Two Huge Eleuthori Navy Pops Up Out of Nowhere

I usually have 4-5 fleets composed of 2-3 covered libreme fleet/Triemes patrolling the Mediterranean to eliminate pirates. On 217 BCE, for some reason, 2 huge pirate Eleuthori fleets pop out of nowhere. (they all have 2 chevrons for some reason)

I thought only the north had huge pirate fleets cuz the south usually has AI factions clearing out the rebels? And this is actually one of the largest fleets I've ever seen...

weird, here's the pic:


First fleet:
https://img162.imageshack.us/img162/...8247636dv6.jpg

Second fleet:
https://img162.imageshack.us/img162/...7495996wx1.jpg

btw, the pirate units are stacked with more than 20 units per fleet...scrolling down
I found a couple more 84 & 26 ships.

well, in fact, they only have 20. If you count all the ships there in those pics, you see 18 per fleet.

Those are two massive fleets!!

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Originally Posted by Roman_Man#3

well, in fact, they only have 20. If you count all the ships there in those pics, you see 18 per fleet.

Those are two massive fleets!!

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ah, I see...must've miscounted cuz I thought each row contained 10. Yeh, so there are 20 units of veteran pirate ships per fleet... :(

The main suprise is that they poped out of nowhere...my fleets had been killing pirates for decades and hadn't encountered a pirate fleet for many years now...

Eleutheroi land stacks spawn throghout the game, why shouldn't naval stacks do the same?

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Originally Posted by Dan_Grr

Eleutheroi land stacks spawn throghout the game, why shouldn't naval stacks do the same?

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because Eleutheroi spawns a few units at a time...not spawn 2 gigantic veteran fleets in a single turn. I've been clearing out small pirate fleets around the region, so this is probably not several pirate fleets merging into one unit.

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Originally Posted by Dan_Grr

Eleutheroi land stacks spawn throghout the game, why shouldn't naval stacks do the same?

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Because it's a lot easier to defeat a full stack army than a full stack navy.
You need a navy a lot bigger than the pirate navy to defeat it (because of the pirate's experience & command stars).
Just think of the enormous costs to create & maintain such a navy.
And don't forget the messed-up auto-resolve...:whip:

there is a file where you can change the spawn rate of pirates and rebels, but I can't remember which one it is.

Edit: did a search and I found out which one it is.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenith Darksea
Right, I've managed it, and it's not hard to do actually. Go into descr_rebel_factions in the Data file, scroll down until you find Rebel Faction: Bandits, and you'll see there's a line that reads something like 'frequency' or 'chance of appearing' or something like that. It's currently set to 15 (I'm sure it was 20 in the original RTW though...). Basically, the higher the value, the lower the chances of bandits appearing. I halved the chances by increasing the value to 30. Ramp it up to 100 though and you'll practically never see them again.

I have no problem with the pirate spawn rate...I was just suprised because this spawn was so sudden & there were so many..so I wondered if there was a glitch or something... :D

If you're playing with the "civilized" factions (greeks for eg) you don't need more ships. You just need 2 or 3 of your own regular ships to destroy several boats. I usually win these fleets with 3 ships of my own. I can't do the same with Lusotanna, as they have shitty boats.

They might have come from the North Sea; usually the pirates there start bunching up as they keep spawning with nobody up there to kill them off.

f34r Admiral Buggerrandimnozzzz and Admiral Panda the Great, rawr!11!!

Am I the only one seeing the obvious that admiral Panda (:inquisitive: ) warped in from another dimension in order to restore the persian empire, but dominated by asian critters?

I THOUGHT YOU PEOPLE KNEW ABOUT HISTORY! :furious3:

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Originally Posted by JeffBag

They might have come from the North Sea; usually the pirates there start bunching up as they keep spawning with nobody up there to kill them off.

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Thats very likely. I had 4 or 5 big fleets (more than 10 ships, 2 nearly full) one day coming down the west side of spain one after the other and several smaller fleets beyond them. Around 100 pirate ships in 2-turn distance. :dizzy2:
They killed my huge-army-with-general that was on a 2-ship fleet in the first attack. :furious3:

Admiral Giant Panda for the win!!! :D


I mustered 7-8 of my best warships (covered liberemes, triemes, each with 2-3 silver chevrons) and attacked & defeated the pirate fleet, taking heavy losses...

I'll post the resulting pics asap. :)

This is when Quinquiremes and Poiliremes rock. You only need 2 or so and you will beat the full stack pirate navies.

Unfortunately this doesn't help Casse flotillas :(

Panda is a celtic name.

