Perhaps you should? The same way you would try to wipe out smaller enemy armies you see roaming around your provinces, before they can link up into larger ones.
Disable Pirates: 5 years of user requests ignored
- Thread starter Jumbo Shrimp
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Well, armies can capture provinces. Fleets don't do much besides land armies, which I take care of with land units...
When I get bored I send my fleet to clean up the ai stacks of 4 ships blockading my provinces. Or if it is actually causing some sort of war exhaustion my ruler can't eliminate, otherwise I generally don't bother with things naval unless I'm invading somewhere.
As for the topic at hand, I don't particularly mind the pirates but it would be nice to be able to flag the anti-pirate patrol "fleets" to not show up on the outliner. It isn't a huge deal though, if I forget where my main fleets are I turn them on in the outliner, find them, and turn the fleet display back off. Finding the non-1 in the number of ships line isn't all that hard and it's not like you really need all that many fleets if you place them correctly. As I recall it's something like 18 ships to completely sanitize the Americas in vanilla...
A fleet blockading your coast cripples your income from that province (giving part of it to the enemy blockading you) and adds warscore to your enemy. True, you probably can't win a war purely by naval blockades unless you're only bothered about getting a white peace, but it's still a lot more important than you'er suggesting.
Pirates are boring and are not needed the way they are. They're simply a waste of a good feature. They simply raid unoccupied ports. They need to be far more dynamic, they need to hit and run rich, high value provinces. Not a siberian port that makes 1 ducat a year. They should also be more inclined to hit nations with a low number of ships. A single pirate ship wouldn't raid a 500 ship strong, global spanning empire...
Why on Earth would you waste a big ship sitting unused in a port just to keep pirates away when a galley works just as well? Or a barque if you have colonies and want a double benefit. But a big ship? Why?
Ever since DW where naval range is projected from ports this has been a non issue for me. It USED to be a rage quit moment for me when I used to have to have all the boats manually patrolling, then calling them into port when I was at war.
Now? Doesn't worry me in the slightest. By the end of the game 16 old carracks I kept for this purpose patrols the ENTIRE Med Sea. Put them in Sicily and they reach every part. 20 ships in Vendee does the entire channel, French and North Spanish coast. These ships can just sit there forever quite happily.
So to me, it's now just not a problem at all. In fact, it's a way to use up all those old carracks and galleons I have sitting around.
Now? Doesn't worry me in the slightest. By the end of the game 16 old carracks I kept for this purpose patrols the ENTIRE Med Sea. Put them in Sicily and they reach every part. 20 ships in Vendee does the entire channel, French and North Spanish coast. These ships can just sit there forever quite happily.
So to me, it's now just not a problem at all. In fact, it's a way to use up all those old carracks and galleons I have sitting around.
Note that even if there are no pirates, you should probably park a ship nearby as coastal provinces with 'unpatrolled sea coast" gets a negative income modifier.
Yeah, pirates really are an annoying mechanic which is trivial but tedious to deal with.
Problem with setting up patrols is that everytime I do, I will sooner or later get into a war with GB or Castille...
Perhaps some provincial naval structure "pirate patrol" could have been used so that the fleet display is not overwhelmed by the single ship fleets.
But even that still does not address a trip around Africa involving 50 naval battles, while I just want to move my fleet. If the fleet is not out there hunting pirates (just moving), does it really need to get involved in a battle in every sea zone around Africa?
There is nothing good, and just about everything bad with the pirates as far as the game experience in EU3.
I would be surprised if even 10% of EU3 players kept the Pirate option on, if it was an option. And those 10% would probably be payers playing mostly inland countries...
Another thing about the realism of all of it: Shouldn't the pirates have some kind of economics model as well? I can send a fleet up and down the East Coast of Americas and another fleet around Africa, destroy every single pirate ship, I can edit the game to make sure that pirates have no money. And about a month later, pirates are spawned in every single sea zone, upwards of 100 of them, even though the pirate nation had no money to build any ships. And the ships appear there quicker than any kind of ship could be built...
I don't get why the OP's suggestion to get rid of one the most annoying mechanics that adds nothing to the game is getting so much hate. Yes, the solution is simple, but that doesn't make it okay to have such a mechanic.
I don't understand why "things I don't like" is always equated to "things that make the game worse," There are plenty of mechanics in video games I wish weren't there, but chances are, if they were gone it would make the game simpler, easier, and more boring in the long run.
It may have something to do with how he expresses his discontent, this isnt WOW forum.
What have you done to so thoroughly shatter the world's navies that you're meeting pirates on a trip around Africa?
The only issue with dealing with pirates that I see is that, once your empire spans far and wide, you need a lot of fleets to be sitting in port, never to leave. And they still show up on the fleets tab. Perhaps if there was an option to hide the fleets from showing up on the panel... but I guess that is somewhat beside the point of the thread.
I am the first one to explore it. I think I mentioned that I was playing Castile/Spain focusing on colonization, not European expansion. I defeated Portugal. The only competitor is England. England put a lot of resources into its successful wars with France (crippling another colonization competitor) and into meddling in Mediterranean, but at the same time, all that hyper-activity of England in Europe slowed down its own exploration / colonization. All happy coincidences for my plan...
The farthest place I have seen English fleet was Gulf of Guinea, so on a trip around Africa, up and down the cost of Americas, I was it for the time being (before I threw in the towel), no help from other navies...
I am not saying there should not be Pirates in EU games. If implemented better, Pirates could add another dimension of the game. But pirates are implemented so badly in EU3, that the best option would be to just disable them completely.
I am not asking for some brand new Pirate AI and mechanics in EU3, I understand that Paradox has to put all its effort into EU4. All I am asking is an option to turn off a feature that is needlessly annoying a lot of EU3 players ... And if they make that feature a DLC, I will be happy to pay for it.
But the pirates don't spawn if the provinces a sea zone is bordering are all empty?