Gross English Navies

[Anthropoid]

What the heck is up with the UK AI in this game!? Its 1890 and they have 673 total ships, including 42 PDNs, 166 PCs and 274 Steam Transports?

42 PreDreadnoughts!? Even 166 Protected Cruisers seems excessive.

42 PDNs in about 5 or 10 years!? At most . . . those things cost like 5K to 8K pounds per ship!?

Is UK really just that rich in the game or does the AI cheat?

 

[twcAxeman]

Britannia rules the waves...

 

[Anthropoid]

Britannia rules the waves...

Surfing is one thing, but FORTY-TWO Pre-Dreadnoughts in the span of 5 or 10 years!?

Do they get some kinda cheapo bonuses on ships or something?

. . . I'm gonna load this dang computer players turn and delete some ships or something . . . damn cheatin' AIs . . .

 

[Anthropoid]

In 1881 he had 79 Protected Cruisers and zero PDNs.

I'm playing as Prussia. Is there a way to load it as one of the other Great Power positions?

ADDIT: in 1884 she had zero Pre-Dreadnoughts and 121 PCs

In 1887 still zero PDNs and 161 PCs!

42 Pre-Dreadnoughts built in the span of three years!?

ADDIT*2: This is not right. I loaded up the 1881 scenario as UK to check what the Devs thought a "normal" level of naval development would be. UK has the following
1 PDN
2 PCs
0 DN
15 MO
29 ICs
23 MW
0 CL
17 Fr
8 S Trans
2 C Trans
97 Total ship units

The other Great Powers totals
France 66
Russia 33
Spain 29
Neth 28
USA 19
Germany 18

Those numbers seem reasonable.

In my 1836 match played up to 1881, the UK has 673 ships, and apart from me, Prussia having about 50 ships, virtually no other nation on Earth has anything remotely comparable. I think France has about 10 PCs.

A UK that focuses on naval is one thing, but 12 times as large a navy as anyone else, and effectively everyone else building almost nothing? That is not balance.

 

[unmerged(16676)]

The game does have some flaws, that is one of them.

Steel warships are way to cheap in the game, most powers could only afford a handful, in teh game you will see dozens or more for some powers.

 

[Anthropoid]

The game does have some flaws, that is one of them.

Steel warships are way to cheap in the game, most powers could only afford a handful, in teh game you will see dozens or more for some powers.

Thanks for responding and clarifying FFZ. I have to say this really bummed me out when I encountered it because it totally flew in the face of my strategic plans. I was so jazzed when I could build pre-dreadnoughts and I laid down my first hull, only to see that the UK already had 42 of them!? Talk about a let down. I mean at that point, what is the point? Why even bother?

Do any of the mods address it? Is it something I can change in a file somewhere?

Best thing would be if there were a cumualtive modifier for cost so that building the second one is more costly than the first, third more costly than second, etc.

 

[LlywelynII]

Well, I do agree that the game would feel better if capital ships were more restricted (though it is hard to see how: the real expenses were maintenance and rapid obsolescence. The first doesn't matter to an AI that can't be expected to balance his accounts and the second would be even more frustrating.)

Otoh, it's hard to see what realistic plan you had that didn't involve the RN being the dominant power on the waves. OTL, they'd've responded to your plans with just such a building spree or just gotten a proxy to invade and wreck your shipyards.

Just stay on good relations with Mama Victoria and beat up on France.

 

[MannheimCouncil]

VIP introduces ship hulls as a resource and it does seem to ameliorate the problem somewhat. As has been said the problem is mainly the lack of expensive maintenance. The fact that you are able to make ridiculous amounts of money doesn't help either.

If you want a quick fix for the UK only you might ask the modders. As far as I know, there is a value in the AI files that sets the maximum fleet levels. For the UK it is set to -1, which means that the AI just keeps on building, if anyone seems to be likely to build up a navy to rival their own.

 

[Anthropoid]

It is not that I planned to challenge the RN within a year or two, or even in ten. I just had a vision of keeping a sufficient credible threat to deter RN intervention in Baltic while I used a small but powerful navy to start picking off French colonial holdings. Then perhaps by 1925 reach something like parity in numbers of capital ships if not close to parity but balanced by more subs, etc.?

With a navy of 673 ships, including 42 pre-Dreadnoughts, and nearly 200 PCs, there seems to be little point in 1890 of Prussia doing ANYTHING naval at all.

The next largest number of ships is 77 (France I believe) who had about 5 or 10 PCs. (wish I could get screen shots to work again).

The game should certainly model British naval dominance, and the numbers in the 1881 scenario reflect that. But a nearly 10 to one ratio in total ships, and a 42 to zero ratio in pre-Dreadnoughts? That just seems absurd.

