Oh my god, the Sea Beggars are incredible.

I've got a Privateer with Supply. Seems to be a general Privateer thing.

Still better to get it for free, of course.
 
What map/game settings, if any, exist to get AI to actually build a navy?

Dozens of games, and I have yet to see any AI build more than a token trireme, and the occasional caraval.

I tried being the Dutch, but it is just boring when there are no ships to ever attack. Same with any navy-oriented civ. It makes me sad.

Please tell me I'm doing something wrong...
 
What map/game settings, if any, exist to get AI to actually build a navy?

Dozens of games, and I have yet to see any AI build more than a token trireme, and the occasional caraval.

I tried being the Dutch, but it is just boring when there are no ships to ever attack. Same with any navy-oriented civ. It makes me sad.

Please tell me I'm doing something wrong...

Prince/Continents and I just fought a sea battle of my two Frigates and two Privateers against their 3 Frigates and 1 Galleas. I won, and now two of their Frigates are mine... Time to conquer some coastal cities.
 
Yes, but I would hardly call one free promotion "incredible." +2 Strength and two abilities no other military unit has (Legion) is incredible.

While I think the Sea Beggar is very useful, I'm actually going to defend AriochIV on this a little and say that, when I think of incredible, I think of units that have abilities that no other similar units have.

Hence, the Conquistador and Legion (one of which he mentions) are both pretty incredible units, given that they have abilities usually reserved for non-combat units. Along the same line, the Khan GP is another incredible unit that can do what other Great Generals can't.

That said, I agree with everyone else so far as the Sea Beggar is a great unit, still.
 
What map/game settings, if any, exist to get AI to actually build a navy?

Dozens of games, and I have yet to see any AI build more than a token trireme, and the occasional caraval.

I tried being the Dutch, but it is just boring when there are no ships to ever attack. Same with any navy-oriented civ. It makes me sad.

Please tell me I'm doing something wrong...

I am playing my first game on King. No invasion yet, we'll see. I will move back up to emperor next game. I just wanted to get to learn the game a bit.

Funny I am the Dutch, but have had land wars almost from the outset, although only against Austria. Boring is not the word I would choose to describe it. More like awesome!
 
I really love the Sea Beggar. I was playing a King level game as the Netherlands, and I took a level 24 city with just four Sea Beggars.
 
What map/game settings, if any, exist to get AI to actually build a navy?

Dozens of games, and I have yet to see any AI build more than a token trireme, and the occasional caraval.

I tried being the Dutch, but it is just boring when there are no ships to ever attack. Same with any navy-oriented civ. It makes me sad.

Please tell me I'm doing something wrong...

The new large islands map works. In my last game (prince-level, standard size/speed) I fought a naval war vs. Attila which involved a dozen ships on each side. Even a BCE war against France saw my 4 triremes going against his 5.
 
Healing at sea is great, so many times far from the motherland, I've needed safe haven and found none.. :cry:
 
Unless you are on a comepletely land type map, ships are the new goto unit for taking cities. Navy is even more important now than in vanilla. I hardly ever play just land maps, and I always build some kind of navy. I love ships, and it's even better now.
 
OK, so how does one actually employ sea beggars? So far, I've been using sea beggars to support a land campaign on a long, thin continent. My sea beggars can do some damage to a city, but they get pummeled by return fire from both the city and nearby ranged units.

Are wolfpack tactics the way to go, using several sea beggars in close proximity to take out a city? Are sea beggars better off used in isolated areas (such as islands) far from the main action? Somehow I just don't think I'm doing this right. I'm usually an Immortal player, but I've stepped down to Emperor to learn G&K.
 
Privateers are not very useful operating alone.

Just as with land units, you'll need ranged units to reduce a city's defenses before trying to capture it with a melee unit. That means supporting Privateers/Sea Beggars with Frigates (or Galleasses).

The same goes with capturing enemy ships -- it will take multiple hits and only the last hit needs to come from the Privateer/Sea Beggar, so you'll want a fleet of ships, ideally including Frigates.
 
Well, I see the Sea Beggar as the ability to open up second fronts. IMO, the Netherlands is 2nd in that ability, after Austria.

Case in point: in the game I'm running right now, I have a _huge_ economic machine running. I think I'm playing on Shuffle, and Amsterdam is in a middle-to-large size continent with nothing but Jungle and Marsh as far as the eye can see. This means Polders and Trading Posts everywhere. (I rushed to Polders, took a few other techs (Education), then rushed Economics.)

