Nautillus Pirates Strategies

[Ironwood]

What sorts of strategies are effective for the Nautillus Pirates in a regular game of SMAX?

I'm not sure if the bases should be close together, to lessen the effects of their efficiency penalty, or far apart, to maximize their squares with special bonuses. Hugging the coast seems a good idea; that's where the shelf squares are.

That efficiency penalty hurts. It means less reaped from distant bases, less bases without extra drones, overall a bad situation.

The aliens potentially make matters worse. So far as I can tell, no human opponent can stand up to the aliens one-on-one, which means either the human (as opposed to computer) player has to step up and play "protect the world," or you end up with a single human player vs. whichever alien faction comes out on top.

I don't know. Are there any strategies beyond "Just go conquer all, you moron!" that work for the Pirates?

[CEO Aaron]

My strategy, quit and restart with a faction with less suck. :P

All joking aside, just try to stay out of trouble early, and let the huge nutrient and energy production potential of your ocean bases carry you past the industry and efficency hurdles.

You've got plenty of early mobility, so use it to pop pods, contact your rivals and make the most of tech trading. Once you've gotten what you can from everyone, start using probe foils to tech rape them all for the rest. One of the few advantages of being stuck out in the ocean is that you're a big pain in the butt to conquer, which means you'll be able to annoy alot of folks a fairly large amount before they'll commit to wiping you out. So make the most of your impunity via irksomeness.

[Kody]

One of the few advantages of being stuck out in the ocean is that you're a big pain in the butt to conquer, which means you'll be able to annoy alot of folks a fairly large amount before they'll commit to wiping you out. So make the most of your impunity via irksomeness.

Find some land borehole and condensor it like crazy then procceed to eco damage as much as you can. Raise the sea levels a bit drown a few factions. While they busy're trying to save their cities, have some fun bombarding their terraforming from the sea.

Not really a strategy but .... mmmmm fun

[Blake]

The key to getting strong as pirates is realising that:
Sea colony pods are much more expensive than land pods.
Sea formers are expensive, and sea terraforming generally takes more turns than land terraforming.
Your sea bonuses work just as well for land bases.

The pirates should take to the land as quickly as possible, just find a nice mid sized uninhabited island (if you have unity scan, Mt Planet or the crater are great), prefferably build your HQ on the coast of it adjcant to the land. Once you have lots of minerals from the land, you can start the serious sea development.

The one thing all pirates should do is pop pods like crazy. You get lots of cash that can be used to rush buy all those useful facilities.

And a little tip, you dont need a sea transport to allow units to move from a sea base to an adjacant land tile, a cheaper infantry transport in the sea base will work fine (however you might want a sea trannie anyway). And if theres already a friendly land unit in the tile your moving to, you dont need any transport at all! This tip applies equally to all other factions.

A couple of popular pirate strategies:
Militaristic
Beeline to Green, go Demo/Green and amass a large, free native sea army, pop lots of pods get lots of artifacts/freebies and lots of cash from killing worms.

Builder
Go Free Market - cheap terraforming because all shelf tiles automatically become 2-1-1 with just kelp. You'll want to get demo and creches for effeciency and restrictions lifted ASAP. Also do the odd Demo/Planned pop boom, pirate bases can grow big fast. Then get lots of specialists, and change to Green if you feel the need to conquer.

Pirates pretty much need demo, otherwise growth and effic penalties are crippling. I once toyed with Police/Planned, HQ terraformed with kelp/tidals (turn into a SSC), all other bases kelp/platforms. Expansion rate and production became crazy. A good militaristic ICS, kinda boring tho.

[Hercules]

Ironwood:

You may care to look at the ACDG2 forum and join the Peace faction which is the Pirates by another name. In here you could learn from the others and contribute to Pirate development.

[johndmuller]

The Cuspidor might even have a spare bird for a new crewman.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

(from discussion at civgaming)


I'll second Blakes advice.

Go inland ASAP. Best means I have found is simply this.

