This. I could not find anything from eu4wiki so how do you use privateers? How do they work at all?
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Send them to rival-controlled nodes downstream for Power Projection and maximum efficiency.
I never really used this yet
Do i risk war if i use this? We could say that The Hansa send privateers to France. Would that give France reason to attack?
Do i risk war if i use this? We could say that The Hansa send privateers to France. Would that give France reason to attack?
I never really used this yet
Do i risk war if i use this? We could say that The Hansa send privateers to France. Would that give France reason to attack?
They get a CB so potentially yes.
The income generated by privateers depends entirely on three factors: Trade power in the node, wealth in the node, and your privateer efficiency. Like when you protect trade and assign merchants, you want to send them to boost your trade power in a node with little competition and high value. Usually these go together, of course, so I suggest simply finding high-value nodes with a friendly port in range (for maintenance) and sending them there.
DO NOT send privateers to a node where you're collecting. That just makes the privateers compete with you, and you'd get significantly more money from just protecting trade. The exception to this rule is if you're collecting only because you have a spare merchant and nowhere else to put him, or if you're sending privateers in order to get power projection and your rivals share nodes with you.
Which brings me to power projection: Essentially, the function of privateers is twofold: First, and least, they allow you to recover part of the maintenance on light ships you can't use for protecting trade. Which effectively allows you to have a larger fleet than your trade needs require (for instance, if you're dominating the nodes you want to the point where sending extra light ships to protect trade there is pointless, use the ships as privateers in foreign nodes instead.)
Secondly, privateers are the best way to get power projection. Simply send them to a (preferably rich) trade node where your rival trades a lot - within range of a friendy port, of course - and you'll get a bunch of extra power projection. Try to maintain 50+ power projection. If your rivals are strong and have their own nodes, you can get up to 20 power projection from relatively small privateer navies.
All this said, I should point out that privateers will usually generate less money (assuming 0% privateer efficiency) than light ships protecting trade. Privateers provide an extra option for your light ships when they'd otherwise be useless, and they also provide power projection - plus the fringe benefit that you're stealing money from your opponents.
Edit: To answer one of your questions: I don't know if privateers can even give CB's to your opponents, and I've never seen them use such a CB to attack me. I've never gotten any downside from privateers except for events that can give a malus to "improve relations over time", e.i. there's a small risk that your reputation will make others less forgiving of all the other stuff you've done. ;-)
DO NOT send privateers to a node where you're collecting. That just makes the privateers compete with you, and you'd get significantly more money from just protecting trade. The exception to this rule is if you're collecting only because you have a spare merchant and nowhere else to put him, or if you're sending privateers in order to get power projection and your rivals share nodes with you.
Which brings me to power projection: Essentially, the function of privateers is twofold: First, and least, they allow you to recover part of the maintenance on light ships you can't use for protecting trade. Which effectively allows you to have a larger fleet than your trade needs require (for instance, if you're dominating the nodes you want to the point where sending extra light ships to protect trade there is pointless, use the ships as privateers in foreign nodes instead.)
Secondly, privateers are the best way to get power projection. Simply send them to a (preferably rich) trade node where your rival trades a lot - within range of a friendy port, of course - and you'll get a bunch of extra power projection. Try to maintain 50+ power projection. If your rivals are strong and have their own nodes, you can get up to 20 power projection from relatively small privateer navies.
All this said, I should point out that privateers will usually generate less money (assuming 0% privateer efficiency) than light ships protecting trade. Privateers provide an extra option for your light ships when they'd otherwise be useless, and they also provide power projection - plus the fringe benefit that you're stealing money from your opponents.
Edit: To answer one of your questions: I don't know if privateers can even give CB's to your opponents, and I've never seen them use such a CB to attack me. I've never gotten any downside from privateers except for events that can give a malus to "improve relations over time", e.i. there's a small risk that your reputation will make others less forgiving of all the other stuff you've done. ;-)
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Just build some +12/24er stacks of lights, then send one of those stacks to each of you rivals homenodes. This should net you 3 times ~15-20 PP.
for exm.
