Okay, look at this I was laughing my head off so hard I almost had a heart attack. This was a prince difficulty dual size pangea map. Easy, I know but I just wanted to try out Native American as a civ because I had never played them before. (They rock BTW)
Persia was becoming too powerful for my liking but I was not quite ready to declare war yet- so what I did is I barricaded every single one of his cities with privateers. (great financial boost for me) So what the AI does is freak out and start building as many frigates as it possible can. Unfortunately their placement was less then optimal...

http://upload.imgspot.com/u/07/286/13/Civ4ScreenShot0012.JPG
http://www.a5og.net/images/smilies/lol.gifhttp://www.a5og.net/images/smilies/lol.gifhttp://www.a5og.net/images/smilies/lol.gifhttp://www.a5og.net/images/smilies/lol.gif

What you are looking at- four of my privateers baracading three of Darius' cities.
Then you have 26 frigates that can't get to them because there is a single land tile between the ocean, city, and the other ocean. And no he can't just go around because the little bay he built them all in is either iced in or landlocked from all sides.:lol: Here are some more pics:
In this one note just how stuck his ships are:

http://upload.imgspot.com/u/07/286/13/Civ4ScreenShot0018.JPG

Close up.
http://upload.imgspot.com/u/07/286/13/Civ4ScreenShot0014.JPG

Eventually I did declare war, captured Persepolis and did of course did the one thing the AI was too stupid to- build a fort between the city and the water and sent warships through the newly created channel. It was a slaughter. Four destroyers all with with at least combat three and a few assorted ships of the line along with two ironclads effectively sank his entire fleet which by that time just in that small body of water was almost forty frigates. He lost that war, and how!:lol: :D :crazyeye:

Just for the heck of it here is the graph from after the game was done, you can see exactly when I started the barricade and just how much it screwed him over.

http://upload.imgspot.com/u/07/286/13/Civ4ScreenShot0016.JPG

So what do you all think?

Oh man, that's hilarious! Gotta love how far AI has come.

Worst part is that he CAN get at your privateers with his frigates. All he needs to do is build a fort one square north of the city on the bay.

^^A thing that clearly had not passed through is algorithym ( I'm somehow reluctant to call it "mind" :rolleyes: ). The placements of forts to act as naval passings cleary was not coded in the BtS AI.... ( never saw a AI using well placed forts to naval advantage )

Forts create a passage for ships?

Forts create a passage for ships?
In BTS they do!:D
If you read what I wrote above you'll see that I did just that latter on...

that's classic! i do love watching the graph when i'm tormenting them but haven't declared war :mischief:. yarrrrrrr!

Lol! Owned :lol:

Well played :goodjob:

I like what you did with the privateers too... softening things up before the war even begins! Cool idea ;)

Oh, one question though: how many great generals did that give you??? :scan:

I like what you did with the privateers too... softening things up before the war even begins! Cool idea ;)

Oh, one question though: how many great generals did that give you??? :scan:
Two. :D
I attached both of them to destroyers for the heck of it, the game was as good as won by then.

I love using privateers, I try to fit them into every game. The trick is to race all the other civs to chemistry and then get the baracade going as quickly as possible before the AI can counter it. If you do it right their cities will be starving, their economy will be in the gutter and your you'll have the edge if you do choose to go to war. However once frigates are built in large enough numbers your baracade will fall apart fast.
In the case above, however, I was able to hold the blocade with privateers until Persia was all but in ruins.

That's why I love BTS so much, between spys and privateers, there are so many oppertunities to cripple your rival without declaring war.

Two. :D
I attached both of them to destroyers for the heck of it, the game was as good as won by then...

...That's why I love BTS so much, between spys and privateers, there are so many oppertunities to cripple your rival without declaring war.

haha nice

Yeah I agree, it's nice to be able to put the hurt on your rivals without going into all out war.

This is one thing that irritated me, once when I was preparing for war with Caesar he built a nice little navy of 3 or 4 battleships, the only problem was that they were in a 4 tile lake.


I thought it odd because I hadn't thought you could even build ships in lakes.

This is one thing that irritated me, once when I was preparing for war with Caesar he built a nice little navy of 3 or 4 battleships, the only problem was that they were in a 4 tile lake.


I thought it odd because I hadn't thought you could even build ships in lakes.

Well, though I've never made any use of it myself, it does seem like a neat little feature... though one of those that, unfortunately, the AI does not understand how to use properly :sad:

Ships in lakes are invulnerable if you don't have open borders pre-war (and sneak a ship in, not that that would be a good plan) since you can't move a ship through a city with units in it I thought.

EDIT: I'm talking a coastal city with a small lake next to it here, not a big lake with other cities that have access to it.

If he didn't want to make a fort he should have stepped up on global warming. I like Privateers to. In an online match I tried wheeling them a long way around the map in a 6 player match to blockade a city next to me while trying to make it look like the other guy was doing it. I don't think it worked tho.

If he didn't want to make a fort he should have stepped up on global warming. I like Privateers to. In an online match I tried wheeling them a long way around the map in a 6 player match to blockade a city next to me while trying to make it look like the other guy was doing it. I don't think it worked tho.