Maybe I've done something to promote this in my play style as Prussia?

I guess the really frustrating thing here is I don't understand how the naval part of this game works, and indeed it seems (as seems common for Paradox games) to have been an afterhought. An AI that is able to build a navy of those gross proportions is a symptom of such a poorly modeled naval ecology. That is unacceptable for a game that models the era of colonialism, during which time, navies were critical for overseas power projection.

 

[Anthropoid]

VIP introduces ship hulls as a resource and it does seem to ameliorate the problem somewhat. As has been said the problem is mainly the lack of expensive maintenance. The fact that you are able to make ridiculous amounts of money doesn't help either.

If you want a quick fix for the UK only you might ask the modders. As far as I know, there is a value in the AI files that sets the maximum fleet levels. For the UK it is set to -1, which means that the AI just keeps on building, if anyone seems to be likely to build up a navy to rival their own.

Does VIP allow the 1836 scenario to be played? If so, I'm sold!

 

[henryjai]

unless you are those high-population great powers you're unlikely to build a navy larger than that of the british...

 

[MannheimCouncil]

Does VIP allow the 1836 scenario to be played? If so, I'm sold!

VIP allows only the 1836 scenario to be played. Be sure to play on a slow speed, though. I seem to have missed the event that enables the ship hull factory and had to live with a dreadnought-less Swiss empire.

The fact that British India is a separate entity in VIP also helps to reduce the ridiculous income the UK gets in vanilla.

 

[Gustave Amon]

36 dreadnoughts should do the trick, just keep them close to port.

 

[LlywelynII]

VIP allows only the 1836 scenario to be played. Be sure to play on a slow speed, though. I seem to have missed the event that enables the ship hull factory.

Heh. Hate that.

Although it is a fun way to nix England's navy: they clear out their old ships but never are able to replace them with anything.

 

[Alyosha]

Is UK really just that rich in the game or does the AI cheat?

It cheats. The AI pays no military maintenance. Even if ship costs were increased it would not matter because the Great Power AI states make so much money that they will be able to afford the ships regardless. Raising the cost only hurts the player's ability to build ships.

Hulls are a somewhat a solution but the amount of hulls needed to build the capital ships should be vastly increased - that way at least a market would have to build up based on ship hulls.

 

[Anthropoid]

I'm up to about 1848 in a VIP match now (once again as Prussia ; if at first you do not get past 1890, restart again . . .). The numbers seem a bit more on the reasonable side. Though UK does have a rather large number of MWs, not nearly such a ridiculous dominance as in vanilla Vicky Rev.

I have to say, this bit with the navies is the first thing in this game that I've been really disappointed by. The rest of the game has clearly been given so much thought and effort to create complex ecological restrictions (not just "handicaps") that encourage the player toward historicity, and deter "power-gamer" blobbing and such. The AI actually does a decent job in land combat, and indeed, the basic model for naval combat seems well-suited to how the AI works.

But it seems that the ecology of the naval dimension of the game just wasn't given nearly as much thought, even after an expansion AND multiple patches.

This lack of good naval modeling seems to be a theme in Paradox games (EU Rome, EU HTT also), and about the only clear critique suggestion I could make: get a grip on how navies work and try to better model them in game.

 

[unmerged(48056)]

The A.I. is toned down in ViP. ViP is supposed to be played through events and is more economic oriented, as opposed to ''conquer the world' vanilla ricky.

 

[Beamed]

How on earth are you guys missing events? I play on Fast/Above Normal, and haven't missed one - generally if I think I did, a restart of the game does the trick.

Then, I restart it often enough, so that might account for it.

 

[MannheimCouncil]

@Anthropoid:

Yup, in V:R the navy is the only part of the game really lacking. Pop promotion and diplomacy may be a bit weird at times, but they're okay. The navy doesn't really get the chance to shine.

@Beamed:

When I had the problem twice in my VIP games the dev team told me it was probably because the game engine "missed" the events, which normally happens when you go too fast. I had the speed on normal, I think. Beats me, how that was the only event I ever noticed missing, though. Restarting might help as I hardly ever play less than 5 hours straight.

 

[unmerged(16676)]

How on earth are you guys missing events? I play on Fast/Above Normal, and haven't missed one - generally if I think I did, a restart of the game does the trick.

Then, I restart it often enough, so that might account for it.

Its not the game speed that causes missed events, its your PC.

Victoria was designed years ago, for older PCs.

The new PCs run so much faster that the game programming at 'very fast' sometimes does not have enough time to check events, thus they are 'missed.'