Something needs to be done about this!!!

[gran_guitarra]

Okay, I want to know why nobody has done anything about the HUGE Eleutheroi navies that keep popping up out of nowhere.


In my Romani Campaign I spent 30 turns trying to take out three navies. After nearly 100k in ships and a butload of defeats I finally managed to destroy the freaking Eleutheroi navies, only three ships survived.

What happens next??? THREE MORE ELEUTHEROI NAVIES OF OVER 15 SHIPS EACH SHOW UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They slaughter my navy and admiral of five stars, losing only one and a half of their fleets. I rebuild my fleets, this time in groups of two Triremes and three pentekoterai for preserving cash flow and because the description says that they're great against pirates. I finally manage to win after sacrificing two navies like that.

I have peace on the sea for about ten years. Then what happens???


FIVE ELEUTHEROI NAVIES SHOW UP, THE SMALLEST WITH FIVE SHIPS THE LARGEST WITH 19, AND THE REST WITH 12-15!!!!!!!!! I'VE TRIED TO TAKE THEM, BUT AT THE SAME TIME THE LUSOTANAN AND ARVERNI ALLY AGAINST ME!!!! Now I have four gigantic pirate navies, no fleet, and an overseas war.


Really guys. In less than thirty years I've lost four family members, a full Legion, and over thirty ships, and I STILL HAVE MORE THAN 30 PIRATE SHIPS CLOGGING UP THE SEA!!!!!!!!!! Which is curios because the admirals have GERMAN/CASSE names or GETIC NAMES. Apparently the game AI thought that I didn't have enough trouble as it was and sent all the pirates from Brittain, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, the Aegean Sea, and whereever else there were pirates to **** me in a body cavity I will not mention.

Please tell me you have a plan to fix this problem, as I have seen many people complain and I have never noticed it in vanilla, since there are a lot of pirates, but the fleets are really small.

[Zaknafien]

Heh. Pirates were a ***** in antiquity :)

[Xehh II]

I doubt pirate were that bad, in my KH campaign I had 4 pirate fleets with 20 ships each.

[Zaknafien]

really? sure took the romans plenty of time and money to defeat them. and it was only temporary, of course. Not to mention the younger Pompey's pirate navy that harassed Augustus for years and years.

[Ravenic]

Heh. Pirates were a ***** in antiquity

True, but they never formed gigantic armada's comparable to the D-Day landing force of literally hundreds of ships. Let alone multiple armada's.

From what I understand, most pirates enjoyed attacking merchantmen, or things like that, never an actual nation's military fleet.

[blitzkrieg80]

pirates are different from large scale insurgents using naval warfare... no trade or civilization would have functioned if it was commonplace to gather en masse and assault communities... imagine Sea People invasions without end... I think that's a little different from Roman dealings with pirates

suffice to say, pirates should be reduced from the last build, it is really a bad coincidence that they are massing like they are, because by themselves they're weak

[gran_guitarra]

really? sure took the romans plenty of time and money to defeat them. and it was only temporary, of course. Not to mention the younger Pompey's pirate navy that harassed Augustus for years and years.


That rant started in 260-something BC. It was 228 BC when it ended (thanks to a premature CTD.


You're telling me I will have to waste 100k mnai every 40 or so turns to keep my sea lanes clean?

Let's be realistic, genuine fleets were never assembled by pirates. The vast majority of the time it was maybe three or four ships tops (most of the time just a single armed ship). Pirates also never attacked a real nation's trade. They might raid a single city without a navy/manpower to defend itself, but you have never heard of pirates in antiquity attacking say, Rome or Carthage's cities and sacking them. Their merchant ships sure, but not their actual warships.

The way pirates are in-game right now is obscene, and really quite unrealistic. I doubt that some random pirate with no command skills could get say, five hundred sailors under his control, and then defeat 100 trained mariners and marines educated by one of the world's leading powers in antiquity.
Just look at Salamis. A 150 to 200 Greek Triremes (at the time Greeks were some of the best sailors in the world) defeated between 300 and 400 Persian warships because they were better.

A battle hardened Admiral (five stars), with nearly 100 sailors and marines trained by the one of the leading Sea-powers at the time (as Rome had become by then) should defeat 500 pirates with little to no training, under a deadbrained admiral, with stripped down POS's for boats.

