Pirates (Ancient to Renaissance)

Azurian · Oct 15, 2013

Idea

Similar to Subbdued Animals, I think we need Barbarian Pirates that Spawn on Coasts and later Oceans to slow down the travel of ocean and to add a necessary historical element to the game. The vast majorty of Space 4x games have powerful pirates that make you think twice before entering unknown space. I believe we need the same system in C2C for oceans. Pirates may be bad news, but if you defeat them you have a chance to steal their "loot".

We can use Sid Milers Pirates! for Inspiration, and add extra content especially to Rennassiance Era.

Since Coast and Oceans are now deadly, it will slow down inter continental exploration and expansion.

Ancient Era

One of the oldest documents (inscription on a clay tablet) describing pirates dates back to Pharo Echnaton (1350 BC). The report mentions notorious free lance Mediterranean shipping attacks in North Africa.

Greek merchants who were trading with ports in Phoenicia and Anatolia occasionally allude casually to piracy, a classic by-product of such trading activity. There is epigraphic evidence for piracy as well: in the 340s Athens honored Cleomis, tyrant of Methymna on Lesbos, for ransoming a number of Athenians captured by pirates.

The Aethiopica one of the ancient Greek novels by Heliodorus of Emesa (3rd century AD) tells the story of an Ethiopian princess and a Thessalian prince who undergo a series of perils (battles, voyages, piracy, abductions, robbery, and torture) before their eventual happy marriage in the heroine's homeland.

Polycrates (Greek tyrant) seized control of the city of Samos during a celebration of a festival of Hera outside the city walls. After eliminating his two brothers, who had at first shared his power, he established despotism, and ships from his 100-vessel fleet committed acts of piracy that made him notorious throughout Greece.

Classical Era

The piracy threat which came to a head in the decade of the 60's BC was in part due to Rome's complacency about the issue. Rather than stamping out small pockets of pirates early on, they allowed piracy to flourish into a large force of marauders. A poor economy and oppressive social conditions also fed the pirate forces as men who were on the verge of bankruptcy discovered more profit as robbers and pillagers. Rome was unwilling to act conclusively toward the reduction of pirate forces because those forces, along with tax companies, provided slaves for the large luxury markets. The pirates did not attack Rome as an enemy, but treated all targets equally, as opportunities for profit.

Vandal and, later, Muslim piracy disrupted the vital sea routes to Africa and the East; on land the impotence of local government made communications dangerous; and ever-heavier taxation crippled trade.

As a result of the weakening of Rhodes, piracy became rampant in the eastern Mediterranean (the young Julius Caesar was captured by pirates). During the next century Roman senators did not find the political will to suppress the piracy, perhaps in part because it served their interests; pirates supplied tens of thousands of slaves for their Italian estates and disrupted the grain trade, thus raising prices for their produce in Rome.

Read More:
http://www.piratesinfo.com/cpi_romans_piracy_roman_pirates_516.asp

Medieval Era

The most notorious of the Medieval prates were Vikings . Vikings was the name of the Nordic people—Danes, Swedes, Norwegians—who explored abroad during a period of dynamic Scandinavian expansion from about AD 800 to 1100.

The first recorded Viking raid was a seaborne assault in 793 by Vikings on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England. Growing evidence indicates that considerable overseas Viking migration occurred long before then. Vikings went deep into the Russian hinterland, founding city-states and opening the way to Constantinople (Istanbul). Vikings also fought the Carolingian Empire until in 911 they accepted by treaty the area of Normandy in northern France and settled there.

In the 11th century Vikings briefly established a Scandinavian empire of the North Sea, composed of England, Denmark, and Norway. On the other hand piracy was also the problem in the Far East.

