AI's and Privateers

[Echo of Celts]

In my current game, I am Asoka of India, to my north is Zara of Ethiopia.

We have had a great relationship and now have a defensive pack with each other and have been Friendly all game.

However, I had some Privateers attacking my fleet. Finally I hunted them down and sunk them... and it said

"Your Frigate has sunk an Ethiopian Privateer"...

Why would my ally, whom I have pledge to defend (I was 3 of 11 in Power, he was 7th or 8th) start attacking my interests with Privateers?

 

[iamnleth]

Better yet, why did it say it was Ethiopian when the nationality of the privateer is supposed to be invisible?

 

[Incan Emperor]

First off, oddly, Ive never seen a single Privateer that didnt belong to me, second, its really screwey that it told you the nationalty after you sunk it, if I where you I would ignore it, since that is information you where not meant to know in the first place.

 

[Bhruic]

I just tested sinking an enemy Privateer, and I got:
"Your Frigate has destroyed a Privateer!"

Further, the combat log refers to it as a "Barbarian Privateer". So in neither case was the nationality listed. Do you have a screenshot/save of your case?

Bh

 

[Refar]

I did not try it, but perhaps the mess-up comes, when the Privateer belongs to your Vassal (i think that's the described situation...)

EDIT: Just made the experiment, sinking some of my Vassalas Privateers. The Message did _not_ revealed the nationality...

The other part however is a bit odd indeed - my Vassals Privareers (Who's on top of it Friendly towards me) happily pillaged my fish, blockaded my capital and (a bit less happily) made a run on a stack of my Destroyers... Funny guys... This is a bit strange, but i think not a bug - those dudes are pirates after all, they take all they can get

 

[CivCorpse]

Most likely the cities they were blockading were the most profitable.

 

[brianb1974]

The whole point of privateers is to screw your friends over without reaping negative diplomatic repercussions.

I'm currently playing an archipelago game as the dutch. I didn't fight a battle all game until privateers and everybody was at least pleased with me. Next I built a privateer fleet to trash my nearest rivals. It's a great deal. Set them back, pillage money. And my favorite thing of all is that it made a market for my excess seafood. Late game on an archipelago map, you can barely give away seafood. But after my privateer fleet did its work, I had a little chat with my friendly rivals. "Oh I'm so sorry about what happened to your fishing nets. I wish there were something I could do to help. I have fish, crab, and clams I'd be happy to let you have in exchange for your excess gold. Woohoo. The only thing I just thought of that I have to check is: do privateer victories give you great general points? If so, that would just rock. A couple GGs while staying at peace. I can settle them to do some research under representation. And eventually my dyke-powered armies will have extra XP. You gotta love privateers.

 

[UncleJJ]

brianb1974; privateers definitely do give GG points and that is one of the major reasons to build them ... and apart from messing with your friends and enemies seafood and trade routes at a profit, that is probably the best reason to get them early and pump hammers into them.

 

[Echo of Celts]

I know it is not supposed to show the nationality of Privateers and I sunk about 3, but only 1 said it was Ethiopian, the other two just said privateer...

I know it happened, because it caught me off guard that my ally was attacking my sea interests. I didnt get a screenshot though

 

[Luke1195]

Hey! My apologies in reviving an old thread. I've just edited the Privateer page on Civilization Fandom to say: "A bug in CvPlayerAI::AI_calculateUnitAIViability() prevents the AI from building Privateers." but this thread suggests the opposite!! Is this actually true? Maybe AI do build Privateers sometimes?

 

[AcaMetis]

I have seen videos of privateer units showing up to harass the player's coastal areas, albeit rarely. Though I've never seen someone use I.E. espionage to confirm that's what an AI was building in one of their cities, for what that's worth.

 

[Luke1195]

Thanks! What's "I.E. espionage"? Maybe what I've written is okay anyway as it doesn't say it completely prevents them building Privateers, but that's a question for the Talk page on Fandom.
Here I'd rather focus on what changes are necessary to get the AI to build Privateers -- or maybe I should make a separate thread for that.
Edit: I've changed to "The AI seldom (if ever) trains Privateers, possibly due to a bug in CvPlayerAI::AI_calculateUnitAIViability()."

 

[AcaMetis]

"In Example", as in using espionage to gain visibility of AI cities and actually seeing them build a privateer.

 

[a pen-dragon]

The unofficial patch mentions this as:

4) CvPlayerAI::AI_calculateUnitAIViability - Fixed incorrect integer usage which caused function return to be meaningless, blocked AI logic for building privateers

Any mod containing this one will therefore have different behaviour from 3.19. This includes BUFFY. In BUFFY the AI loves to spam privateers.

 

[Lennier]

I’m running BUG, not BUFFY (I’m on a Mac.) I’ve seen exactly one AI privateer. But in my experience, once _any_ AI gets Astro plus Chem, your privateers are *dead*.

 

[Luke1195]

Thanks all -- cool to know it was the earliest unofficial patch, so there's likely plenty of anecdotes and material out there of AI Privateers. I've added the links to the Unofficial Patch on the Privateer's Fandom article! And yeah, you're right Lennier. There's a consensus that Privateers should have 5 movement instead of 4 to outsail Frigates, but who knows if the AI will successfully use that or not.