Move sea colony pods next to land mass. Likely two separate land masses. First build should be infantry transport. 10 free mins and 3 minerals allows the transport to be built in 4 turns. Next build is a land colony pod. Infantry transport can move directly from the base to land. If a pod is within base radii pop it with the transport in hopes of an AA. (It will likely always be a good outcome if within base radii). By turn 5 you are working to produce land bound pods and units.

As soon as you've researched Centauri Ecology (formers) you'll likely want to make these as well and send them land side. (If your lucky or have taken the time to scout around a bit you might have the monsoon jungle as your own - This might be the real hidden strength of the pirates)

Initially as you have those two sea colonies to yourself and no threats from other factions I tend to leave them -gasp!!! unprotected and ungarisoned. All that you need fear is the wandereing sea lurks which normally don't show for the first 20-30 turns. Prior to size 2 staple them, and then later on add the garison/rec commons etc.

As for the initial question on SE choices, First switch is normally to Demo once land bound mins are more easily achieved. Second is to wealth. Then as I have decided it makes best sense to reel in the sprawl and limit the exploration I'll go FM. At that point I'll likely be doing all my exploration with foil probe teams.

FM phase normally lasts until I have gotten myself embroiled into too many wars via probe actions and then it usually is a switch to Demo/green/knowledge for warfare (Allowing paradigm and free allocationof energy from credits to research as the need presents itself.)

Og


P.S.

Two natural advantages of Pirates are not alwasy noticeable. They both relate to ability to scout and set up shop in sweet spots. Those being Monsoon Jungle and the north and south poles.

Monsoon is obvious, it is by far and away the best starting location for any faction. Save perhaps ruins for Cha Dawn or DeeDee.

Poles are great for Pirates as it is a natural source of minerals withits rickies all over the place. That couple with a secluded area for growth that no one else normally expands towards.

[johndmuller]

Awwkkk!! Nervestaplin' yer own Pirate brothers in yer own HQ!

What a fine bloodthirsty Pirate ye would be, Cap'n Ogie .

-------------------

Some generally good advice, but here's my 2 cents . . .

Regarding the pod popping, I believe that popping pods in the tiles adjacent to bases is 'safe' (except for earthquakes, which IMhO are generally unwelcome, especially if you've got any of your boats in range). OTOH, since I've been paying attention to this issue, I have definitely seen MW's appear from pods just outside the tiles adjacent to the Base (but still within the Base area). Also, I am not sure whether the same rules apply to sea pods next to land bases or vice versa.

I agree that it is important to spread onto land in the beginnng - it is, of course, especially satisfying to get the jungle, and I would count the Volcano or the Crater as also pretty useful to the Pirates. If you get the land bases planted before officially meeting any preexisting residents, you can do it without regard to their territoritial boundary rights with no vendettas generated (not that you will be making any good friends that way, however ).

OTOH, once you can afford to build Sea Colony Pods in a reasonable time, they are not really all that bad, as the free Pressure Dome is equivalent to your having built a Recycler at the base; the extra cost of Sea Formers over Land ones and the nut and energy restrictions are probably more of a hinderance to sea development. Assuming you place the Sea Bases in locations rich with special bonuses, the restrictions are less of a factor. Once you get Fusion, the Sea Colonies are definitely worth it as both they and the SFormers are much cheaper and by then you would presumably have gotten rid of the restrictions.

Pop booming with Demo/Planned/Creche does not work due to the -1 Growth, the more difficult Demo/Planned/Creche plus Golden Age method is required.

I don't know about the FM either; there are a lot of pods out there to pop for money and other goodies, and a lot of IoD's to fight for the Pieces of Eight they offer, not to mention the morale boosts. Warships are much better at this than probeships (and also cheaper to build) not to mention a lot more in character for pirates to be out cruising instead of hiding inside the bases like some wimpy landlubbers. Now, warships that were dressed up in disguise to look like innocent merchantmen or fishermen might be in character, but unfortunately are not in the game.

