Privateer

[famousguy]

I have some questions about the privateer unit. if i were to go to war with another nation and i used privateers as my naval army what would happen? would the enemy know that it was me or would they still think it is pirates? and also why don't the other civs know its me? when i blockade i get money for it and wouldnt they see the increase? please respond

[GePap]

Privateers don't carry a national flag, so if your entire navy is made of them, expect anyone and everyone passing by to attack your ships if they can.

The point of privateers in the game, just as they were in real life, is to enable you to damage the trade of other states, and make some money on the side without actually having to go to war, which can be very expensive and dangerous.

I would recommend you making some frigates and men of war for actual wars, and save the privateers for making the life of other civs difficult.

[Kuciwalker]

Privateers are too expensive and too weak to use as the bulk of your navy during wartime.

[snoopy369]

Privateers are meant to be "spy" type units - in other words they are intentionally unknown nationalities.

As above, they're not useful really during wartime because they're so weak; but you can probably use them for scouting purposes at least.

Nobody can really see your gold go up for that specific reason, since there are plenty of reasons for gold to go up, that's not the only one...

[DaShi]

When the Babylonians sent a fleet of caravels after one of my privateers, they didn't seem to notice when it fled into one of my ports for sanctuary.

[Egbert]

Originally posted by GePap
Privateers don't carry a national flag, so if your entire navy is made of them, expect anyone and everyone passing by to attack your ships if they can.
.

Yes. In my last game I built a couple of privateers so I could interfere with Montezuma's fishing. My loyal vassal promptly sank them. (Montezuma continued hisfishing without botheration).

[Ming]

Originally posted by peterfharris
My loyal vassal promptly sank them.

[Arrian]

Privateers are fun if you already have a lead and want to harrass a rival a bit. If you're in a real dogfight, you're not going to have the hammers to spare.

I had fun with Privateers in my last game. I really messed up the Dutch (already a fairly weak civ in that game - too much jungle) with them. They had caravels, and I was slaughtering those as well as destroying their seafood nets and blockading. It was rather silly, though, as I was already miles ahead of them.

Eventually, the sworn enemy of Holland, Sumer, took out my privateers with Frigates and SotL.

-Arrian

[dac]

I dunno, I had to fight a major war with privateers. I had a good tech lead, but no Iron in my empire. Toskugawa was right next door and had iron, but not a lot of tech. So, I couldn't build frigates or ships of the line, all I could build was privateers, but they were able to clobber his caravels, they even do well against Galleons.

My war was helped by the fact that the AI apparently considered the privateers to be quite the threat, and it stopped building land units and started building exclusively caravels. So, my land campaign started gathering momentum (no replacement units for those I killed), and by privateers started getting pretty experienced, making life even tougher on the caravels.

Now I just have to hook back up all the seafood I pillaged during the war.

[Kuciwalker]

I have a feeling Privateers could be a good bit more fun in MP.

[Arrian]

I hadn't realized they were no resource required units. Given that, sure, they can be useful in a conventional war. I too have noticed the AI freak out and build tons of caravels.

In MP they could be fun. Of course, a human isn't going to be as dimwitted as the AI about the origin of a privateer...

-Arrian

[wodan11]

Don't get used to the caravel spam. I think I remember seeing Solver or Blake saying they were probably going to tweak that in the next patch.

Wodan

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Arrian
I hadn't realized they were no resource required units. Given that, sure, they can be useful in a conventional war. I too have noticed the AI freak out and build tons of caravels.

There are naval units before Ironclads that require resources?

In MP they could be fun. Of course, a human isn't going to be as dimwitted as the AI about the origin of a privateer...

Which makes them more useful, not less. Humans aren't going to attack privateers harrassing their enemies, and the target isn't necessarily going to declare war over a few privateers.

[Kekkonen]

Sending a group of privateers to harass backwards civilizations is a cheesy way of building up Great General points.

[ColdPhoenix]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
There are naval units before Ironclads that require resources?

Do frigates come before ironclads? They require iron.