Pirates?

[billt568]

One of the least fun features of EU3 is Pirate management. Obviously it was a somewhat realistic component in the beginning, but towards the end of the game huge pirate fleets controlled thousands of miles of coastline with no home base to assault. How will they be handled in EUIV

 

[Baneslave]

IMO, the best way to represent pirates would be pirates simply taking money from trade routes. Routes that are not patrolled cause pirates to increase in number and strength. This would also allow nations alongside of trade route to use pirates to gain money.

IIRC, one of the screenshots that we have seen had the pirate timer, so my idea most likely isn't in the game.

 

[Fishman786]

Pirates are just robbers. Bands of brigands with big, expensive ships, shiny cutlasses and amusing shoulder-parrots. They attack commercial shipping. Mostly because they want to separate the commerce from the shipping, so they can bury it on desert islands for no reason. They also steal ships and hold crew members to ransom. Occasionally they do a bit of smuggling, or perhaps raid a few coastal settlements. What they don't do is send out a fleet of warships to contest the seas with the crown. That's what navies do, not pirates. If the crown comes along, the pirates don't sit around in battle and hope to survive their inevitable destruction, they run and hide until the crown goes home again.

Hence, in EUIV, pirates shouldn't be represented by random rogue naval fleets, but by some nice and well-illustrated modifiers. Not little bits of text or some random events, but an actual interface element and a mapmode. Pirates were quite important at that time, you know?

 

[Arokel]

Pirates are just robbers. Bands of brigands with big, expensive ships, shiny cutlasses and amusing shoulder-parrots. They attack commercial shipping. Mostly because they want to separate the commerce from the shipping, so they can bury it on desert islands for no reason. They also steal ships and hold crew members to ransom. Occasionally they do a bit of smuggling, or perhaps raid a few coastal settlements. What they don't do is send out a fleet of warships to contest the seas with the crown. That's what navies do, not pirates. If the crown comes along, the pirates don't sit around in battle and hope to survive their inevitable destruction, they run and hide until the crown goes home again.

Hence, in EUIV, pirates shouldn't be represented by random rogue naval fleets, but by some nice and well-illustrated modifiers. Not little bits of text or some random events, but an actual interface element and a mapmode. Pirates were quite important at that time, you know?

Would be nice to see some sort of physical representation of pirates on the map. Maybe little pirate ships on the route and as the severity increases more appear?

 

[NosgothKingdom]

I would prefer a thousand times to have no pirates whatsoever than anything that even for a bit involves micromanagement.
The thing that made me hate colonizing in EU3 was these damn pirates.

The idea to "attach" them to trade routes which you need to patrol has potential for me.

 

[Fishman786]

Would be nice to see some sort of physical representation of pirates on the map. Maybe little pirate ships on the route and as the severity increases more appear?

I like the idea. Trade routes that are piratey should look nasty and unattractive, whilst ones that have been depirated should look clean. Visual cues are important, even in a game that is largely determined by numbers.

 

[Dafool]

I like the idea. Trade routes that are piratey should look nasty and unattractive, whilst ones that have been depirated should look clean. Visual cues are important, even in a game that is largely determined by numbers.

As pointless as it might really be, I do actually like that idea as well.

 

[Storey]

I would prefer a thousand times to have no pirates whatsoever than anything that even for a bit involves micromanagement.
The thing that made me hate colonizing in EU3 was these damn pirates.

The idea to "attach" them to trade routes which you need to patrol has potential for me.

I have to agree running my fleet around just to attack pirate fleets was a pain in the neck. Representing them as a loss of trade unless you occasionally patrolled the sea lanes would reduce the need for repetitious pirate sea battles.

 

[Fawr]

Attaching them to trade routes sounds like a brilliant idea. I'm sick of having pirate patrolls which must be cancelled before any war with a naval power. Then once the war is over there is a messy cleanup task to eliminate the pirates and setup all the patrols again.


The other beneift of pirates being connected to trade routes is that if you have ships trying to control those same trade routes then they could automatically protect against the pirates too.

