Privateers, best use of?

[absimiliard]

Okay, I tried using a fleet of privateers in two recent games. They're not normally my thing. But even with a focus on getting early Chemistry I still found the AI got frigates in my face long before the privateers were able to gain enough gold to have made them worth my effort. So I'm thinking, "Privateers, I'm doing them wrong."

What I've done is just spam them and then try to have them sit in spots that can cover as many cities as I can at once.

Should I be constantly moving them around? Should I be using them more for hitting enemy shipping and getting XPs than commerce-raiding? Should I just give up on them?

I can't help but feel I'm missing something fundamental here. Some folks whose opinions I respect think VERY highly of privateers, so I'm fairly sure it's me, not the unit.

Could people let me know how they're using privateers so that perhaps I can exploit this unit better?

-abs

 

[TM Moot]

Not sure what difficulty you're playing, but I find on Monarch they're well worth getting.

I often beeline Chemistry, and then send out a fleet (10-15) to blockade major cities and especially any coastal capitals. After a few turns the money starts to roll in, and often continues for years and years (even if one AI gets frigates early, plenty don't). Also if you can, double stack the blockading units.

I don't generally move them around once in position, but will pillage any sea resources enroute.

 

[toug]

When playing a map which includes a "race to a new continent" they are very useful in keeping your competitors away from the new lands while you setup scouting, city placements and defense.

This, of course, assumes you get there first

 

[UncleJJ]

You can use privateers as a way to make money but they can be used for several other things too. I use them to project power and slow down the economies of my enemies and rivals (even my friends). The fact that you can make war on an AI without declaring can be very useful in diplomatic situations. It is very useful to be able to pick up GG points as privateers sink any ships up to galleons. I often go hunting galleons even those of my "friends" to kill a settler and escort as well as the galleon. Pillaging seafood can be a very effective way to slow down the growth of an AI city or colony and is worth it even if the privateer eventually gets killed as the lost food and the cost of the replacement workboat can weaken the enemy.


Frigates are strength 8 and privateers are 6 so as long as you have double the number they stand up quite well especially if you can get them a few promotions from the drydock and Theocracy. As with many naval exchanges between closely matched vessels, usually the first privateer dies to the frigate's attack and the second kills the badly damaged frigate next turn. So if the frigates sail around in pairs my privateers sail in squadrons of 4 or 5 and can defend themselves quite well. In war my frigates are backed up by privateers who add extra muscle, often enough to tip the balance (and I count them as worth half a frigate) and they can blockade cities for money while the frigates provide naval superiority.

 

[Winston Hughes]

But even with a focus on getting early Chemistry I still found the AI got frigates in my face long before the privateers were able to gain enough gold to have made them worth my effort.

The blockading (and pillaging) gold is just a nice little bonus, imo, so I wouldn't worry about running at a profit. The real value is in GG points and messing with the AI. The former is obvious enough, but the power of the latter can easily be overlooked because it doesn't show up on your own balance sheet:

1) Denying the AI use of water tiles, to starve their populations and hurt their economy. Choose your targets carefully - a certain amount of calculation is required to determine which cities will really suffer from the loss of their water tiles. Island cities in particular can be absolutely ruined by a single Privateer, so they become nothing but a drag on the AI's economy.

2) Cutting off AI trade routes - another source of income disrupted.

3) Preventing AI expansion by destroying boats carrying settlers.

4) Causing the AI to waste tons of hammers building ships (and workboats) rather than ground troops or buildings. Blockading a couple of cities in advance of a DoW is a great way to disrupt their defence preparations. The fact that the AI often seems scared to send its Galleons and Caravels out to meet your Privateers means that sometimes you can destroy their expensively assembled navy just by capturing the city in which it is cowering.

For all this, however, the value of Privateers is entirely situational. Using them is easy enough, the difficult bit is judging whether or not they'll be a worthy investment in that particular game.

 

[bestbrian]

Don't have BTS, but if you want a unit to hang around for awhile before it obsoletes, increase your speed setting. On marathon you get good mileage out of your units.

 

[madscientist]

I agree with All Winston Higes says.

To add, I use privateers to pick on the tech backwards AI. Generally they are the Monty's, Khans, Isabellas who will map an endless supply of caravels and galleys to try and kill you privateers earning ALOT of GGs.

