What happened to the flagless privateers?

[Bliss]

Why did they remove it from the game?

IMO they were a very nice feature. More peaceful civilizations could join the war fun by building them while having some profit! Not to mention the option of changing the result of a battle that has influence over your interests. Also, with the addition of espionage on GK, this kind of "neutral" unit could be much more explored in the game.

What do you guys think?

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[Melchizedek]

I think they were a good idea, but with the increased importance of trade routes, there should be some small chance of their identity being discovered each time they pillage a route, so they couldn't be used with absolute impunity.

 

[Bliss]

Yes! We could even get the knowledge of another civilization assaulting someone's else ships and have the possibility of sharing the intrigue.

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[ArnoldI]

Maybe if some naval unit is close to the marauding privateer it can discover its identity. Them you could forgive the person, share intrigue or (if it didn't pillage one of your trade routes) say to the civ you won't share the intrigue (diplo bonus)

 

[danaphanous]

I say who cares? Trade ships are worth more therefore they should be more vulnerable. Let privateers pillage with impunity!

All joking aside, instead, let's make a way for cargo ships to be protected by actually being able to escort the ship more easily. I remember thinking I'd solved the problem by keeping a military boat on top of the cargo ship and moving along after it, but the odd off-turn movement of the unit makes it move into vulnerable territory right before barbs and I'd inevitably predict it's movement wrong and get insta-pillaged and have 2 barbs on my hand after all that work. I've had trouble making this work without a lot of work. I'd love to see an option where if a military ship is on a cargo ship you can click "escort" and the boat will move with the cargo ship. Then at least you've got advance warning and don't need to waste 5 boats protecting a whole route. This makes no sense anyway since the cargo ship is only in one place at a time. In real history, you'd just sail military along with the cargo ship. I really want to see this implemented.

On a similar matter, I want to see "bandits" which are flagless land units. I for one think it's fine for them to remain anonymous provided they are only mediocre units, as all you'd need to do is hunt it down and kill it, essentially forcing you to patrol a little more aggressively with that static military. It'd even be fun by providing a little war and exp during peace. If you hunt it down maybe you can recover the gold? Alternatively, if enough ppl really care, maybe killing the unit causes it to confess to its true master but I see this really complicating things--I'd just as soon not.

 

[Callonia]

I remember the privateers, they was in civ 3. One catch is that if you built a fleet of them, AIs would start beelining for where your privateers is. I had so many AI ships waiting outside my cities for my privateers to go and sink them xD

 

[andreafin]

yeah i said much same about privateers and escorting trade ships in my wish list in the ideas and suggestions section

 

[joncnunn]

Privateers were never flag-less in Civ V. It's only Civ III in which they were; but the poor AI had lots of problems with them. As an above poster mentioned, they treated them exactly like they treated barb units.

 

[vivalamexico]

Privateers were never flag-less in Civ V. It's only Civ III in which they were; but the poor AI had lots of problems with them. As an above poster mentioned, they treated them exactly like they treated barb units.

iirc they were flagless in civ 4 as well, and that was a feature I really liked. Agree with danaphanous's suggestion for escorts of cargo ships. I think it could be a nice addition if the AI could be programmed to handle them correctly--though with the multitude of other problems the AI has, theres no reason to believe that this would be any different