...we should at least give this a basic run and see how it goes.
IMHO the current implementation (nav1, nav2, costal attack, then pirate promotion) is easily "exploited" by human players and totally overpowered. In my current game (on emperor difficulty) I'm easily producing pirate man-o-war's (with drill too!) every other 4 turns or so, by simply having settled all my gg (except for a single great commander - another thingy easily "exploited" by human players; i.e. the AI simply can't use them...) in a dedicated costal city.
Pirate Man-o-Wars. Stacks of them (after a bunch of turns; I play on eternal speed
). Starting with drill too! It's insane.
And the crux of the story is this: it's an upward spiral. Once you have a bunch of powerfull pirate ships (you can safely level them, by luring in your cities and picking your fights...), you will get so much points towards your next gg, and then another. All while being pacifist, mind you. You'd think "ok", "that will take a while for the next gg", having to gather 300 points or what not. But with a bunch of pirate stacks of doom, you can literally watch that number drop. AI ships will just go leroy jenkins' and try to kamikaze one or the other of your pirate ships, so you don't even have to actively do much, if properly placed (individually switching between healing and blockade), or then AI certainly will underestimate your pirate ships's reach (having at least nav2). So you can pick stacks of galleys guarded by a terime or what not.
In my opinion this is broken/totally nuts. And then I'll be able to upgrade my pirate ships to non-wooden ships? The AI is so ed.
I'm really not in favor of overcomplicating mechanics to start; we can always add things if we really need to.
The question is: shall pirates go obsoleted with time, as wooden ships die out? Is it realistic (or maybe just fun, in gameplay terms) to end up with modern, insanely expensive pirate battle cruisers? I'm not sure about that...
And most important: this promotion system does not really allow for early piratery; which is kind of sad. So maybe, the simplest solution would be really to have earlier pirate ships available (without necessary promotions), have an upgrade path to privateer and then end piraterie there, once wooden ships get out of fashion.
Plus: I don't think that AI will ever be able to effectively use piraterie with these promotions. This - somewhat - worked with privateers, as far as I remember, no?