A Pirate's Life for Me (AoD II)

[Hermann the Lombard]

Just some WIP thoughts about trying to play a Pirate in AoD II.

I'm surprised to see that you don't appear to get Plunder points for sacking towns, as that was one of the most profitable--and risky--pirate activities (the sack of Cartagena, for example).

That makes it something of a mistake to sack European colonies as you eliminate future vict--er, "customers."

In my game I sacked the nearer towns because their cultural radius was taking away many of "my" tiles, promoting starvation.

In the meantime I discovered a change that I had overlooked: "Attack from ship modifier now -40% (was -25%, is -20% in vanilla, attempt to fix a single and multiplayer exploit of loading loads of cannons on a ship and attacking without chance of counter attack)." This was a painful lesson as I lost 3 of 5 cannon against mere militia.

It gets tedious waiting for new customers, especially after eliminating a bunch of ports...and more importantly sweeping the seas of shipping. I presume that what happens is each European gets one new ship at a time, which takes a long time to reach one of their scattered (surviving) colonies, then I sink it, creating another cycle of waiting. Also, if I accidentally mistake an inbound for an outbound I don't get any plunder for my trouble.

Net result: I may win an Economic victory while trying for a Pirate Plunder victory.

[moriety]

Heh!

Please keep us informed on the games progress, I'm interested in how the Pirate aspect pans out.

As for the inbound shipping I think Pirate ships should be allowed to capture the colonists they are bringing in, but only if that nation has a functioning colony over size 3- afterall, that was how most pirates "replenished" their crews.

If Dale implements the King sending in the odd Man O' War or Frigate for those pesky pirates, it would enhance Pirate gameplay perhaps, and give your ships XP....or send them to Davey Jones's Locker.

Toby

[Hermann the Lombard]

As you might expect (from silence) I let that game peter out, with a vague thought of possibly resuming it. This was partly because I felt like I was floundering and making little progress, with little prospect of making progress. I had really expected to get plunder points by sacking towns, and having sacked the towns there weren't enough merchantmen out there to make a profit. When there is only one ship per nation on the whole map... Now I think in a more recent update Dale upped the number of ships, and that would help. OTOH, if the King's Commissioners make an appearance the life of the pirate will resemble life in a "state of nature: nasty, brutish, and short."

[moriety]

Perhaps if the Kings' ships were Frigates only? In reality the Royal Navy both then and now used/es Frigates for this purpose, although before Hong Kong retured to China I believed they used FPB's for that (local) role.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Yes, frigates would be appropriate in the anti-pirate role. They would be effective, too. For the pirates to have a chance you would have to make their ships as fast or faster than their pursuers.

[moriety]

And Pirate Brigs would only need "a few" victories before they could match a Frigate without experience.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Were you thinking of the Pirate Brigs or the Pirate Ships?

On the other side of the coin, I had a very unpleasant experience last night when I took a pirate town and then a SoD sallied from the next town and annihilated the entire army that just reduced the first town.

[moriety]

Hi Hermann,

Do you mean a SoL? How did the ship destroy the troops? I'm a tad confused here!

I found this very interesting link to the typical pirate ships of this era within the Caribean, and the warships ranged against them:

http://blindkat.hegewisch.net/pirates/ships.html

There could be the case for 3-4 Pirate ship types, with two specialist pirate hunters, one supplied by the King, with perhaps the "snow" available to be built in the colonies?

I also read that the annual Spanish treasure fleet was 100-ships strong and typically carried wealth equal to twice the annual income of the King of England.
Each galleon (the Spanish Man O' War at that time) weighed 500 tons, had a lengh of 125ft, carried 200 men and fielded 60 cannon.

By comparison, a National Maritime book I have offers up a typical pirate ship of the late period as: A Schooner, weighing 214 tons, 76ft in length with 22 guns- good as she was both fast and had a shallow draught, allowing for easy hiding and beach repairs.

An East India Company man- William James, of the Bombay Marine, commanded a Pirate hunter called the "Protector" of 40 guns, the lead ship of another 3 vessels hunting Maratha Pirates.

Chinese pirate Junks were upto 80ft in length and carried 12 guns, along with row boats equipped with a swivel gun and carried 20 men for boarding and coastal raids, but the largest fleets were huge- the one under Ching-Chi-Ling had over 1,000 junks.

All pirate ships had one thing in common- they carried many more men than the boat normally would in merchant service.

Pirate raids on coastal towns carried in Pirate ships (all of which should have cargo and human capacity) would be pretty good.....

Toby

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hey Toby,

SoD = Stack of Doom

Strictly speaking pirates razed ships and buccaneers (usually larger groups of pirates) coastal towns!

[moriety]

....Or human Privateers regarding towns- Drake on one expedition to sack towns of the Spanish Main had 3 ships under his command, one of them, named "Jesus of Lubeck" (I think!) was a beast for that time- 700 tons.

Technically, the word Buccaneer derived from the French pirates active in the region, derived in turn from the name of native meat-smoking huts used by Frenchmen on St.Domingo, whilst Corsair is the French privateer equivalent. The Barbary Pirates were also called corsairs by some- like the Greek brothers who went to North Africa and were known as the Barbarossa Brothers.

You've gotta love the description of English Pirates working out of North Africa (tolerated, for a while, by the Muslim rulers as they were bringing in new technology from Europe, along with excellent fighting and sea-faring skills):

Sieur de Breves in 1606 reported on "the profuse liberality and excessive debauches" of the English corsairs, stating "They carry their swords at their sides, they run drunk through the town....They sleep with the wifes of the Moors....in brief, every kind of debauchery and unchecked licence is permitted to them"

Good to see that us English are still exactly the same today then

[PrinceMyshkin]

Saying that did you know the word "Barber", and "Barbarian" have the same root?

Barbarians used to have beard!

As for the "barbar" is the ancient Greek impression of random talking produced by a spoken language that one cannot understand (something like blahblah in ancient greek!?).

Hence, they called them barbarians!

[moriety]

Blimey,

After a few beers I must be known for talking "barbar" then....Love it!

Do you think anyone might be up for a co-op type MP game- Untill Independence is declared perhaps by the first player- then mayhem could be allowed to break out?!!

[PrinceMyshkin]

You can join our next game with Ed if you like, what if we use this forum to post our progress?