Privateers for Dummies...

TheDS said:

This is a very player-intensive strategy - that is, you the player will have to work hard to do this, to load new spies on the ships, get them in position, and use them. It will also probably require you to devote a significant fraction of your economy toward EPs.

I haven't tested this - I way underutilize the EP system - but I see no reason why this wouldn't work if you were able to stand all that player-work.

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This is brilliant. I'm trying it tonight.

After reading this guide, I implemented it several times. Comments follow.

1. This seems to work best if your target(s) is/are nearby. As per the guide, I was able to sink scores of enemy caravels thus promoting the privateers to very high levels. The unforeseen side-effect was to enable the WP wonder much more usually and easily than before. Win/win.

2. The gold gained from blockades wasn't very spectacular, but I was amazed to watch enemy coastal cities shrink in population--sometimes very rapidly. Now, it doesn't surprise me to see these blockaded cities, sometimes w/12-16 pop, waste away to 4-7 pop after 20-30 turns. This HAS to hurt.

3. I still leave a privateer in my own coastal cities, at intervals along the coast, in order to intercept AI caravels, that, of course, might be carrying spies.

Great advice. So useful.

JoeMacUnGee said:

This is brilliant. I'm trying it tonight.

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Happy to be of service! Let us know how well it turns out, if you would please.

A couple things I've always wondered about Privateers:

1) Does the AI ever use them?

2) Even though their national origin doesn't show, you can logically deduce where they are coming from if you pay attention to who has the requisite techs to produce privateers. Even if it weren't entirely clear then, it would become so later when you see upgraded destroyers with the Sentry promotion which do not have Combat III; you would know that they were upgraded from Privateers. Once a Privateer is upgraded to a Destroyer, it's national origin again becomes apparent.

Does the AI take any of this into account?

The only exception to this would be if a player were to receive a gifted Privateer, in which case this gift, experienced as it may be, may be a little too hot to handle if it's been pissing someone off in a serious way.

3) Suppose you get the world circumnavigation bonus. Your Privateers would automatically show they have more movement points than normal ones do. Someone paying close enough attention to this would know they were coming from you. Does the AI also?

4) Can you "fool" the AI into belieiving a Privateer isn't part of your fleet by "chasing" it with a Frigate of your own? Clearly you can't sink the Privateer, but if the AI observes you in "hot pursuit" of a Privateer that has been harrassing its coast, will it guess that you are not controlling it? I guess this goes back to my first question: does the AI use Privateers?

yturk39 said:

A couple things I've always wondered about Privateers:

1) Does the AI ever use them?

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I've seen it happen a couple times. The circumstances are probably the same for a human player to make use of them: a sufficient tech lead and production capacity to spare.

Your other questions; you're giving the AI way too much credit. It's not able to do all these things, it just knows there's a pirate ship out there and it has to destroy it or run from it, as the case may be.

I wouldn't count on being able to fool a human player. However, chances are it's not that big a deal anyway.

The AI is clueless when it comes to privateers.
When the game says "hidden nationality", as far as the AI is concerned, it is a complete mystery.

All your other points may be valid when playing against humans.

A human would notice if you had a caravel with combat1+medic sitting in a stack of privateers (to heal them faster without using a non-combat promotion, or making the medic vulnerable to attack).
The AI does not.

Besides, if they don't have the tech to fight your privateers effectively, do they really want a full scale war with you?

I've never tried this, but I wonder if it might be worthwhile.

It'd be interesting to see where the AI decided to send it, and for what purpose.

Perhaps if you had a Frigate handy, before gifting, just to keep it in check...

They'll use it the way they would as if they were at war with everyone, which, in fact, a Privateer IS. My own vassals attack my Privateers with their patrol Frigates. Very annoying. I try to keep the necessary techs out of everyone else's hands for as long as possible, because Frigates go everywhere.

Clearly you can't sink the Privateer, but if the AI observes you in "hot pursuit" of a Privateer that has been harrassing its coast, will it guess that you are not controlling it?

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Buwahahahaha!

That one just made my day...

Well, if not the AI it just MAY fool a human player...

I've been having some Privateer fun in my current game - playing as Qin Shi Huang of China, Monarch difficulty, Shuffle map, Marathon speed.

I saw that the Russians had a huge number of Caravels, and although all of the other civs had Chemistry and Astronomy, Russia did not have these techs yet. So I decided to build a stack of Privateers and send them out to kill as many Caravels as they could before they could be upgraded! So far I've killed 151 of the buggers (the vast majority of them Russian), and the Russians still have at least 46 left (including 11 in Yaroslavl').

I've got a stack of 21 Privateers in the area, and more on the way (including one with a GG and Medic III), and have attached some screenies.

