About naval escorts.

[Dewion_86]

When I decided to try once again this mod despite those crashes, I noticed that naval escorts won't protect my ships.
I have 1 naval escort waiting at the seaway and 1 grouped together my merchant ships and still some of those ships are plundered.

Also, pirates are invisible and my naval escorts won't attack them even if I move then on the same tile, I used world builder to make sure where the pirates are.

So how am I suppose to protect my merchant ships?

 

[Nexus1980]

Hi Dewion,

When the game progresses the bigger ships (and pirates) are less "invisible" . But that said this this won't make the early game easier.

You can do several things :

when you automate a transport merchant ships take the same route. try placing on those spots naval escorts or frigates.

Assigning a naval escort to a a group of merchants is a good idea. Unfortunately piratesdecide sometimes not attack your naval Escort but attack your merchant. Sometimes that's frustrating.

I felt the same and decided to delete this invisible feature of the pirates (Sorry M07). I thought it didn't add extra gameplay... If you feel very strongly about this i suggest you change the file as i did. Hint : look in the file CIV4UnitInfos

try find : UNIT_LOW_PIRATE <bInvisible>0</bInvisible>

 

[M07]

There is only one way to be sure to protect your merchant ships.
You have to add enough naval escorts in your fleet. A naval escort can fully protect 2 merchant ships. But having a fleet compose of more than 6 ships is risky too.
The best configuration is to have 2 naval escorts + 4 merchant ships to be fully protected (you will be sure that one of your escort naval will protect you from pirate attacks.