AU mod: The Privateer

[ZargonX]

Privateers (and all other sailing ships) become obsolete with combustion.

I think that's a very good suggestion. The AI is better of building stronger ships, not hidden ones.

[alexman]

Under consideration:

A. No change
B. Reduce cost of Privateer to 40.
C. Privateer does not require support.
D. Reduce defense of Caravel and Galleon to 1. Galleon would get 'requires escort' AI flag.

Voting in a week, by ranking the above choices.

Also under consideration, independently of the above:

Yes/No: Remove the ability to build Frigate, Privateer, Man-O-War when you can build Destroyers.

[nbarclay]

I've already made my case against reducing the defense of caravels and galleons.

Regarding the idea of reducing Privateers' cost or otherwise making them more effective, I think it is very important to understand their proper niche. Think back to the time of England's Queen Elizabeth I, when England wanted to gain power relative to Spain but did not want a direct war with Spain. Privateers allowed England to attack Spain while maintianing at least some pretext that the two nations were not truly at war.

The legitimate role of Privateers in Civ is similar: when a player wants to weaken one particular opponent without actually going to war. Privateers are not and should not be a means to gain a relative advantage over several AIs at once. In order for Privateers to provide a relative advantage even over two opponents at once, they would have to be able to destroy more than twice their cost in enemy units, which would make them far too effective when focused on one particular target.

(So far, I haven't used C3C Privateers yet because I havn't had a game where that niche was particularly valuable. To the extent that I've thought about the possibility of using Privateers at all after how useless Privateers were in earlier versions, either I've been more interested in building up my own civ than in tearing down one particular opponent or I've been inclined to fight more directly.)

The question that remains is whether Privateers can fill their legitimate role properly under the default rules if they are used correctly or whether they need to be beefed up in order to do so. If Privateers focused on one particular target can kill more shields' worth of the target's units (including both ships and carried units) than they suffer in losses (both from the target civ and from being forced to fight third-party ships), then they are good enough already. If not, it would be very hard to find a useful niche for them under the current rules.

So far, I have seen no compelling evidence or testimony indicating that the players who have the most effective tactics for using Privateers are unable to make them worthwhile in their proper niche. Further, C3C has been out a short enough time that there hasn't been a huge amount of opportunity to develop tactics for C3C Privateers (and experience from previous versions certainly does not carry over well). I think we need a stronger experience base with clearer evidence that the current version is not worthwhile before we reach the conclusion that change is needed. Even aside from the conservative nature of the AU Mod, if we make Privateers powerful enough that they are easy to gain a net advantage from using in most games, we risk making them far too powerful when players who figure out or learn the best tricks for using them effectively use them in their proper niche.

Nathan

[Theseus]

Very well said, Nathan.

[alexman]

Time to vote! We have 48 hours.

My votes:

DACB and Yes

[Stuie]

CBAD and Yes

[ZargonX]

BADC and Yes

[lockstep]

CBAD and YES

[alexman]

Hmm, with Nor Me missing in action I predict some ties in the rank voting. The order of conservativeness, which we have chosen as a tie-breaker, is not clear.

How about ACBD?

[Theseus]

CBAD and Y

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
Yes/No: Remove the ability to build Frigate, Privateer, Man-O-War when you can build Destroyers.

I voted yes, but on second thought (just to be sure): Is there any reason why we didn't make Frigates, Man-O-Wars and Privateers upgrade to Destroyers?

(Note: you can upgrade Curraghs to Transports!)

[alexman]

Won't having Frigates upgrade to Destroyers make the Ironclad tech researched even less often?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
Won't having Frigates upgrade to Destroyers make the Ironclad tech researched even less often?

Only if you can find a way to research Ironclads less often than never. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but probably not much of one.)

On the other hand, having ironclads upgrade but not frigates does give human players more incentive to want to get the Ironclads tech from an AI when an AI researches it (which does happen in the AU Mod) and more incentive to build ironclads when the tech is available. Conversely, the lack of an upgrade path for frigates prevents a strategy of building a big frigate armada and then upgrading it into an instant big destroyer flotilla, a trick which could be especially powerful in conjunction with Leo's. So I think the current design is good enough that we don't need to change it in that regard.

Nathan

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nbarclay
... the lack of an upgrade path for frigates prevents a strategy of building a big frigate armada and then upgrading it into an instant big destroyer flotilla, a trick which could be especially powerful in conjunction with Leo's.

OTOH, I view building a bunch of horsemen and upgrading them to knights as a valid and (with C3C's upgrade costs of 3 gold per shield) 'non-broken' strategy, so I don't think that upgrading frigates to destroyers should qualify as a 'trick'.

[alexman]

But you can already follow that strategy with Ironclads.

If we allow Frigates to upgrade to Destroyers as well, that would make one more reason to ignore Ironclads, especially since they require a 50% greater shield investment than Frigates do.