With the decline of central authority in China toward the end of the 13th century, piracy began to increase along the China coast. Using ships large enough to carry 300 men, the pirates would land and sometimes plunder whole villages. For instance during the 1550s corsair fleets looted the Shanghai-Ning-po region almost annually, sometimes sending raiding parties far inland to terrorize cities and villages throughout the whole Yangtze Delta. Although coastal raiding was not totally suppressed, it was brought under control in the 1560s As we already said in the Far East operated wako pirates, in Japan's civil wars during the early part of this period. any of the groups of marauders who raided the Korean and Chinese coasts between the 13th and 16th centuries. When denied trading privileges, the Japanese were quick to resort to violence to ensure their profits. By the 14th century, piracy had reached serious proportions in Korean waters. It gradually declined after 1443, when the Koreans made a treaty with various Japanese feudal leaders, permitting the entry of 50 Japanese trade ships a year, a number that was gradually increased.

Originally mainly Japanese, in later times the pirates were of mixed origin; by the early 16th century, the majority of them were probably Chinese. Basing themselves on islands off the Chinese coast, the pirates eventually made their main headquarters on the island of Taiwan, where they remained for over a century.

Rennasiance Era (Golden Age of Piracy)

The mere mention of the words “pirate” or “privateer” conjures up images of daring swashbucklers, bloodthirsty scoundrels and wicked rogues of the sea. As a nation, we have been reared on the media’s portrayal of pirates as either improbably romantic and dashing heroes or incorrigible villains. There has been no in-between. Those that explore the history of piracy in deeper detail find themselves exposed to a much more complex world than had previously been suspected. Often, many of these would-be scholars stop when they learn the truth of the gruesome and horrible deeds of some pirates. Unfortunately, they stop too soon. While it is true that there were several pirates and privateers that more than lived up to this reputation for evil, it is also true that as a nation we owe a great deal of our history to those very same pirates. In fact, the vast majority of historical pirates were nowhere close to the levels of villainy that have been attributed to them.

During the so-called “Golden Age” of piracy, in the mid to late 18th century and early 19th century, the deeds of many pirates and privateers would prove to be invaluable to the development of the United States as an emerging world power. To understand the ramifications of this statement, one must first understand exactly what it is to be a pirate. Webster’s dictionary defines piracy simply as “an act of robbery on the high seas; also: an act resembling such robbery.” A pirate is someone who conducts such acts. There is another term that is often confused in its relation to that definition. Whereas a pirate commits such acts for personal gain, a privateer commits them ostensibly for the good of a patron nation. As Admiral Ernest Eller points out, “Privateering, on the other hand, was a distinguished practice whereby a sovereign power granted its commission and recognition to private armed vessels to prey on enemy shipping, i.e., ‘to grieve the enemy by sea’”

Read more:
http://www.piratesinfo.com/History_of_Piracy.asp

Pirate Ship Classes (from Sins of a Solar Empire)

Frigates: Pirate Rogue • Pirate Pillager • Pirate Reaper
Cruisers: Pirate Cutthroat • Pirate Corsair
Capital Ships: Pirate Capitalship

Thunderbrd will have to review the Pirate Combat classes and decide if this is a good fit.

Pirate Rogue
A scout ship with the that grants it extra movement speed, lowered HP, increased visibility, but no extra abilities.

Pirate Pillager
A pirate transport ship that has that houses units the can spread flammability, disease, and crime to city and the ship can plunder :gold:

,

and

from a city 5 spaces away.

Pirate Reaper
A pirate "Antiship" that has that grants it extra attack against ships and has increased HP, but reduced movement speed.

Pirate Cutthroat
A pirate ship that has that has a 85% chance to take over your ship if it defeats it. It has a 33% chance to "poison" ships from a high range.

Pirate Corsair
A pirate ship built for speed that can generate Culture (Pirate) on your coastal cities (6 spaces max from coast) rapidly and Buccaneer Units that has increased City Attack.

Pirate Capital Ship
The grand daddy of pirate ships with high hp, high attack that has has a pirate army and a Great General like Cilician, Blackbeard, Ann Bonny etc.

For Pirate Ships on Defeat
Outcome
60 percent : gold: / :espionage
15 percent /culture/ science/ education
15 percent hammers (take pirates at slaves)
5 percent disease
5 percent crime /disease

to nearest player city.