So I finally find Ethiopia, and they've got a smallish continent to themselves. So I send 4 Sea Beggars + my Great Admiral to his most exposed coastal city, and take it in two turns, losing only my Great Admiral (to his insta-heal). I annex it, and hold off the counterattacking forces until it gets out of anarchy. I then buy Walls, Castle, Arsenal, and a Gatling Gun. I'm now slowly but steadily taking cities from this beachhead.

Certainly, Frigates would make this easier, but I had zero Iron until I took that city. Now I have a much better mixed navy.

Oh, something I forgot. A Sea Beggar coming out of an Armory City only has the Ship-to-Ship option available to it once you cap out the City/Gold route. So that argument is slightly weaker.
 
I'm beginning to wonder what I'm doing wrong. The naval AI in my games is non-existent to the point of Vanilla level stupidity. In a war against Hiwatha I was burning his little 1 tile cities down to the ground pretty much in sequence and was thoroughly disappointed to find out that he was hiding his rather large Privateer fleet on the other side of his home island absolutely no where near anything of value or looking like it could be fulfilling some strategic purpose.

Needless to say, I sunk them all with the two submarines I had just completed. That part was actually pretty funny, the way the map is set up I simply ended up shooting about half of them from underneath ice where they couldn't reach me! More seriously though is that I'm not seeing the kind of naval production or coordination that I was expecting.

OK, so how does one actually employ sea beggars? So far, I've been using sea beggars to support a land campaign on a long, thin continent. My sea beggars can do some damage to a city, but they get pummeled by return fire from both the city and nearby ranged units.

Are wolfpack tactics the way to go, using several sea beggars in close proximity to take out a city? Are sea beggars better off used in isolated areas (such as islands) far from the main action? Somehow I just don't think I'm doing this right. I'm usually an Immortal player, but I've stepped down to Emperor to learn G&K.

&

But how does this Sea Beggar work?

Essentially, yes. To be honest, you don't even really need Frigates. All that matters is the number of points of attack your Sea Beggars/Privateers have on a city. If there's only 1 hex opening out onto the coast then you're not going to be able to rush the city with naval units. 2 or more, however, and you're in business. Simply rush the city with your Sea Beggar/Privateers, you should take somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 your health in damage on one unit and do a fair number on the city. You might lose a unit in the counter-bombardment phase but that's increasingly unlikely as you start earning promotions. Withdraw back to friendly territory (or if you have Supply just out of range of the city) and heal, then ram two+ more into city. Rinse and repeat.

In my current game I was cycling out a huge fleet (15+ ships more than half of which were captured) between the city I was attacking and my home island some 3 or 4 turns of movement away, and still took the city! Provided you're careful with your promoted units and know when to sacrifice your new/recently captured units it is rather easy, too easy probably, to take cities by sea.

The only issue I've encountered so far is if the city in question is being defended by an artillery, a battleship or similar. In that case, yes, you do need naval bombardment units or a very large number of coastal hex tiles.
 
I just had a game on king and I had a navy that consisted of 6 sea beggars, 3 caravels and 5 frigates. I absolutely dominated anything and everything in the game and won domination very quickly.

Frigates bombard the city, sea beggar attacks and then when he is damaged a lot I switch him with another. He now heals out or range due to the supply promotion they get. I rinse and repeat doing this. I quickly got all of them very promoted on the city taking promos and they were unstoppable.
 
Q: What's better than a Dutch Sea Beggar?

A: A Swedish Sea Beggar
 
But how does this Sea Beggar work?
They're rather easy to use, multiple tactics are possible. As someone else has noted already it is possible to capture and raid cities with just using Sea Beggars, but I usually move with a team of Sea Beggars, Frigates and an Admiral to a city. Any hostile ships on my way (mainly barbarian) are attacked and captured by my Sea Beggars, increasing their chance on promotions and so more successful raids. Four or five Frigates and three or four Sea Beggars should do the trick, use the Frigates to bombard the city and the Beggars for a constant melee attack. If one of your beggars' hp runs low, move it away to heal it and replace it with another Beggar. Same story for the Frigates. Using this tactic I've conquered quite a bunch of cities already.
The most brilliant thing I find about the Sea Beggars (and of course the Privateers) is that you can capture enemy ships. If you manage to capture a city and captured a bunch of barbarians or civ-ships, you can keep increasing the size of your navy and so perform more assaults.
 
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