In late game 100 Great Frigates were producing ~ 27 ducats in Western Europe node for me as a Japan, 90% of trade from Asia was streamed to Alexandria, so mostly there was trade from America+African west coast.
+i had no trade/marine related Idea and with Navy tradition ~50
That was in no way effective income vs. spendings on fleet maintenance but my enemies(GB,HRE,France) were loosing from this ~ 68 ducats. :closedeyes: which is nice.
In late game 100 Great Frigates were producing ~ 27 ducats in Western Europe node for me as a Japan, 90% of trade from Asia was streamed to Alexandria, so mostly there was trade from America+African west coast.
+i had no trade/marine related Idea and with Navy tradition ~50
That was in no way effective income vs. spendings on fleet maintenance but my enemies(GB,HRE,France) were loosing from this ~ 68 ducats. :closedeyes: which is nice.
Don't use privateers unless you have enough trade power in the nodes you're present (collecting or steering).
Example:
You're playing Ottomans. You have one merchant steering in Crimea and one merchant steering in Alexandria. You collect in Constantinople. You have 100 light ships at your disposal.
Without any light ship, you already have 80% trade power in Constantinople. In Crimea and Alexandria, you just need about 50 light ships to steer most of the wealth towards Constantinople.
When a situation like this happens, the other 50 light ships won't bring much additional value if you send them to protect trade nodes.
So, you open the trade section and look for the most lucrative trade node in the World. Let's say it's Sevilla (sometimes it's Lubeck). That means you send the other 50 light ships on privateering mission in Sevilla.
Overall, you'll make more money doing this instead of protecting trade in your already saturated nodes. This also allows you to profit from the wealth coming from the New World.
EDIT: On another note, sometimes your supply range won't allow you to privateer in far away nodes. When this happens, find a very small nation near that node and pay for fleet basing rights. The fee will (usually) be a small fraction of your profits.
Look to the richest trade node, check if you rival the owner of this node (mostly vendig, lübeck, antwerpen, london or sevilla). Build a fleet of all you light ships. rival the owner, if possible. send the ship as private. enjoy the human wisper, rages, etc.
Activate go home at war (you loose the income bonus, but the power protection bonus stays active in harbour)
for example in one of my multiplayer games:
Venedig, big blobbed:
They collectet in venedig 140 ducats per month.
I sended 100 light ships into his node.
He collectet now 80 ducats per month. -60 ducats which he cannot spend into army or advisor...it hurts.
I got +55 Power protection for this, +1 free leader, +1adm/+1dip/+1mil point per month.
I got 10 ducats per month as spoils of war
Privatering is to weaken enemies, switch node, when somebody does a war and "destroy" his trade income. exspecially during a war, he will be hurt.
If you are the strongest nation, you can complety crupel nations like Hansa as france in multiplayer, they cannot do anything against your peace attack
Activate go home at war (you loose the income bonus, but the power protection bonus stays active in harbour)
for example in one of my multiplayer games:
Venedig, big blobbed:
They collectet in venedig 140 ducats per month.
I sended 100 light ships into his node.
He collectet now 80 ducats per month. -60 ducats which he cannot spend into army or advisor...it hurts.
I got +55 Power protection for this, +1 free leader, +1adm/+1dip/+1mil point per month.
I got 10 ducats per month as spoils of war
Privatering is to weaken enemies, switch node, when somebody does a war and "destroy" his trade income. exspecially during a war, he will be hurt.
If you are the strongest nation, you can complety crupel nations like Hansa as france in multiplayer, they cannot do anything against your peace attack
Look to the richest trade node, check if you rival the owner of this node (mostly vendig, lübeck, antwerpen, london or sevilla). Build a fleet of all you light ships. rival the owner, if possible. send the ship as private. enjoy the human wisper, rages, etc.
Activate go home at war (you loose the income bonus, but the power protection bonus stays active in harbour)
for example in one of my multiplayer games:
Venedig, big blobbed:
They collectet in venedig 140 ducats per month.
I sended 100 light ships into his node.