I rarely ever built Privateers - if I have a tech advantage and some hammers, I'd rather build units which make me stronger by conquering a weaker neighbour than set a stronger opponent back. But I recently thought that they might be useful if you're planning a continental invasion and are concerned that your target might acquire Astronomy/Chemistry and mass upgrade to Frigates before you have your troops ready (probably Cannons/whatever if you go for chemistry). In which case building a few Privateers along with your other troops and hunting down their Caravels first might make sense. They seem to hide in their cities rather fast though, so you'd need to set them up to block the entrances to their nearest cities in time...

Well Peter didn't do a very good job of hiding his Caravels in his cities - he just left virtually all of them sitting in the sea waiting to be killed! I did invade Willem later on (they were threatening a culture victory) and Peter joined the war on Willem's side. So the Combat IV/V destroyers I now had available became rather handy when Peter kept building yet more navy...plus I got a couple of Great Generals out of it too!

I did have a good pirate game where I found DeGualle as a pariah on the other side of a hemisphere's map... I had a decent lead on the two or three civs on my side of the world, but had a better lead on the other side... DeGualle was way off because he was a different religion from the other two civs on his continent -- he didn't even share open borders with either of them! So...



I built me a dozen or so privateers and sent them over to harrass him. Since I kept them within his cultural borders, the other world civs (none of whom would open their borders with the heathen) couldn't reach them with their frigates and SotLs. DeGualle only had galleys when I first started the blockade, and only managed to float caravels (which, of course, I carefully picked off) for centuries. I wiped out the population in his coastal cities and screwed his commerce. The pillage gold was enough to pay for the maintenance costs of the privateers, and I managed to spawn a couple of GGs from raiding his galleys/caravels. The ROFL-blockade only ended when he started fielding galleons, which were able to take on my privateers more effectively. I simply withdrew them back home and upgraded them to a bunch of super-promo'd destroyers (since I, like the rest of the world, was well into modern ages by then )

A small stack of privateers can face down galleons handily. A combat II privateer gets heavily damaged, but if a C1/Med 1 stacks with it outside cultural boundaries, and there's another couple of privateers to continue the blockade, you can get away with this for a long time (basically until frigates). I think the key is what this thread already mentioned about AI being unwilling to attack a stack that has one undamaged privateer. If you're blockading several close ports, the stack from one port can help out the stack from another. I've even had 2 C3 privateers survive attacks from single frigates, though that was a bit of luck.

I've tried using this strategy, to a limited extent. To say the least, it was fun.

But I have a question? What would you do with your privateers if your target is the Dutch? They have East Indianmen, which 1) are of equal strength with privateers and 2) are unlocked with Astronomy.

I've just noticed that this thread has been necroed. Twice.

Don't target the Dutch?

There's usually more than one possible target, and when I try privateers (which is rarely) I go for the most backward. Monty is ideal. But any civ with frigates will target privateers, so eventually you get chased away -- and upgrade to highly-experienced destroyers.

dalamb said:

Don't target the Dutch?

There's usually more than one possible target, and when I try privateers (which is rarely) I go for the most backward. Monty is ideal. But any civ with frigates will target privateers, so eventually you get chased away -- and upgrade to highly-experienced destroyers.

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Yeah, that's a pretty good strategy in Vanilla Civ. However, I was thinking more of in RFC; there, the Dutch are located right in the center of the rest of the Europeans you would want to target.

Oh, and what if the Dutch were your main competitor, and the only target worth using privateering against? Given that Williem's Financial, that's not a remote possibility.

Mod the game - allow upgrading into privateer subs... unrestricted submarine warfare

I don't know why they didn't include this... even in modern times, subs attack without identifying themselves/declaring war (ex: south korean destroyer gets sunk, everyone thinks its a north korean sub)

Atlantic Pacf. said:

I've tried using this strategy, to a limited extent. To say the least, it was fun.

But I have a question? What would you do with your privateers if your target is the Dutch? They have East Indianmen, which 1) are of equal strength with privateers and 2) are unlocked with Astronomy.

I've just noticed that this thread has been necroed. Twice.

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Well, if this keeps getting necro’ed, it must be a great article, amirite?

As for the Dutch… well, they’re 1 civ out of what, 34? They’re obviously not the best target, but I’m usually able to avoid them, assuming they’re present in the game. Much like the way you’d hesitate to try an Axe rush against Babylon or Mali, you’d should also hesitate to try a Privateer blockade against the Dutch.

If you're hell-bent on taking on the Orangeman, it can be done, but you'll have to accept greater losses. This isn't necessarily a problem - East Indiamen and Privateers are both 80 , and you should be able to manage a better win/loss rate if you ensure you defend on coast.