind of attrition its ship will suffer.
It would not start a trip from France to Singapore, knowing that the "time at sea" kind of attrition would sink the whole expedition. Or, even better, he could devise a plan to load 10k in France, make a stop in Madagascar to stop the "time at sea" and repair for a couple of monts, then re-embark the troops and cover the rest of the trip, just like a human would do.
Actually, as I said, the AI would have the perfect advantage of knowing each and every data beforehand, so he could ask itself "If I load 10k in Provence, am I able to bring them to Singapore, with 1/2 necessary stops?". If the answer is no, he would just drop the plan within a millisecond, just like he moves within a millisecond every stack if he does not want them engaged and logistics allow it.
It could make such plans given his own MA, or even considering friendly nations' obtained MA, gaining more options but also the chance of the plan being halted by the loss of such MA.
It's a pity such things cannot be modded, for some modders would surely develop effective systems, given time and testing.
Still think its crazy that people are so bugged by this when the human player has so many advantages over the AI. For me I would want them to spend their time on how the AI invades a country, it would be nice if the AI could do what a human player would do by massing his troops on the boarder with full morale and swarm the country before they can mobilize 
, would make players watch their borders a lot closer
, would make players watch their borders a lot closer 
1st DLC: updated navy battles, mechanics and events
And while we're at it we not remove explorers/conquistadors altogether from player control and make them mission-based, eg. go West, find a way to India...(as discussed in the various "random new world" threads a few months ago)
And while we're at it we not remove explorers/conquistadors altogether from player control and make them mission-based, eg. go West, find a way to India...(as discussed in the various "random new world" threads a few months ago)
1st DLC: updated navy battles, mechanics and events
And while we're at it we not remove explorers/conquistadors altogether from player control and make them mission-based, eg. go West, find a way to India...(as discussed in the various "random new world" threads a few months ago)
The random explorers/conquistadors would be cool make it expansive to uncover each area instead of having a human player who knows what areas to explore fast and colonize.
The AI currently has some issues with understanding the naval range and attrition mechanics at the moment. If it didn't, the no-attrition cheat wouldn't have been necessary. By doing what you suggest, you wouldn't really solve anything. It would not make a difference within the naval range, because there's no/minor attrition there either way, but it would still kill the fleet and the Explorer whenever they go on a long trip. However, with the no-attrition cheat, the short-range fleets aren't at a big risk to begin with. Which leads to the AI constantly needing to spend it's money to build new exploring fleets, and it's military points to get new Explorers, to continue to explore. I doubt the AI will explore randomly, so it's bound to have exploration as a goal. Which will effectivly cripple them. Is it really worth it? I say no.
Until the great Wiz of Oz manages to make the AI understand the range\attrition mechanics, no-attrition is the way to go.
The problem is not that the game becomes hard due to the AI advantages. The problem is the game becomes silly. I've seem things like the Ottomans invading Prussia by the sea with huge amount of troops in the early game, which makes no sense. This kind of crazy stuff can really break the immersion, which sucks. It is not necessarily deal breaking, but it is certainly something we would be better off without.
How would giving the AI attrition fix this, this sounds like a diplomacy problem in that Prussia would have no real interest in a war with the Ottomans, they have done a lot of fixes to diplomacy so hope not to see this as often.
You don't understand. The fix we propose wouldn't kill the AI navies, it would outright FORBID the AI to send its ships past a certain limit (which would be further than the actual supply range lest it would be unable to explore).
This would give the human player so many advantages, think about it have you ever clicked between 2 points on the map and seen the path your navy would take and if it did take this path it would sink but as a human you can guide your fleet around this problem using way points but programming a AI to do this is close to impossible if not impossible
All I see with this is a AI that would never send its fleet any real distance and would be stuck close to home.
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