 

[absimiliard]

So, I'll get better use out of them if I

A. Use them in packs, or at least pairs.
B. Use them more agressively for XP and GGs and less for blockading.
C. Have at least two coastal hammer cities for quick building.
D. Am faster than the frigates. (gleaned from a previous privateer thread)

Okay. I'll try it.

I usually play Monarch, so this will be no exception. I'll give Ragnar a shot. Financial should help me get to Chem and Astro faster. The UB should help me make faster privateers. Agressive, well, hell, I just plain like agressive.

I'll let folks know how it goes.

-abs

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

I find the best way to use them is in packs of Min 3 or more.

I privateer will blockade the cities...this will be my privateer with the medic promotion, (combat 1, medic 1)

the other 2 are there just for taking out Cavarels, galleons, defending against Frigates/cavarels or for the opportunistic attacks that will arise.

Of course by the time the AI gets to frigates, it'll usually have 2 or more in a port city near your privateers...so either stack more defenders with the wolf pack, or move it enough turns AWAY afrom that city, so a successfully attacking firgate, will end its turn in the open, and remaining privateers can kill it.

By time the AI gets to ships of the line, Pirvateers are finished.

I usually try kill ALL cavarels milling about my privateer wolf packs. No Cavarels=No cheap frigate upgrades.

 

[absimiliard]

Well, intriguing experiment.

I hit early and hard for privateers. Self-researched Astro and took Chem with Liberalism. (Had wanted to try for taking Steel from it but saw Hannibal getting close and didn't want to lose the race.) Then self-tech'd Steel while building a few privateers out of four cities, two with decent production and two legitimate hammer-cities.

I used them in packs, typically 2-4, dependant on the size of the territory they needed to cover.

All in all I got several centuries of use before the AI got enough frigates that they could send stacks after me. (at which point I quit since my experiment was done) I got two GGs out of it, and nabbed a bunch of cash.

I found that wolf-packs were needed near concentrations of ships, but there were long stretches of coast where the cities only had land units and I could just sit a privateer off-shore and blockade safely provided I had a pack near the cities with the actual fleets in them.

Very interesting experiment. I'll try it again tomorrow on Continents. Might try a diff. leader though, Ragnar's speed boost didn't actually prove hugely useful to me, in packs I'm not running as much. Maybe go w. Elizabeth, Phil and Fin should get me to Liberalism and Chem/Steel damn fast if I play it right.

I think I'll also try out attaching GGs to the privateers. I'm thinking highly promoted privateers getting double XP just can't be a bad idea. (and they'll become highly promoted destroyers on upgrade)

-abs

 

[UncleJJ]

I'm glad you found the more active use of privateers intriguing , particularly using them in mutually supporting squadrons. I find that about one in 4 of the privateers needs to be a medic to help heal faster (15% / turn versus the normal 5% in enemy culture). Damaged privateers can then stack with the medic to heal quickly (and I think they can blockade as they do that, tbc). Also the 4 ships don't actually have to be in one stack as long as they are within one move of each other so that if one is attacked the others can counter attack or provide cover. Splitting the stacks up a little can tempt the AI to venture out with their galleons and caravels for more experience. It also allows you to blockade more of the coastline and gain more money.

I don't much like the idea of attaching a GG to a privateer, even to makes a super medic. The leadership promotion gives 100% extra points to the unit but they don't count for a GG points, so not really worth the trouble IMO. It would make for a cheap upgrade to destroyer but I find privateers have a high casualty rate when frigates become common and losing a GG is expensive. I prefer to settle a GG as a Military Academy in a good naval production city. It can make a big difference to the hammer costs of replacement privateers. Say your port has a basic 20 hammers / turn, then a drydock will raise that to 30 and a MA will raise the total to 40. That is a bonus of 10 hammers per turn for the GG building military stuff and a 25% boost to your best naval production city.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Also the 4 ships don't actually have to be in one stack as long as they are within one move of each other so that if one is attacked the others can counter attack or provide cover. Splitting the stacks up a little can tempt the AI to venture out with their galleons and caravels for more experience. It also allows you to blockade more of the coastline and gain more money.

That's a very good point, and is the reason why I love the Vikings for piracy - faster Privateers means a wider net.