[Ravenic]

The numbers you see is ships, not men by the way. So if a little Trireme picture says '26' it's actually 26 boats, not 26 sailors.

Personally, I think it's more realistic if a pirate stack of 1-3 'fleet's' show's up every turn or so and blockades a random port.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Funny, I never had big problems with pirates (0.81). Perhaps they changed it in gran guitarra's build?

I have 3 fleets at the moment, of which is one consisting of 2 units Trieres, and the other two each made up of 2 units Trihemiolai. If they encounter one of the regularly spawning pirate groups of 1 to 3 units of pirate ships, that with 52 ships and that with 150 ships as well, they fight them, each unit taking 2 to 5 losses, and completely destroy the pirate fleet. Perhaps the Hellenic ships are better?

[Zaknafien]

at the height of his anti-pirate campaign, Pompey captured 846 pirate ships, and enslaved their crews.

[Ravenic]

Yes, but that counted for a large portion of the Mediterranean pirate fleets. I'm sure in that figure he's also included small boats, like schooner's just to sound more impressive.

Even so, after he did that the sea's were relatively clear for a long while, until his son went and reorganized the pirates using rebels, desserters, former-pompeian's, etc.

[gran_guitarra]

Funny, I never had big problems with pirates (0.81). Perhaps they changed it in gran guitarra's build?

I have 3 fleets at the moment, of which is one consisting of 2 units Trieres, and the other two each made up of 2 units Trihemiolai. If they encounter one of the regularly spawning pirate groups of 1 to 3 units of pirate ships, that with 52 ships and that with 150 ships as well, they fight them, each unit taking 2 to 5 losses, and completely destroy the pirate fleet. Perhaps the Hellenic ships are better?


Well I had to delete my game thanks to a CTD, but while it was still going I had only one fleet of five ships (during the time of peace mentioned)(maintaining three legions is expensive), and did as you do, I destroyed every single small group of pirates, but nobody does that in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, the Aegean Sea, or the areas around Brittain/Ireland. This wouldn't be such a big problem if it weren't for the fact that those damn fleets, for some really wierd reason, come several thousand miles to my territories. That means that the small groups of two or three pirate ships that were formed in the aforementioned places merged into groups of six or eight, then twelve or so, and finally they reached a nearly full stack of pirate ships.
When five groups like that show up at your doorstep you are going to have a problem, especially if they have a couple of stars from sinking some random weakling navy from an underdeveloped AI.

[christof139]

In the Mithradatic Wars the Pirates did some fighting against the Rhodians and Romans, and were a big factor in Mithradates controlling the seas for some time. The Pirates helped 'M' a lot, but the romans and Rhodians and friends eventually attacked Cilicia itself and they were basically brought under rein.

Most of the Pirate ships appear to have been Uniremes, various Hemiolas and Biremes, although it seems they might have had a few larger ships, maybe some Triremes, Quads and Quins, but those would be very rare.

I have only played RTW a few time a few years ago, and like METW-VI and STW better, but I thnk you all for warning me about the Pirate unbalance in RTW, as I am getting a Total Eras package soon.

This Pirate problem could probably be easily corrected with a tweak or two.

Chris


Chris

[larsbecks]

Go to descr_strat file and near the top there are brigand and pirate values. The closer the number to 100 the fewer they will pop up. Putting 9999 will make sure no pirates or slaves pop up anywhere.

[Ravenic]

I think of those numbers are percents...so that means 100 to 9999=9999% of 'normal' pirate spawn.

Doesn't it? O_o

[larsbecks]

I think of those numbers are percents...so that means 100 to 9999=9999% of 'normal' pirate spawn.

Doesn't it? O_o

I play with both at 9999 and no pop ups so far.

[Veris]

Yeah the pirate navies are messed up currently. but either change the desc_strat files as suggested (9999 works perfectly. I've had 0 problems with that in all my campaigns). If you want a mid-game fix, just use auto_win. Sadly you can't do that for the A.I; at most you can compensate by giving them more money to replace their always sunk naval plans.

The A.I has 0 ability to do anything by sea because of these unrealistic navies. The RTW A.I already sucks badly enough, there is no reason to hurt them more. Historically pirates could not take out the navy of a giant empire. They weren't some extremely organized force that grouped together and overwhelmed the enemy, but rather targeted civilian/merchant ships and if they did try to fight a real navy, it would not have been with a massed force, for that would surely have spelled defeat.

