Quote Originally Posted by 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.
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.