Was worth the try though right :lol:

In BTS they do!:D
If you read what I wrote above you'll see that I did just that latter on...

Maybe I could make a Panama Canal with Forts. :lol:

A thing that clearly had not passed through is algorithym ( I'm somehow reluctant to call it "mind" ). The placements of forts to act as naval passings cleary was not coded in the BtS AI.... ( never saw a AI using well placed forts to naval advantage )

Yeah because it's an exploit not really meant to be used.

I think someone else said they tried the Panama Canal idea, but it doesn't work. You can't pass the ship through adjacent forts.

^^Yes you can... but both need to be next to a water body ( sea or lake )

Hmmm. The AI may have eventually upgraded that to one seriously large wolf pack of Subs.

Yeah because it's an exploit not really meant to be used.

It's not an exploit, it's a documented feature.

It's not an exploit, it's a documented feature.

touche... touche

What I find most amusing about this situation is that the AI has 'no idea' whose privateers those are. :lol: I mean, any player would declare war on you. Could thos be Native American Privateers, or Native American ones. Oh wait, maybe they are Souix ones. :lol:

What I find most amusing about this situation is that the AI has 'no idea' whose privateers those are. :lol: I mean, any player would declare war on you. Could thos be Native American Privateers, or Native American ones. Oh wait, maybe they are Souix ones. :lol:

LOL I was thinking the same:
Darius- I need to talk to you about something.
Me- What's on your mind
Darius- Well we've been having some serious piracy issues
Me- That's terrible!
Darius- Yep really been wreaking havoc
Me- Probably just some punk kids
Darius- Yea...And these being privateers we of course can't tell for sure who's behind this
Me- Well if you can't, you can't! What can you do?
Darius- I hate to bring this up...
Me- Yes, go on
Darius- Well this is a dual size map, there are only two of us on this whole damn planet!
Me-.....
.....
What are you implying?
Darius-You know what, just forget it.

ROFL.

"That's terrible" :lol:

this is nothing. the AI will frequently build caravals and the like in a landlocked city that has a 1 tile water square next to it, so the unit is just sitting useless in that tile for the rest of the game

@ Party

Blame the barbs.... :lol:

The AI definitely needs some help combating privateers. I love to build huge fleets of them and blockade every coastal city. I typically try to use fleets of 4. One game I had one fleet blockading 4 cities. After awhile, I noticed that there were an awful lot of caravels and galleysswarming about. So I went to the military advisor and he has 178 caravels and 30+ galleys. Half his cities were pumping out caravels. I wondered when he'd attack so I stripped off as many privateers as I could from other duties and sent a fleet of 13. I assumed that all 17 would be lost eventually, but I should get tons of XP out of it. Once there, I used 4 of the 13 to start picking off caravels. Still he doesnt attack. I did lose a couple of ships at greater than 98% but in the end, he never did attack and I whittled the enemy fleet down to under 20 by the time he finally got frigates. The second I saw the first frigate, the remaining privateers made a dash for new hunting grounds. By the end, with all the new caravels sunk, I had 3 privateers over 100xp. Those turned into nice destroyers for when the real war started.

What I learned from all of this is that the AI seems very reluctant to attack privateers in a stack of more than 3 HEALTHY ones. The largest stack I've ever seen attacked was 9 but all 9 were damaged. So now I make sure that 3 are at full health at all times if I'm heavily outnumbered.

You know what after playing with privateers for a while I have to say that I now consider them way overpowered.
If get them quite a bit before the AI gets friagte the map turns into a slaughter.
The AI freaks out and starts building as many caravels as it can and then I have turns where I can litterly sink 10 of them in one go and repeat it a couple of turns latter.
Then it makes the enemy so week a land invasion will qickly wipe them out.

You know what after playing with privateers for a while I have to say that I now consider them way overpowered.
If get them quite a bit before the AI gets friagte the map turns into a slaughter.
The AI freaks out and starts building as many caravels as it can and then I have turns where I can litterly sink 10 of them in one go and repeat it a couple of turns latter.
Then it makes the enemy so week a land invasion will qickly wipe them out.

I agree that privateers are OP on how the AI reacts to them. I had 2 privateers off of Joao's coast and then attacked him on land. I rolled up his entire country while he kept trying to build carracks (Portugal's UU for caravel) in all of his cities. It made for a cakewalk invasion after taking out the initial counterattack. He didn't need to worry about the 5 or 10 gpt that he was losing when I was conquering him!

i still love privateers.

but this game i started next to willem and didn't think twice about it. well, turns out the dutch don't really need to rush to frigates. his UU is way stronger than normal galleons, oopsies. remind me not to move in next door to him again!

i have actually seen the AI using forts to move ships. but only in two games. once shaka passed a ship thru a fort on stone, but i think that was the shortest path, he didn't need it for a canal in that case. in this game mansa's using it because there's ice blocking one set of his cities from another. so he has forts on furs way down south and sends ships thru every once in a while.

maybe it's just luck that there was a resource there, so the workers happened to put a fort on it. then when the boats look for a path they find one? because literally every time i've seen the AI steer a boat thru a fort, the fort was on a resource.

