Quote Originally Posted by LordCurlyton
The pirate fleets are still there, but if you capture the two naval port cities (Ivernis and Ictis, IIRC), you can build a second level warship that is statistically better than the various iterations of "crappy pirate fleet" (ie the second tier warship is 8 att 10 def vs 4 and 4 for ye olde pirate fleets) so even though you probably won't be able to build up a big enough fleet to wipe out full stacks at once unless you manage to get a VERY good economy going you can still get one that could support 5 or 6 units or quality warship effectively and that will quickly whittle the fleets down, even if you may spend a few years retraining them as they work their way through the full stacks.
Personally, in the Casse campaign I am running concurrently with a Pahlavi one, I intend to wait for the first reforms to kick in before invading. I'm debating between going for Gaul proper and the inevitable Roman confrontation or "migrating" and pulling a reverse-Viking by taking Denmark and the other Nordic lands before sending my rowdy sea dogs into the Baltic.
Same, I was thinking of going Nordic too(for obvious reasons) Then taking every single Island in the Med.

Just because Islands are easier to defend.