 

[unmerged(15337)]

These are good ideas and I hope Johan and Co. consider them seriously. The EU3 system is both irritating in its micromanagement and exploitable -- for a small coastal nation, you can actually build up a serious navy early on by capturing the occasional pirate warship.

 

[fanoI]

Remember too, that some times the pirates were "fake" that is was, in reality, a Cold War tool of another nation... for example some pirates attacked only Spanish fleet and they were well paid by Great Britain (and in the end a Pirate Captain become a Baron, too!)... that is would interesting to have the possibility to found your pirates fleet, too.

They should have some Caribbean island too as "Pirates Nation" they aren't always on the sea, night and day...

Maybe make them playable? A Pirates Empire anyone?

 

[GregElSho]

I do enjoy the idea of small pirate ships sailing along the trade routes unless said routes are patrolled.
Less tedious, more historical (pirates weren't sitting along a coast, waiting to get smashed by a superior force from the old continent) and altogether probably much more enjoyable.

 

[Grubnessul]

Pirates weren't that much of a hassle. Just put some small fleets on strategic locations. Now hiring privateers. That's something that needs attention in EU4! As it was a major way of the Netherlands et all to finance their wars against Spain. As well as a huge thorn in their sides (like the pirates of Duinkerk)

 

[Dafool]

Pirates weren't that much of a hassle. Just put some small fleets on strategic locations.

I think part of the problem was the regularity and persistence. Pirates always reappeared and did it regardless of location. Whether it was the Mediterranean or some isolated rock in the Pacific, they always reappeared a month later, sat there, and then got crushed when someone finally felt like destroying them. It would be nice, as has been suggested, to see them focus on trade nodes and trade routes and be manageable rather than a yes/no threat.

 

[Baneslave]

Pirates weren't that much of a hassle. Just put some small fleets on strategic locations. Now hiring privateers. That's something that needs attention in EU4! As it was a major way of the Netherlands et all to finance their wars against Spain. As well as a huge thorn in their sides (like the pirates of Duinkerk)

Cleaning them after a war was seriously annoying, though.

(Pros kept their anti-pirate fleets in ports though)

 

[Darkath]

I like the idea above. To increase the role of pirate as a threat, because you know, they also sometimes battled ferociously against monarchial powers, they should be a chance for them to spawn a sizeable fleet if they "own" trade routes for too long.

Some pirates posed major threats to navies, and sunk hundreds of ships ...

 

[Fishman786]

Good ideas.

How about the richer a trade route is, the more piracy it will suffer, and the more ships needed to be attached to it to prevent this piracy. If a trade route was left undefended, fleets of pirate ships could eventually appear by chance, and would need to be destroyed by force. Pirates would always appear in provinces with a trade route, and only in the provinces that border land.

 

[Peonage]

I would prefer a thousand times to have no pirates whatsoever than anything that even for a bit involves micromanagement.
The thing that made me hate colonizing in EU3 was these damn pirates.

The idea to "attach" them to trade routes which you need to patrol has potential for me.

I agree with this. They really did make colonizing harder for me in EU3. I still would like visuals of them but I do believe they would be better served actually focusing on being the pirates that we all know and love.

 

[Fawr]

I think part of the problem was the regularity and persistence. Pirates always reappeared and did it regardless of location. Whether it was the Mediterranean or some isolated rock in the Pacific, they always reappeared a month later, sat there, and then got crushed when someone finally felt like destroying them. It would be nice, as has been suggested, to see them focus on trade nodes and trade routes and be manageable rather than a yes/no threat.

Maybe they could do something like they did for rebellions in EU some years back. If pirates were less about running around and micromanaging battles/patrols with them, and more about other effects (lower income, etc) then I'd be happier with the mechanic.

 

[ANO1453]

I never had much problem with Pirates. Put a barque every four coastal provinces patrolling and pirates are a thing of the past.
They could be more interesting, but I don't want to suffer modifiers (like lower income) from Pirates when I possess a fleet that would allow me to completely crush any opposition I could face at sea.