I hate it how my own ships cannot "blockade" enemy Caravels from hitting my Privateers. I mean, the Destroyer can just try and get in the enemy fleet's way and give the Privateer more time and accuracy to shoot while the enemy is trying to get past, I mean they know it's your ship when it's in a friendly port or on a friendly tile, so you go to conclusions.

No diplomatic penalty though, as the Privateers are not owned by the country anyway, but the country's ships should at least attempt to blockade the Privateer from enemy fire, if only temporarily (Each blockading "fleet" (1 unit) adds 1 strength to a defending Privateer "fleet". No offensive bonus. Either that or a tile bonus or blockade bonus of 5% per blockading "fleet")

Yeah, noticed the caravel issue. My 3 privateers looting happily off Roman coast, and each of the blocked cities has like 30+ caravels anchored inside. Occasionally he would build some extra ones and try smuggling them into blockaded cities (sometimes I'd sink them, sometimes I'd forget to, so their numbers grew). He ended up with largest caravel armada in history - and then the Vikings came knocking on his land border.

Funny thing is the AI usually have no qualms using suicide tactics in sea battles (in my experience, AI controlled 10 destroyers stack will nearly always attack my 10 battleship stack - in coastal waters!), so they seem to understand naval warfare is mostly a war of attrition. However, they seem extremely unwilling to sacrifice a couple caravels to get rid of privateers. It almost looks as if they go into "amassing forces" loop - build an armada, but never use it. Weird, may be bugged.

Yeah, noticed the caravel issue. My 3 privateers looting happily off Roman coast, and each of the blocked cities has like 30+ caravels anchored inside. Occasionally he would build some extra ones and try smuggling them into blockaded cities (sometimes I'd sink them, sometimes I'd forget to, so their numbers grew). He ended up with largest caravel armada in history - and then the Vikings came knocking on his land border.

Funny thing is the AI usually have no qualms using suicide tactics in sea battles (in my experience, AI controlled 10 destroyers stack will nearly always attack my 10 battleship stack - in coastal waters!), so they seem to understand naval warfare is mostly a war of attrition. However, they seem extremely unwilling to sacrifice a couple caravels to get rid of privateers. It almost looks as if they go into "amassing forces" loop - build an armada, but never use it. Weird, may be bugged.

It is differently bugged, I always experience exactly what you described.
Then when I actually declare war I capture a city and instantly destroy the 20+ caravels stationed there.

I have noticed the caravel/privateer issue as well. I figure it has something to do with the AIs not attacking netural (Barb) units unless there is a large chance of victory. (At least i dont think they do) One on One a caravel has a low chance of beating a privateer, so they just never attack, whereas a frigate+ will.

I'd imagine this is something fraxis coded to prevent AIs from suiciding all their troops into barb citys early game. In the case of privateers though, owned heh. :lol:

I'd imagine this is something fraxis coded to prevent AIs from suiciding all their troops into barb citys early game. In the case of privateers though, owned heh. :lol:

You know that's probably very true...... I wish they did! :D

I think it might help the AI if they did probably. So long as they took a stack not some unit-by-unit approach. I don't know anything about coding AI myself though so just talking out my rectum. I think Privateers should make them more prone to go to war also. I mean the player is aware that barbs don't get privateers. The AI should be made aware to and not see them as barbs but as other nations.

I consider the "Privateer effect" on AI behavior to be a borderline exploit. That said, playing on Monarch I need the help so I use them pretty liberally. If you get them while the AI is still on caravels and galleys you can rack up incredible amounts of exp (and Great Generals during peace time) and some decent money.

Kinda sucks that Portugal can't have as much fun with Privateers. (Carracks in their case) Well, at least not in a multiplayer game. I'm pretty the AI aren't smart enough to figure out who's UU is harassing them.:lol:

Query: I haven't played BTS yet, but can naval units bombard land units in cities for collateral damage or, even better, directly attack land units? This is something they were capable of doing in CIV II, and I've missed it in Warlords; it really takes the bite out of an invasion fleet.

no, ships can't attack or bombard land units.

Milk... joao's privateers are the same as everybody else's. his UU is a caravel replacement.

Speaking of stupidity, I just encounter one last night.

I was having a deal with Tokugawa who is my vasal. The deal is I give incense he give fur (more of a deal to help him since I already have 2 furs). Then suddenly he want to cancel the deal. So I thought, fine, lets renegotiate and see what he wants. Guess what, he offer me the fur, fish and 2 GPT for the same incense. :lol:

had you just discovered the tech that makes fur obsolete by any chance? for some reason the AI seems to think fur, whales, or ivory is worthless to me when it becomes obsolete for me, but those aren't the same thing. i do get value out of it, it brings me a happy face, but i can only get it in trade now, not on my own. so really, they ought to charge me more! but more than half the time after i get the tech that makes one go obsolete, i'll ask somebody "what would make this deal work for ivory?" and their offer is "here, i'll give you ivory FOR FREE." wow, thanks! but that's really dumb of them.