He collectet now 80 ducats per month. -60 ducats which he cannot spend into army or advisor...it hurts.
I got +55 Power protection for this, +1 free leader, +1adm/+1dip/+1mil point per month.
I got 10 ducats per month as spoils of war
Privatering is to weaken enemies, switch node, when somebody does a war and "destroy" his trade income. exspecially during a war, he will be hurt.
That is not right, as ottoman in multiplayer you do not need the trade income, build 30 light ships, back them up with 100 galley, and send it against human venice...you get 50+ Powerprotection (it bypass the income loose for better advisor) and you cripple venice.
Do not forget, light ships with backup means, venice has to build galleys, too, to fight you^^
Activate go home at war (you loose the income bonus, but the power protection bonus stays active in harbour)
for example in one of my multiplayer games:
Venedig, big blobbed:
They collectet in venedig 140 ducats per month.
I sended 100 light ships into his node.
He collectet now 80 ducats per month. -60 ducats which he cannot spend into army or advisor...it hurts.
I got +55 Power protection for this, +1 free leader, +1adm/+1dip/+1mil point per month.
I got 10 ducats per month as spoils of war
Privatering is to weaken enemies, switch node, when somebody does a war and "destroy" his trade income. exspecially during a war, he will be hurt.
That is not right, as ottoman in multiplayer you do not need the trade income, build 30 light ships, back them up with 100 galley, and send it against human venice...you get 50+ Powerprotection (it bypass the income loose for better advisor) and you cripple venice.
Do not forget, light ships with backup means, venice has to build galleys, too, to fight you^^
Haha I wind up having to do this often as nations like the Berbers. You rival Portugal/Castile, and then you haven't conquered Mamluks or discovered Timbuktu yet so your only merchant options are downstream with no power or Tunis + Sevilla. Since pirating Sevilla double-counts your pirates for PP, it's worth the inefficiency for permanent monarch points boost so early, but you really want to move the merchant...yet sometimes you STILL make more from collecting in Sevilla
.That's a niche case though, and one where you do it because monarch points > money. In most cases, you would indeed avoid pirating nodes where you collect.
I thought the OP was talking about SP, not MP.
You may be right about MP, but MP seems a completely different game.
Early on, I send a single Light Ship to each rival's node (Bonus, if you've rivaled both Portugal and Sevilla, you get double PP for just pirating Sevilla)
Early on, the power projection is rather low because there isn't much trade to steal (depending on your rivals), and you get more money from using your light ships to protect trade, but after I notice my single ship starts adding 4-5 PP, then I'll put together a pirate fleet of 5-10.
Mid 1500's in my Spain game, my rivals were London, Austria and Ottomans, and I had 10 lightships pirating London, Venice and Constantinople, which kept power projection well over 50, which is really nice.
I've also had Spain and Portugal gang up on me as France, they would send 50 or more ships each to Pirate Bordeaux, which stole 40-60% of my trade.
Really annoying, as I had to keep finding ways to go to war with them to wipe out their pirate fleets, but I liked that they did that, as annoying as it was, it's nice to have the AI put some real road blocks in your way once in a while.
Early on, the power projection is rather low because there isn't much trade to steal (depending on your rivals), and you get more money from using your light ships to protect trade, but after I notice my single ship starts adding 4-5 PP, then I'll put together a pirate fleet of 5-10.
Mid 1500's in my Spain game, my rivals were London, Austria and Ottomans, and I had 10 lightships pirating London, Venice and Constantinople, which kept power projection well over 50, which is really nice.
I've also had Spain and Portugal gang up on me as France, they would send 50 or more ships each to Pirate Bordeaux, which stole 40-60% of my trade.
Really annoying, as I had to keep finding ways to go to war with them to wipe out their pirate fleets, but I liked that they did that, as annoying as it was, it's nice to have the AI put some real road blocks in your way once in a while.
If you set 3 rivals and pirate one to +20, you're at 50 already. If the Ottomans also rival, say, Austria and Mamluks, he is quite likely to get over 50 (to some degree) via 20pp worth of pirating on Venice and some tertiary impact on Austria.