What naval tech increases ship discipline to "strong?" I am sick of pirates coming and defeating my fleet! 
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If you click on the little port icon on your main screen, it will list the techs that increase your CRT level, which helps agaionst pirates. Also, you can go to your budget screen and hover your mouse over the little red question mark next to your naval slider and see the same information.
More to the point, however:
Pirates are a fact of life. You will not, ever, be rid of them. Kill them and more will come back. Things that may help you decide how you want to deal with them --
(1) The richer the area (in general) the more pirates are attracted. The Caribbean especially so.
(2) Trading posts are particularly vulnerable. They tend to attract pirates and whatever effect fortifications have in reducing pirate frequency or expense, they obviously don't get it.
(3) The game and/or the manual says that fortifications help. I usually just take their word for it, so I don't know exactly how or by how much. However, I've had zones in the Caribbean, New England, and China where I have Maximum level fortresses in every province that touches the sea zone and it will still spawn pirates.
(4) Supposedly pirates won't spawn in a zone that is already occupied by a ship. So you *could* send out a small fleet -- even a lone ship -- into the sea zone you want to keep clear, sending it back periodically to port to keep attrition down. However, that wouldn't stop your tiny fleet from getting attacked by pirates who generate in other zones and move into yours.
(5) Take a look at your province income and trade data by hovering the cursor over those numbers in the province view (the ones at either side of the picture showing its primary produced good). If pirates are reducing those values, you'll see it and know by how much. Since the numbers are usually relatively small (that might be affected by fort size, though) you might simply choose to let the pirates alone.
(6) If you really want to go pirate hunting, try fleets of varying sizes until you find something that works best for you. In my last game I settled on around 15-20 warships as most of the time this could beat any pirate fleet. Larger fleets tended to suffer losses more often for no visible benefit; smaller fleets tended to lose more often. But keep in mind that you'll still lose ships vs pirates even with very high naval tech (in the 40s). Unless you really need that fleet for something else, the extra cost to build, maintain, and occasionally replace those ships probably outweighs what the pirates themselves cost you.
Pirates are a fact of life. You will not, ever, be rid of them. Kill them and more will come back. Things that may help you decide how you want to deal with them --
(1) The richer the area (in general) the more pirates are attracted. The Caribbean especially so.
(2) Trading posts are particularly vulnerable. They tend to attract pirates and whatever effect fortifications have in reducing pirate frequency or expense, they obviously don't get it.
(3) The game and/or the manual says that fortifications help. I usually just take their word for it, so I don't know exactly how or by how much. However, I've had zones in the Caribbean, New England, and China where I have Maximum level fortresses in every province that touches the sea zone and it will still spawn pirates.
(4) Supposedly pirates won't spawn in a zone that is already occupied by a ship. So you *could* send out a small fleet -- even a lone ship -- into the sea zone you want to keep clear, sending it back periodically to port to keep attrition down. However, that wouldn't stop your tiny fleet from getting attacked by pirates who generate in other zones and move into yours.
(5) Take a look at your province income and trade data by hovering the cursor over those numbers in the province view (the ones at either side of the picture showing its primary produced good). If pirates are reducing those values, you'll see it and know by how much. Since the numbers are usually relatively small (that might be affected by fort size, though) you might simply choose to let the pirates alone.
(6) If you really want to go pirate hunting, try fleets of varying sizes until you find something that works best for you. In my last game I settled on around 15-20 warships as most of the time this could beat any pirate fleet. Larger fleets tended to suffer losses more often for no visible benefit; smaller fleets tended to lose more often. But keep in mind that you'll still lose ships vs pirates even with very high naval tech (in the 40s). Unless you really need that fleet for something else, the extra cost to build, maintain, and occasionally replace those ships probably outweighs what the pirates themselves cost you.
Morlac said:
This is true. Pirates will *not* spawn in a sea zone that you already have ships in.