[Geoffrey S]

I see the damage done to fleets as a representation of the damage done to civilian shipping.

[bovi]

The AI already has no ability to do anything at sea, so the pirate navies are blocking player usage of the sea a lot more than the AI.

[hoom]

Well, pirates are one of those things where quality > quantity.
I've had a single unit of Carthaginian Quinquremes destroy 300+ pirate ships (half stack) in a single battle & with minimal losses.
Take them on in weaker ships like Triremes & you can expect heavy casualties.

[The Internet]

I have a dedicated fleet of a couple tri's that are highly experienced as "hunter killers" to keep them all at bay in my area and if i need to i'll bulster the ranks with more ships for a short time if a massive fleet shows up.

[Imperator]

Well, it's true that pirates never congregated in huge fleets, but to diminish the frequency and size of pirate appearances would be to grossly understate the danger they posed in the Med at the time. Basically, the number is right, but the AI insists on merging the stacks, which is rather a-historical. Then again, there aren't nearly enough challenges to the player on the open sea anyway. I consider it a way of simulating storms (probably the no. 1 cause of fleet damage back then) or whatnot.

[Pharnakes]

Are there not supposedly storms in rtw, anyway? I personaly have never knowingly come across one, in vannila or any mod. Are there plans to introduce them to eb?

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Well, pirates are one of those things where quality > quantity.
I've had a single unit of Carthaginian Quinquremes destroy 300+ pirate ships (half stack) in a single battle & with minimal losses.
Take them on in weaker ships like Triremes & you can expect heavy casualties.
I quite agree with you good sir,

I can't be bothered to mess around at sea, if I am playing as one of the more advanced factions, I wait until my coffers can absorb the shock, then I build 2-3 of their best ships/fleets and these crush large groups of pirates easily, most of the time.

In fact I like to avoid a war across the Med somewhere, until I am reasonably assured I have naval dominance. I invest to much effort in an army+commander, just to see him go down to the briny depths. One doesn't like to gamble you see, a nasty habit!

[mAIOR]

I don't agree with this model of piracy. Havong such great pirate navies is unrealistic. They posed a problem to trading not warfare in itself. Take the Macedonian harassing the ptolies routes to aid Greece. They avoided attacking fleets with military escort. I don't think anything above a Triere should have trouble dealing with pirates. They should have smaller fleets (5 units tops) and be more scattered. Like so many others said, this further cripples the AI making their navy useless...


Cheers...

[Ravenic]

I do seem to recall in Vanilla that you'd see navies from just above any nation swimming around in the 'Med, with one or two pirate fleet's yelling "argh, shiver me timbers" before being sunk with all promptness.

Now, probably in no small part to EB's fleet costs and upkeep, the A.I. doesn't even seem to find it prudent to build navies in the first place. I can honestly recall only two times when i've even seen another nation's naval forces outside of their starting ships.

[Zaknafien]

Nah. I get naval invasions all the time in my latest builds. I use BI exe of course, though.

[Ravenic]

Aye?

Well I use R:TW 1.5. It's a problemo for me.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Are there not supposedly storms in rtw, anyway? I personaly have never knowingly come across one, in vannila or any mod. Are there plans to introduce them to eb?
I had one in vanilla.

There are very few disasters in EB at all right now. If you lower health bonuses or don't build health buildings, you may get a rare plague. And there is about one flood every hundred years. Teleklos has redone the disasters and expect some new stuff for the future of EB.

[I Am Herenow]

Don't forget that CA has said it will include a new moddable Famine disaster in Kingdoms.

[Swordmaster]

Well, pirates are one of those things where quality > quantity.
I've had a single unit of Carthaginian Quinquremes destroy 300+ pirate ships (half stack) in a single battle & with minimal losses.
Take them on in weaker ships like Triremes & you can expect heavy casualties.

Sorry, must disagree. I also built a couple of Quinquereme fleets in Karthadast, each of which was sunk relatively soon by relatively small pirate fleets. I tried again with a host of Covered Liburnes and had a lot more success.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I generally found that one / two heavy ships (being nearly always Greek, that's Pentere & Polireme for me) + a bunch of cheep and cheerful augmented by some Rhodians ... works like a charm.