How the heck do i use the friggen privateers?

[Kinimod]

Hmmm.. well, apart from the total lack of any multiplayer whatsoever, including hotseat () the game is pretty good. the civilopedia is pretty useless tho. For instance, it says: use privateers to attack other civ shipping without identifying yourself (hence not provoking war). However, it does not say HOW you attack the shipping . I try to just move into a city w/ a port... no attacking settlements, it says. I have 6 privateers fortified around the city.. nothing. What do i do? Are they just for attacking enemy boats??? I dont actually get luxuries or strategic resources?? In any event, if anyone has figured out how you use the stupid pirates, please reply to this post. In the meantime, I will be conducting further research ingame...

[Jaybe]

Privateers are for attacking other shipping.
OTH, I had a Privateer looking for some 'not yet an enemy' (I hadn't declared war yet) and a caravel of a friend of mine attacked and sank it. They obviously thought my "pirates" were a threat to the shipping lanes.

[Vitmore The Great]

I think "attack shipping" just means you can attack other ships (eg. triemes) of other civs without the a declaration of war. They don't know you did it. But the downside to Privateers is that they are not very powerful, so you would be discouraged from mass producing them. But I do think it is somewhat suspicious that a trieme (from ancient times) ALWAYS beats my Privateer (with Age of Sail cannons). In fact, it pisses me off and is very unrealistic. The Privateer is totally useless if it cannot even beat the earliest type of ship.

Vitmore

[Spagina]

Yeah Vitmore, that's one of my beefs too. I've had a frigate armada annihilated by a couple tireme's. Really takes the wind out of your sails (No pun intended) when early aged boats can sink massive ships with cannons.

I've been wondering though. How does one blockade a port so they can't ship out resources and bring resources in? I've been trying to blockade a computer port with my frigates, but I can't seem to cut them off.

[player1]

Prvatters have stats of 1/1/3 like GALLEY.
I thnik that this is an error, not design decision.
Hope that it will be change in patch (to maybe 2/1/4 like in manual)

[Dida]

you can change this on your own, with the editor.

[Vitmore The Great]

Originally posted by Spagina
Yeah Vitmore, that's one of my beefs too. I've had a frigate armada annihilated by a couple tireme's. Really takes the wind out of your sails (No pun intended) when early aged boats can sink massive ships with cannons.

I've been wondering though. How does one blockade a port so they can't ship out resources and bring resources in? I've been trying to blockade a computer port with my frigates, but I can't seem to cut them off.

The manual says you blockade a city by occupying every ocean square touching it with a ship.

Vitmore

[Admiral PJ]

I'm glad the privateers aren't too powerful, it pis*ses me off no end when an enemy sinks my transport with 6 units on it.. imagine even friendly civs being able to sink all my transports!
Maybe privateers should not be able to attack weak transports or a war will be declared.. it will be seen as butchery by the other nations.

[Spagina]

Thanks Vitmore. I've been occasionally flipping through the manual to find a lot of the stuff, I must have missed it.

[Rommel393]

Your problems with losing naval battles to tirmes by more modern ships has never happened to me. My first game, I built a fleet of 2 frigates and 2 privateers, to destroy about 5 barbarian tiremes that were hovering around my coastline. All the ships were built around the same time and within 3 turns. All the tiremes were dead, and I hadn't lost a ship. The privateers killed 3 of them. Both of the pirates had lost 1 hp and the frigates didn't take any damage. Since then, I have fought many naval battles/wars and have never lost a ship to a tireme. I think you guys have just been getting unlucky.

BTW, I think when they say "use privateers to attack other civ shipping without identifying yourself ", it means you can only attack enemy ships, not trade.

[Jason]

Incidentally, although this may be undesirable for play balance, Galleys were actually able to capture "roundships", especially when becalmed. They didn't have to rely on sail in combat. On the other hand, their shallow draught meant they couldn't mount many cannon, if any.

Once roundships got more ability to maneuver with less windpower it started getting a little more uneven, and of course galleys required huge manpower and had limited range, etc.

[Pyrodrew]

I'm glad the privateers aren't too powerful, it pis*ses me off no end when an enemy sinks my transport with 6 units on it.. imagine even friendly civs being able to sink all my transports!

Prvatters have stats of 1/1/3 like GALLEY.
I thnik that this is an error, not design decision.
Hope that it will be change in patch (to maybe 2/1/4 like in manual

I would think 2/1/3 would be better.

[Grunthex]

Originally posted by player1
Prvatters have stats of 1/1/3 like GALLEY.
I thnik that this is an error, not design decision.
Hope that it will be change in patch (to maybe 2/1/4 like in manual)

I think it is a design decision, just not a great one. I like 2/1/3, just the extra point of attack. That means they can usually beat galleys (which they should), sometimes beat frigates and caravels on the attack (but not always), and tend to get soundly beaten if frigates attack them. I don't think 2/1/4 is quite right, most pirate/privateers were smaller ships, and don't have the high ocean speed of the larger ships.

[Sarxis]

2.1.4 sounds good to me. The Privateers cost just as much as the Galleons and the Frigates. The Frigs have 2 for attack and defense, plus can bombard. The Galleons have 2 for defense, and can transport 3 units. The 4 for movement actually gives the Privateers a fighting chance. I have noticed that the AI will pretty much always blow them out of the water when spotted. So otherwise, the privateers are just plain sitting ducks with their defense and slow movement rate.

[Spagina]

Rommel, barbarian tireme's are easy to sink, it's other civilization's tireme's that offere a lot of problems for me and my frigates.