New Player Ship Promotions
Bounty Hunter I, II, III large :gold:

Thunderbrd · Oct 15, 2013

Are those 'ships' you listed intended to be Combat Classes or units? As units they could fall into various class category choices like any other unit and they wouldn't be too hard to categorize. I also am adding a Pirate Combat Class in and of itself.

One thing this somewhat goes against or should at least take under consideration is a neat previous suggestion of doing away with pirate ships by definition and making pirate captains that attach to ships and make them pirates instead. Perhaps both could be done just fine I suppose. Not all pirates were privateers supported by a government... many were indeed rebels and profiteers. Provided these ship types you propose remain 'barbarian specials' we'd be able to nicely blend both concepts I think.

Some of the special abilities you mention would require either python or dll efforts. You'd have to wait on my lengthy queue of programming tasks to dwindle down a bit for my help there. The ship capture method is already in python and may be fairly easy to adjust... maybe. I dunno enough about python methodology to say for sure.

Azurian · Oct 15, 2013

Thunderbrd said:
Are those 'ships' you listed intended to be Combat Classes or units? As units they could fall into various class category choices like any other unit and they wouldn't be too hard to categorize. I also am adding a Pirate Combat Class in and of itself.

One thing this somewhat goes against or should at least take under consideration is a neat previous suggestion of doing away with pirate ships by definition and making pirate captains that attach to ships and make them pirates instead. Perhaps both could be done just fine I suppose. Not all pirates were privateers supported by a government... many were indeed rebels and profiteers. Provided these ship types you propose remain 'barbarian specials' we'd be able to nicely blend both concepts I think.

Some of the special abilities you mention would require either python or dll efforts. You'd have to wait on my lengthy queue of programming tasks to dwindle down a bit for my help there. The ship capture method is already in python and may be fairly easy to adjust... maybe. I dunno enough about python methodology to say for sure.

They would be Ship Units.
This is an idea and understand it will be a while (if) its implemented would have to be done by yourself or Dancing hoskuld, with the tweaks you guys believe are of merit. You both know more about this stuff than myself, but the general idea of Spawn Barbarian Pirates I find worthy to eventually add.

Hydromancerx · Oct 15, 2013

@MrAzure

1. I thought Pirates already spawn.
2. Civs and Players can already make pirate units.
3. Having them spawn at a certain date would never line up with players research.

And here are our current pirate units ...

Dragon Pirate Ship -> Barbary Corsair -> Privateer -> Assault Ship

There is also the Unmanned Pirate Skiff and the Somali Pirate (Somali)

Nerdman3000 · Oct 16, 2013

I actually like MrAzure's idea. Kind of makes sense.

Dancing Hoskuld · Oct 16, 2013

There are already events that spawn special pirate bands. These are tied to technologies I think which is the best way of getting them balanced. Unlike land barbarians sea barbarians don't spawn as far as I know. However barbarian cities may build ships to launch an attach.

There is some art, XML and a brief description of an idea for bandits and pirates in the Bad_Karma/Bandits_and_Pirates folder. This is much more feasible now that we have Super Forts merged.

The idea is that a band of pirates set up base on one of the (unworked) one plot islands inside your territory taking over the plot (ie plot owner becomes barbarian) and having a number of units in the stronghold all with attack or pillage as their AI. Not only that but the spawn system can then be used to spawn more units in there. Similarly for bandits in unworked Ancient Forests!

The compressed folder has most of the basic stuff but needs to be converted to Super Forts and have the events worked out.

LumenAngel · Oct 19, 2013

Dancing Hoskuld said:
The idea is that a band of pirates set up base on one of the (unworked) one plot islands inside your territory

Some MapScripts have an option to not have such one plot island.
it would be best if they can take a any plot (coastal for pirate, any for bandit) adjacent to your territory.

It will force to be carefull with these little non-claim plot inside your territory...

Pirates (Ancient to Renaissance)

Azurian

The Azurian

Thunderbrd

C2C War Dog

Azurian

The Azurian

Hydromancerx

C2C Modder

Nerdman3000

Chieftain

Dancing Hoskuld

Deity

LumenAngel

King

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