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Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus

Panda is a celtic name.

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Seconded. Plus, it's a cute name. Why shouldn't you feel happy for having such a fuzzy admiral? BTW, do not fight pandas or the Getai will get you! :knight:

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

Seconded. Plus, it's a cute name. Why shouldn't you feel happy for having such a fuzzy admiral? BTW, do not fight pandas or the Getai will get you! :knight:

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the giant panda is a half ton killing machine that can easily bite off the head of a Gastarne in a split second.

Panda's are FAT and LAZY.

which is why they are on the endangered species list.

So I guess us Americans are next?

No because we have food EVERYWHERE. Silly panadas only eat like 1 type of bamboo that's hard to find, but we have a Burger King or something every 3 three, so we will be fine.

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Originally Posted by LordCurlyton

So I guess us Americans are next?

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I resemble that remark:laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Intranetusa

the giant panda is a half ton killing machine that can easily bite off the head of a Gastarne in a split second.

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So? They're still warm, cuddly and fuzzy. ~:grouphug:

Meandering back to the topic.....

I have observed the following:
1. Pirate fleets usually spawn 2 ships. One 84 man monster and one 26. Sometimes there are more 26ers but it is usually a manageable enemy to encounter.
2. When left alone, pirate fleets that come into contact with each other tend to merge. Hence large monster fleets.

You have two choices. You can duck from harbour to harbour or you build up a strong enough force to kick their butt. I've done the latter. My ships are now sporting gold chevrons from all the fighting with pirate fleets, so that when I finally have to face Romans or Ptolies, I have the upper hand.

/Sygrod

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Originally Posted by MastaSpoofa

Panda's are FAT and LAZY.

which is why they are on the endangered species list.

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I dunno why this is so funny, but it is :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Sygrod

Meandering back to the topic.....

You have two choices. You can duck from harbour to harbour or you build up a strong enough force to kick their butt. I've done the latter. My ships are now sporting gold chevrons from all the fighting with pirate fleets, so that when I finally have to face Romans or Ptolies, I have the upper hand.

/Sygrod

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Yeah did about the same thing when I played as AS. Boy, those pirates must have feared my silver chevroned Huge Poliremes and their 3 stars after just 3 battles general with his fleet of experienced trieres and pentekonterai... :grin:

Please look where this navy is situated:

https://img159.imageshack.us/img159/...tospirajd6.jpg

Looks like a really safe place for a navy.

Goodness, that's a really snugly divided continental Europe you have in your campaign. And it's a really neat combination of colours too, soothing on the eye, it is.

Results: :D

https://img410.imageshack.us/img410/...iratny0.th.jpg


https://img237.imageshack.us/img237/...iratpu5.th.jpg


https://img61.imageshack.us/img61/15...iratgv1.th.jpg


"Goodness, that's a really snugly divided continental Europe you have in your campaign. And it's a really neat combination of colours too, soothing on the eye, it is."


You talking about my pic or Centurio Nixalsverdrus's pic? lol

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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi

Goodness, that's a really snugly divided continental Europe you have in your campaign. And it's a really neat combination of colours too, soothing on the eye, it is.

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Yes, I guess I was lucky with it. :yes:

Does nobody find it strange to have a navy just in the middle of the belgian continental land mass?

I'm a newbie - currently in the middle of my first game - so maybe what I'm seeing is a fluke. Anyway, it seems that the Eleutheroi on Gotland are churning out ship after ship, and I have the impression most of those ships move out to the Atlantic after a while. My guess would be that after they've put a strong stack of units into their Gotland city, they focus on building ships, and move them along the coast. They've even blockaded a port of mine for a couple of turns!

That's interesting.

In my 0.80 Casse campaign I noticed that the Eleutheroi fleets seemed to come down the English Channel from the North Sea in convoys of 4 to 6 fleets. I assumed they were patrolling - but it looks like they were just heading for the Med!

I assumed the boats were being created by scripts. Every time I built a fleet (the Casse could only build ships in south-east Ireland and north-Cornwall), it would be caught crossing the Channel by 3 or 4 enemy fleets.

What would generally happen is that I would beat the first fleet with heavy losses. The second would then beat me, and my retreat would fail to take me out of range of the third fleet, which administered the coup-de-grace. The whole process felt rather like being run over by a bus.

I thought that if I kept building fleets, the Eleutheroi would eventually run out of boats. Looks like I was wrong.

I ended up conquering Gaul almost entirely with troops recruited locally - it was just too expensive to recruit a new fleet for every stack of elites I wanted to transport across the Channel.