Ivan Rogov said:
Flawed premise, Ivan. Pirates advance in tech right along with you and the rest of the world. You may stay a few levels ahead, but they won't be using rowboats against your level 36 triple deckers. If you are thinking that getting to Strong morale will guarantee your naval supremacy, you are wrong. They will simply advance to Strong right along with you, and continue to harass your poor admirals. :rofl:
To make an attempt to answer your question: I don't think anyone who's posted so far remembers that off the top of their heads, and it's not the kind of thing most folks are likely to remember. I *could* go into my year-by-year archive of saved games and try to figure it out, but honestly I don't feel like going to that kind of effort.
Judging by the EU v 1.08 naval tech guide at euprovince (which wouldn't necessarily be an exact correspondence), naval morale increases at the following key levels:
lvl 5 (from 1.5 to 2)
lvl 11 (to 2.5)
lvl 20 (to 2.75)
lvl 26 (to 3)
lvl 36 (to 4)
And of course, some religions (reform and shiite) get bonuses to unit morale.
And no, I don't know exactly how the numbers correspond to the word descriptions of moral (disciplined, strong, very strong, etc). My guess -- and it's just a guess -- is that strong is around 3, which would mean level 26 navy but only level 8 land (stinks to be a sailor, eh?
)
Morlac said:Flawed premise, Ivan. Pirates advance in tech right along with you and the rest of the world. You may stay a few levels ahead, but they won't be using rowboats against your level 36 triple deckers. If you are thinking that getting to Strong morale will guarantee your naval supremacy, you are wrong. They will simply advance to Strong right along with you, and continue to harass your poor admirals. :rofl:
To make an attempt to answer your question: I don't think anyone who's posted so far remembers that off the top of their heads, and it's not the kind of thing most folks are likely to remember. I *could* go into my year-by-year archive of saved games and try to figure it out, but honestly I don't feel like going to that kind of effort.
Judging by the EU v 1.08 naval tech guide at euprovince (which wouldn't necessarily be an exact correspondence), naval morale increases at the following key levels:
lvl 5 (from 1.5 to 2)
lvl 11 (to 2.5)
lvl 20 (to 2.75)
lvl 26 (to 3)
lvl 36 (to 4)
And of course, some religions (reform and shiite) get bonuses to unit morale.
And no, I don't know exactly how the numbers correspond to the word descriptions of moral (disciplined, strong, very strong, etc). My guess -- and it's just a guess -- is that strong is around 3, which would mean level 26 navy but only level 8 land (stinks to be a sailor, eh?
Flawed premise? My land forces used to be at "Disciplined," now they're at "Strong" due to a tech that made "armies fight better." So what is the corresponding naval tech???
Ivan Rogov said:Flawed premise? My land forces used to be at "Disciplined," now they're at "Strong" due to a tech that made "armies fight better." So what is the corresponding naval tech???
Relax, and read the (longish) post you quoted again..
And that the 'armies fight better' tech level also gave them 'strong' morale is a coincidence (had you been shiite or reformed you would have gotten it earlier). The 'armies fight better' means you have reached a threshold where you will be very likely to win battles with enemies that haven't reached that 'fight better' level.
Nikolai II said:
Well, actually,every military tech advance will announce "Our armies/navies will fight better." As for the phrase 'flawed premise', he was refering to the fact that your navy's maximum morale is less important to deciding how often you'll defeat/lose to pirates than other things: the random number generator and the *size* of your fleet relative to the pirates' are probably the two biggest determinants, and you only control one of those
. After that, it's relative tech levels and, as was pointed out, the pirates will continue to advance more-or-less as quickly as a player. Possibly equal in value to tech levels is relative morale levels, which can be independent of tech. Are you fully funding your maintenance? Have you suffered bankruptcy within the past five years? Has either of you lost a naval battle within the past few months? And close to these two in importance is current attrition rates: I've noticed that fleets lose in battles quicker when they are already at a (relatively) high monthly attrition.-Pat
pjcrowe said:
Hm?
IIRC the CRT-levels have some extra text about 'fighting better' to remind that they change there.
(I'll check when I get home I guess)
He's right, they all say that.
4 = Very Strong
3 = Strong
2 = Disciplined
1 = Weak? (Can't remember what comes after Breaking, before Disciplined)