[Ironwood]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I used to try to get onto land quickly, but stopped because I enjoy being able to completely avoid the land wars. Still, settling a mid sized island to get that early advantage, then focusing on sea expansion sounds like a good idea. With the naval powers of the Pirates, very little could threaten them on land on their own island.

I'll have to dig up my old copy of The King's Bucanneer to find the name of my first land base, the name of the largest city on the Sunset
Isles (for those familiar with the works of Raymond E. Feist).

[Blake]

The strangest pirate game I played, on the huge map of planet, actually landed me in the freshwater sea. Then Marr built bases all around the sea. I think I used marine attacks and nerve gas etc to destroy all his coastal bases, thus leaving me immune to conquest (I dont think I even bothered defending most my bases). I basically ran Free Market almost the entire game, content to stay in my nutrient rich pond teching like crazy (for an age I had no contact with non-Marrs) and winning with transcendence. It was an interesting game, with all the nuts I could pack my bases quite tightly, build a decent amount of mining platforms and still get huge bases with heaps of specialists.

It was also the only game where I could build in near absolute peace - with the notable exception of a planetbuster strike from the Caretakers, after this I totally cleared my pond of units (aka PB targets) and had a few forward bases doing the Alien X-Termination.

Speaking of atrocities against pirates, I do quite like nerve stapling them. The early stuff they need is sooo mineral expensive and a couple of staplings allows you to spend minerals on important things. And it's not as if you get any commerce in the first 50 turns. However you suffer a permament rep hit... so do it for the conquerer, but not the builder.

[Shai-Hulud]

As Pirates it's probably a good idea to head for a land bases early on but I dislike the idea. Maybe it's because I tend to use little sea bases with land-based factions and want to enjoy the opportunity when playing Pirates...or maybe I just like to remain seabound for role gaming purposes.

In my latest game I did OK focusing on the sea. Early on I built a lot of platforms to boost min production. Later on the inherent +1 min per shelf square, Subsea Trunkline, AdvEcoEng and Genejacks etc. kept my industry competitive enough.

I switched to Demo/FM/Knowledge. And tried to stay out of conflicts early on(not that they could've hurt me). I crawled Geothermal Shallows with success and topped everyone in research/economy. Half of my bases focused on energy and speacialists. Other half built up my defences which I needed a lot since I eventually got into war against everyone.

What I especially like in Pirates...

1. Is their ability to remain safe at the early stages of the game (also latter when playing against AI)
2. Cheap terraforming costs to get most out of sea squares.
3. Ability to explore early on
4. Possibility to probe any faction with little trouble
4. Uniqueness of approach

It would be interesting to play as Pirates in MP game. I think their in some way overpowered versus AI, since AI can't really effectively conquer you.

[gopher]

And make sure to use your foils to destroy as many improvements of the others as you can, before you meet them. Especially in the begining, it can make a difference.
Also, play their strengths. They must produce expensive units for most of their cities (foils, cruisers), so use those tidal harnesses. And the land strategy is always a good one, but that free Marine Takeover ability is key. Use it to capture old foils, and recycle.

[Hercules]

In case It wasn't clear the acdg2 TEAM GAME Is a MP game against 4 other human team factions. Take a look.

[Sarxis]

I know that you're "supposed" to go inland with the Pirates as soon as you can, but honestly, I don't want to.

Isn't that playing out of character? Like Deirdre building Boreholes?

[Ironwood]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
I know that you're "supposed" to go inland with the Pirates as soon as you can, but honestly, I don't want to.

Isn't that playing out of character? Like Deirdre building Boreholes?

Not necessarily, not if you pick an island that lacks any previous settlement. All the best pirates have a hidden island base from which they launch their attacks, and I can easily imagine a "pirate king" ruling over a small dominion of landlubbers.

However, my thing with pirate land bases is the fact that, with their efficiency penalty, the number of bases they can have without extra drones is already lower than the other factions. I think it would be better to save these centers for strategically placed sea bases. The pirates are irritating as opponents once Air Power is discovered due to the sheer number of locations Pirate jets can swarm from.