Northern Europe/English Channel...Pirates?

[WarMachine420]

Hey all and thanks for reading yet another thread started by me :2thumbsup:

I really need a thread where I cut right to the chase, so here goes:

If your read any of my other threads you'll see that I'm currently using the Brits in a H/H campaign with 1.5 vanilla. No mods, cheats, romeshell bs...just straight play.

Anyway, I'm always great about building up a mobile and effective navy. Always. It's one of my signatures...

However, with this campaign, there's TONS of rebel ships all around the english channel. On like the fifth turn of the game I had a giant STACK of pirate ships come and set up shop right outside of one of my ports...basically making the english channel good for just a quick troop movement here and there. Any ships left away from the port (only have one port obviously) are attacked and bounced around from rebel ship to rebel ship until they're sunk.

Is this normal? I mean guys...no exaggeration, we're talking about maybe 30 ships at this point (just of what I can see, I know there's more because knew ones keep coming down from the north seas). There's absolutely NOTHING anyone could do to build a navy to break that up that early in the game other than abandoning virtually all production and military buildup. I have 4 ships (it's 258 bc)...maybe lost 2 or 3 along the way. This is WAY less than I had planned on having but I won't put the production into the navy right now since it can serve no purpose anyway.

Has this happened to anyone before? I mean even though I've never used Brit before I've always seen/heard people on the different TW communities make side jokes and the like about all of the rebel ships in the English Channel...but seriously..this is a joke. 2-4 dozen of them with thousands (yes, at least 2000) soldiers, all hanging around the Channel and my ports the whole game? Not only that...but interestingly enough, when the Gual were forced to pull back from the war front with me in Europe (getting their rear's handed to them by me...economically, militarily, politically, as well as having to worry about the germans in the east and the romans who are attacking them from the south) the next turn I find a Gallic ship next to my port up in Londonium. Has 11 crew members, 3 chevrons. How on EARTH does that little piddle-poke ship make it through 2 dozen pirates and 2000+ naval soldiers? I know what it had to go through because I sacrificed a ship for intelligence at sea a couple turns back and seriously...there's NO way even 3 double chevroned Tiremes could have made it 1/4 of the way from Southern Spain to England. No way.

What is going on here? lol

:wall:

[danfda]

I've not played RTW in quite some time, but there is an annoying pirate spawn phenomenon, what with them appearing all over all too frequently and all too powerful. They've all got scurvy, so how tough can they be?

The most common solution is to change the spawn rate of pirates. To do this you have to edit the priate_spawn_value (bigger = less pirates) in the descr_strat file. At least I think this is correct; I simply d'led player1's bug-fixer mod and didn't mess with it myself. Search the forums for a confirmation, or someone knowledgeable may post it in here for you...
;)

[WarMachine420]

I've not played RTW in quite some time, but there is an annoying pirate spawn phenomenon, what with them appearing all over all too frequently and all too powerful. They've all got scurvy, so how tough can they be?

The most common solution is to change the spawn rate of pirates. To do this you have to edit the priate_spawn_value (bigger = less pirates) in the descr_strat file. At least I think this is correct; I simply d'led player1's bug-fixer mod and didn't mess with it myself. Search the forums for a confirmation, or someone knowledgeable may post it in here for you...
;)

Thank you very much. Look...I'm really anal about not altering ANYTHING that might give me an advantage. Always have been (should've seen me playing sports games as a kid). However, if you're telling me that this is a legit bug that occurrs every now and then, well I'll have to look into it as you suggested.

I just found it hard to believe that the devs intended for a naval fleet comparable to something from the Imperial Era to be zipping around the seas in 265bc. :no:

[Severous]

Hi

I play RTW unmoddified in any way.

My experience in this area is:

-Seen quite powerful pirates when playing Julii on m/m. But nothing as powerful as you describe.
-As Brutii on h/h, and Egypt on vh/vh I went nowhere near the English Channel.
-Currently as Gaul on Vh/Vh I have seen hardly any pirate ships.

Observations of pirate ships generally are that survivors gain experience quickly and become undefeatable. If they can rack up victories against weak AI factions (or your own) then they become impossible to ignore.

When facing strong pirates I hole up in ports and limit my naval actions to troop transporting that takes no more than one turn to complete. Fortunately as Brit (or Gaul), the English Channel is easy to ferry troops across. If I remember rightly the ship doesnt need to leave Londons port in order to allow troops to walk across the channel.

[WarMachine420]

Hi

I play RTW unmoddified in any way.

My experience in this area is:

-Seen quite powerful pirates when playing Julii on m/m. But nothing as powerful as you describe.
-As Brutii on h/h, and Egypt on vh/vh I went nowhere near the English Channel.
-Currently as Gaul on Vh/Vh I have seen hardly any pirate ships.

Observations of pirate ships generally are that survivors gain experience quickly and become undefeatable. If they can rack up victories against weak AI factions (or your own) then they become impossible to ignore.

When facing strong pirates I hole up in ports and limit my naval actions to troop transporting that takes no more than one turn to complete. Fortunately as Brit (or Gaul), the English Channel is easy to ferry troops across. If I remember rightly the ship doesnt need to leave Londons port in order to allow troops to walk across the channel.

No it does...just not very far. 90 percent of the time though you can get the ships back and across like 3 times with multiple units.

As for not engaging them, that's exactly what I've done. I'm slowly building up a navy that will eventually take control of western europe. That's a part of another blitzkrieg attack I pull later on though.

:laugh4: