Yo Ho! A Pirate's Life for me!

[gdijedi7]

I have recently discovered the joys of piracy.

I build some Privateers and go around blockading ports, bringing in all the overseas trade the cities would ordinarily be getting, and it made me very rich and very happy.

Only problems:
A) Pirates are not fast enough to run away if caught, and
B) they're too weak to survive if the enemy has anything near technological parity with you.

Anyone else tried this?

[Supr49er]

Yeah, it works great.

You also get combat XP and GG points by sinking their galleys/triremes/caravels. Enough to get a free GG!

[Quillan]

What pirates? We've NEVER condoned piracy!

[rah]

Yeah, if you're a peacenik early in on and have appeased your neighbors enough. (or have had the luck of not having any pyschos as neighbors) this can be a fast way to get that first GG. Assuming they don't have frigates yet. But best to send out 4 or 5 together since the ai has no problem with suiciding a handful of caravels to take one or two out.

[Arrian]

It's nice if you have tech superiority and can get some privateers in place before the enemy can respond with frigates, yeah.

I typically have some medic privateers stacked with combat II (or better) privateers. The medic will be the blockading ship, and the combat promoted ship(s) will cover him and/or whack enemy caravels/galleons. I've wrecked economies that way.

Once frigates (or, much to my dismay in one game, East Indiamen) show up in any sort of numbers, though, you're done.

edit: a combat II privateer on a coast tile will have roughly even odds against an unpromoted frigate (8 vs 7.8). A combat III privateer would have a slight advantage (8 vs. 8.4). So if your blockade is already set up in force (stacks of privateers with medics and other promoted ships), you could hold on for a while.

-Arrian

[Asmodeous]

I tend to avoid most of the sea-related techs until later, which makes privateers fairly useless for me. I should start getting those earlier. :/ Unless I start on an island, which isn't common for me for some reason (luck I guess).

Me.

[jnh140]

Privateers do enjoy a very brief career as the coolest naval ships.

The AI is really good at building retardedly gigantic fleets, and seem to upgrade existing fleets instantly. This means you usually don't get the joy of privateers for long.

I love them, I tend to spam about twenty of them and go sailing around the higher-point empires.


Once I had an entire continent blockaded at the moment they updated to frigates. I tried to flee my privateers back home. Some of them made it into my territory, and one nation declared war on me simply to enter my territory and sink the privateers O.o

[Quillan]

In one of my recent games, the Celts were my primary competitor, but were lagging behind in the naval area. In all fairness, they didn't need a navy, as 10/12 civs were on the continent we shared, and the other 2 were insignificant. I sent some privateers down there and blockaded all of their ports, hoping to cut down on their trade. It worked for a long time, but they eventually got the tech to build frigates. When they did, they did not piecemeal me as I thought they would. They built up to the point where they had 4-5 frigates in the blockaded city, then wiped out the blockade in a single turn.

[gdijedi7]

I wish they were a bit more powerful, but I would much rather have pirates that were really fast. After all, didn't pirates usually try to get the fastest ships they possibly could?

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by rah
Yeah, if you're a peacenik early in on and have appeased your neighbors enough. (or have had the luck of not having any pyschos as neighbors) this can be a fast way to get that first GG. Assuming they don't have frigates yet. But best to send out 4 or 5 together since the ai has no problem with suiciding a handful of caravels to take one or two out.

I have also noticed that when you blockade an AI city, it will change production to naval units. This can really slow them down.

[Supr49er]

Anybody else have a hard time getting the Pirates of the Caribbean song out of their head after seeing this thread title?

Maybe I just go to Disneyland too much.

[gdijedi7]

Originally posted by Supr49er
Anybody else have a hard time getting the Pirates of the Caribbean song out of their head after seeing this thread title?

Maybe I just go to Disneyland too much.

[CerberusIV]

The nice spin off if you are on an isolated continent or with no border issues and can stay at peace is that if you get an early warrior up to 6XP or greater (animals and barbs) you can park that unit in a city, get a GG through privateers and create a warlord unit with the necessary XP level to build Heroic Epic and West Point - all without ever having to fight a war.

There is a sort of bug with privateers in that they can enter coastal cities of civs where you have open borders and can't be attacked in port. Not sure how to take advantage of this yet - apart from it's a good way of hiding from frigates.

[Unimatrix11]

I´d say the best way of taking advantage of it is by not taking advantage of it, for i´d consider that an exploit (even if the AI does it, too, on occasion)

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by gdijedi7
I wish they were a bit more powerful, but I would much rather have pirates that were really fast. After all, didn't pirates usually try to get the fastest ships they possibly could?

Privateers are easily imbalanced units, so they are intentionally weak and slow. The ability to make war on a civ without declaring war is incredibly powerful - and dangerous. Even only on the sea, if it was reasonably possible for a civ to use privateers effectively without risking losing them except to a more powerful civ, the decision of whether to war or not would be a simple one... so the privateer must be weak enough that even a somewhat weaker civ doesn't need to fear it much; if you are going to use it you either use it sparingly in strategically interesting times, or you have to build a lot of them (making it more expensive, essentially).