 

[gettingfat]

One thing I find out is, when an AI is harassed by privateers this AI is much less likely to start a war even his power rating is high. So whenever I play isolated as a builder and don't want a big military buildup to slow down my research I use privateers to harass the less friendly aggressive AIs to keep them busy building caravels (and not bad to have them spare you some changes at the same time). By the time they struggle to get frigates to counter I most likely will be close to getting rifles and don't care if they send in galleons of knights/pikes any more.

 

[Xurr]

I found that if I had a stack of 8 or so and camped an Ai without frigates, the AI would send out 3 caravels every couple of turns to attack my SoD. It would also build a ton of caravels and stack them in the city I blockaded. The strange thing is I've seen the ai stack 12 or so caravels but it only ever attacked with 3 at a time.

 

[absimiliard]

Hey UncleJJ,

I would agree with the medic note. I found my wolf-packs spent much more time doing useful stuff like killing enemy ships, blockading, and pillaging when I had a medic around. Since I went with a GL strategy I was open borders with the world which led me to discover that the safest, and fastest, place to heal privateers is in your target's cities. Amazingly the poor AI's ships won't attack you when you're in a friendly port, even if you just last turn hopped out two squares to pillage their clams and then came back in to heal some more. It's brutal, and loads of fun.

I had tried settling my GGs for extra XP in my production cities. Drydock + Vassalage + Theocracy + 1GG = 10XP out of the gate. Nice for getting C3, or Drill 3, or as Ragnar a net +2 move. (Ragnar, w. 10 XP and circumnavigation can get speed 7 privateers, terribly fast, but not great in fights so I started skipping it after a while.)

I did notice that I never got DOW'd when I had expected to a few times. So Gettingfat might well be right that being harrassed makes the AI less likely to DOW.

Like I said, I'll try some testing again tonight. Hopefully Lizzie will get me to privateers pretty quick since I'm not getting home until late and don't feel like being up until 3AM again. (not that that's unusual, been the story of my life since Civ I)

-abs

"I had thought Leadership DID double the value of XP for generals as well. I'll find out tonight. Even if it's a bad idea I'm in testing mode, not optimal play mode."

 

[tempuraki]

privateers can still blockade and get gold even after AI got ship of the line, just park the privateer in a territory where the AI doesn't have open border access to. Like in territory of AI#2 that does not have open border with AI#1 and also doesn't have advanced navy to kill your privateers, or in your own territory and cancel open border with AI#1.

 

[Melon Head]

The trouble I have with Privateers is they're terribly effective at shutting down one AI civ, but let others get a little farther ahead of you in the mean time, because of all the hammers you're spending on the Privateers. It's not a big downside, but it is worth keeping in mind; if you spent all those hammers on either land or naval military units you could probably attack and destroy an AI.

That said, I love Privateers; here's how you get around the above problem. First of all, I'm often not in an economic situation to expand (I usually have a maces/muskets war) and when Privateers get here I don't want to go conquering, so I use them to attack an AI instead. Second, I usually don't find the loss of a single city to be devastating to my power-rating efforts, even if it is my best production city. Instead, I shift to a defensive focus in my second best production city, and just build enough units to keep my power up (usually that means it's always building CG units, though).

Additionally, I target the AI I can most effectively cripple. Hopefully, this is also the AI who is farthest ahead. This forces that AI to waste a huge number of hammers on caravels, galleons, and frigates as it tries to kill off the privateers. Operating in wolf-packs, I can often get far more than an even hammer exchange between that AI and me. I'm not sure the hammer trade-off exactly, but a 1:1 privateer/frigate exchange works out in my favor, I think, and if I'm facing galleons and caravels it's not even reasonable how well privateers do.

I wholeheartedly agree with the wolf-pack policy. I stack my privateers in 3+ groups, depending on what they're facing (3 vs. caravels, 4 vs. galleons, 5 vs frigates, usually). One is a medic and the others are combat, though once in a while I'll go drill. I prefer combat because of blitz, since if I do DoW that particular AI, or it's fighting my friends, blitz is amazing for taking out stacks of weaker vessels (it also upgrades to destroyers very well; blitz destroyers annihilate enemy navies before they get combustion). I'll also try to let the medic get kills every few turns, so it can get Medic 2, at which point I let it sit. When blockading, the medic unit will blockade and the other will skip turns to force me to look around for targets.