AI ships getting trapped in fjords while fleeing in battle

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This is really more of an AI-programming issue than a bug. I find that the AI's ships, when running away from battle, will obviously always try to sail away from my pursuing ships - to the point of hugging any nearby coastline. If my ships are fast enough and there's a deep enough inlet nearby in one of the landmasses, I can herd them right into it where they are trapped while my ships circle around outside, firing away at them. After about a half hour of target practice and knocking out all of their guns, I'll send my DD's in to finish the job with torpedoes, where even they can't miss.

Some possible solutions to this problem would be to: a) smooth out the outlines of every landmass to eliminate all deep dead-end inlets; b) create an invisible buffer zone around every landmass that will keep all ships from getting too close to land; c) program the AI to be smart enough to avoid any obvious entrapments in the first place; or d) if the territory that the AI is trapped in is neutrally-owned or independent, the AI's ships are automatically interned for the duration of the war. They are out of action, but you don't get credit for sinking them. If the territory is owned by any of the combatants, the ships in question will surrender instead. Again, they are out of action, but you will get credit for sinking (scuttling) them. You will also get credit for rescuing the crews (a lot, since the ship(s) didn't actually sink before surrendering); AND, there might be a possibility of capturing or learning about some enemy technology.

[williammiller]

This is something which we have worked on as we get specific reports of problem areas...also, Fredrik has created a technique to make this much less of an issue, so you can expect this to be significantly reduced in the future.