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Originally Posted by Juvenal

That's interesting.
I ended up conquering Gaul almost entirely with troops recruited locally - it was just too expensive to recruit a new fleet for every stack of elites I wanted to transport across the Channel.

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Interesting :)

The pirate fleets aren't created by script. They just randomly spawn and then conjugate. When there are no (non-pirate) fleets or all fleets are in port, they gather (usually in the Baltic, Adriatic, Persian Gulf, or the Danube delta). Once a fleet (especially yours) leave a port, they 'see' it, no matter where they are, and they will sail full speed to attack it. Once your fleet is gone or back in port they conjugate in their normal areas again. They just seem to come out of nowhere...

There's a fleet ON LAND. Isn't that a... erhh... noteworthy glitch?

It is something that just happens. I have seen it in other mods, and maybe even vanilla. Just ignore the fleet, it shouldn't in any way interfer with anything else. If you want, try to move the fleet with the "move_character" command...

OK! I thougt this was something spectactular...:laugh4: :cheerleader:

https://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4314/pirateslq6.jpg

109 units of Small Pirate Fleet, Great Pirate Fleet, and Sea Warriors...
Looks like my admiral is about the gain a lot of command stars :D

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First fleet:


Second fleet:

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OMG!!!! :dizzy2:
Remember that in EB each boat means on full fleet and not an single boat!!!!
That seems an little non historical, lol...
Or maybe the persian embire got himself eleutheroi... So you should call Leonidas and the 300's spartan supermans :clown:

Are they just spawning like this, or are they combining?

If they are combining, is there some way to keep Eleutheroi fleets from forming masses over a certain size, or at all? I mean, I don't see small Eleutheroi armies banding together to form super-massive armies.

They are combining to form those fleets. There has been dicussion of altering them because they shouldn't be as big of a problem as they currently are.

The problem is that the fleet wander a bit then get stuck somewhere like the Baltic. If rebel armies had nowhere to go, nothing to attack, and nothing to defend, they would collect in a few random places too.

So could you maybe script the creation of AI navies to give them a target, and at the same time keep their numbers down a bit?

And feed them XP ? Yikes.

XP dosen't make so much difference to ships as they ahve higher stats than normal units, but yes, I take your point.

I was really thinking more of the admirals. Command stars are important in autocalc right ?

In my present campaign , i am controling all ports at Caspian Sea..but can't make any ships...

Needless to say all of my ports are under permanent pirate blockade for last 20+ years = waste of money for building all of them + no port trade income:oops:

I think those pirates ships are bit to much prone to multiplying, hehe

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Originally Posted by mlp071

In my present campaign , i am controling all ports at Caspian Sea..but can't make any ships...

Needless to say all of my ports are under permanent pirate blockade for last 20+ years = waste of money for building all of them + no port trade income:oops:

I think those pirates ships are bit to much prone to multiplying, hehe

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Have you checked the maps in the Guides and AAR section of the forums? One of them shows the provinces you can build a military port to construct ships.

The Hellenic factions have the easiest time in dealing with piracy. All they need is to upgrade their military port to the highest level. Then build one Huge Polireme for anti-piracy patrol.

Works like a charm. My triple silver chevroned Epirote admiral has sunk all the pirates in the med. Along with the fleets used by the AI factions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Errant

Have you checked the maps in the Guides and AAR section of the forums? One of them shows the provinces you can build a military port to construct ships.

The Hellenic factions have the easiest time in dealing with piracy. All they need is to upgrade their military port to the highest level. Then build one Huge Polireme for anti-piracy patrol.

Works like a charm. My triple silver chevroned Epirote admiral has sunk all the pirates in the med. Along with the fleets used by the AI factions.

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Yeah i can make transport ship in Black sea and Meditteranean, as Sauromatae..maybe if i go with different goverment in Caspian i can do same..

Still they are not match for several pirate ships..All pirates have 3+ units in their fleet. And i don't use auto_win feature.

I was just about to say that about half of the Eleutheroi navies originate in the Baltic and North Sea. Roy1991's picture pretty much got there first. That's why I almost always turn the frequency of their spawning to the bare minimum. Compared to their land-locked counterparts, the navies face very little opposition, esspecially in the first few turns. As such in many of my games there's an abundance of HUGE rebel navies with VERY experienced admirals and more than their fair share of gold chevrons. It makes things interesting, I suppose.. but it's hardly realistic. Pirate fleets are few and far between in history, and really shouldn't crop up every couple of years as they do in EB.

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Originally Posted by Justiciar

It makes things interesting, I suppose.. but it's hardly realistic. Pirate fleets are few and far between in history, and really shouldn't crop up every couple of years as they do in EB.

