Capturing Colonists with a Privateer

[dalgo]

After coming across this undocumented feature by accident I have experimented with different ships and the results are consistent.

If you attack a foreign ship containing colonists with a Privateer accompanied by a cargo ship the colonists will be captured and appear in your cargo ship (I've tried both Merchantmen and Galleons successfully). Your two ships need to be on the same sea tile at the start of the attack.

An added advantage is that if goods are captured they appear in your cargo ship, not your Privateer. I recently attacked a Spanish Galleon heading for Europe with a Privateer/Galleon combination and all the captured goods appeared in my Galleon - 91 Cigars, 71 Cloth, 200 Fur and 169 Silver.

This raises an interesting question, would it work against a Man-o-War during the WoI? You would need to have a fleet of Privateers and be able to attack before the troops landed, but if it did work you could capture his Dragoons, Soldiers - and maybe even Artillery. If anyone does try this please post the result.

 

[prolefeed]

If you've got a European civ on the ropes, with all their cities captured or razed so they're no threat to you, I would suggest continuous war with a frigate/merchantman attack combo for taking down caravels that respawn from the same spot. With the higher strength of a frigate versus a privateer, you could repeatedly attack turn after turn, using combat promotions to heal, before your frigate got so beat up it had to go to a port to heal (or the merchantman filled up with colonist pioneers after four turns). Two such combos should suffice to get a new pioneer every single turn.

I suspect that this tactic doesn't allow capturing military units, since when you attack a caravel that you KNOW is carrying a pioneer/vet soldier, you only capture the pioneer.

Also, if you play on after winning the WoI, the seas around your coastlines facing Europe will fill up with your former king's Man O' Wars, and your privateers won't be able to go onto any squares containing a Man O' War without attacking (and almost certainly dying).

 

[HermannLombard]

Umm...I think the fly in the ointment is that frigates don't capture cargoes...unless that's a function of the frigate not having holds.

 

[dalgo]

Only Privateers have the capture ability so this strategy doesn't work with Frigates. However I think you are right about not being able to capture military units so that puts paid to the Man-o-War idea. Pity.

 

[HermannLombard]

Yes, after all warships carried marines to make it harder to capture them...and to make life short for officers on the quarterdecks. Still worth testing the idea; there are a lot of exploits--er, tactics--overlooked by the developers.

 

[prolefeed]

Tested it -- a privateer paired with a merchantman works -- pairing the merchantman with any other ship other than a privateer is a no go. Guess you need a ship with both offensive capability and a cargo hold (i.e. only a privateer) paired with a non-offensive ship that can carry units (i.e. a merchantman/galleon) to make this work, and I've only managed to capture pioneers, though I suspect any non-military unit aboard the ship would be captured.

FWIW, if you have the enemy ship respawning from the exact same point each time, as is happening in the game I'm playing, you can attack with more than one privateer/merchantman combo per turn. For example, if you have 4 of these combos all lined up at the respawn point, you can capture 4 pioneers in a single turn -- and repeat that every turn, using promotions to heal the privateers, until your privateers get too beat up and have to limp back to port to heal.