A lot of the strategies for UP mention that you should take up all of the trade spots in the various regions (i.e. Madagascar) but I am not sure how you can possibly do that with the new patch. Every time I leave a small fleet on the trade point, the pirates come and blow it away. Did the pirates not attack ships on the trade points before the 1.3 patch?

It costs so much time and resources to create the large fleets that I am not seeing the large returns that people are reporting.