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Few and far between? they are now, but until the last 200 years or so they were just the opposite.

Piracy was pretty much universal, true. But it impacted trade, not war-fleets, which pirates stayed the Hell away from. Only Early Modern "pirate states" like the city-havens of the Barbary Corsairs or the fig-leaf "privateers" of the Europeans (whose vessels tended to be little short of privately owned and at least partially state-backed warships themselves) had afloat enough ironmongery to even consider taking on military ships, and normally preferred to rather chase merchantmen anyway.

I just think of them more as the Navies of the Eleutheroi kingdoms than pirates, but even then they shouldn't be banding together like they do

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Originally Posted by Watchman

Piracy was pretty much universal, true. But it impacted trade, not war-fleets, which pirates stayed the Hell away from. Only Early Modern "pirate states" like the city-havens of the Barbary Corsairs or the fig-leaf "privateers" of the Europeans (whose vessels tended to be little short of privately owned and at least partially state-backed warships themselves) had afloat enough ironmongery to even consider taking on military ships, and normally preferred to rather chase merchantmen anyway.

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True, prehaps a decrease in pirate stats is called for then? Or an increase of regular navie's stats?

Just kill the spawn rate. If left at standard level they just take away from the game. The A.I should not be punished for trying to use a navy, since it's hard enough to get them to do that without BI.

I seem to rememeber in Vannila a signifigant amount of naval activity, what has happened to stop this working in eb? Or am I just imagineing this?

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Originally Posted by mlp071

..maybe if i go with different goverment in Caspian i can do same..

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There are no naval ports on the Caspian. Originally there was a workaround that prevented pirates from being in the Caspian, but the same workaround killed all trade in the Caspian...

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Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus

There are no naval ports on the Caspian. Originally there was a workaround that prevented pirates from being in the Caspian, but the same workaround killed all trade in the Caspian...

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Oh well money for building 5 ports well wasted , hehe:sweatdrop:

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Originally Posted by Pharnakes

I seem to rememeber in Vannila a signifigant amount of naval activity, what has happened to stop this working in eb? Or am I just imagineing this?

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Vanila= run over your rebel neighboor with ease..... EB= fight hard your rebel neighboor:egypt: I found EB way more interesting :yes:

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Originally Posted by mlp071

Vanila= run over your rebel neighboor with ease..... EB= fight hard your rebel neighboor:egypt: I found EB way more interesting :yes:

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Well yes, obviously EB is better, but I don't see what you mean, you seem to think that I was in some way attacking eb, far from it, I was just ondering about peoples thoughts on the relative degrees of nava activity in vannila compard to eb, or even other mods.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pharnakes

Well yes, obviously EB is better, but I don't see what you mean, you seem to think that I was in some way attacking eb, far from it, I was just ondering about peoples thoughts on the relative degrees of nava activity in vannila compard to eb, or even other mods.

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Oh no , i didn't understood that way :2thumbsup:

..It's just the fact that Rebels gets more money in EB then Vanila or some other mods, ships are (i think ) more costly to build and upkeep and repop times for rebels are faster...Which is fine since it makes them more challenging imho

Thats what i meant, not that you said something against EB, sorry for misunderstanding...

The current setting is:

Code:

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rebel_type                        pirates
category                        pirates
chance                                25
description                        pirates
unit                                generic ship sea warriors
unit                                generic ship small pirate
unit                                generic ship great pirate

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And this picture is from 175BC (testgame).
https://img410.imageshack.us/my.php?...utheroiym5.jpg

So what should be the optimal setting?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lignator

there is a file where you can change the spawn rate of pirates and rebels, but I can't remember which one it is.

Edit: did a search and I found out which one it is.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenith Darksea
Right, I've managed it, and it's not hard to do actually. Go into descr_rebel_factions in the Data file, scroll down until you find Rebel Faction: Bandits, and you'll see there's a line that reads something like 'frequency' or 'chance of appearing' or something like that. It's currently set to 15 (I'm sure it was 20 in the original RTW though...). Basically, the higher the value, the lower the chances of bandits appearing. I halved the chances by increasing the value to 30. Ramp it up to 100 though and you'll practically never see them again.

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im pretty sure you still get them quite a bit on 100. 100 is not the max you can put in. you can set it as high as 99999999999 or even more.

on the subject of navies, i really think they hinder the AI. they dont even dont use the navies they own for anything useful, but they still build a lot of them, which due to the very high upkeep costs, drains money away from doing more useful things, like funding elite armies (rather than full stacks of militia).