Pirates

[rebelscum]

Well I hope they will have named pirates, like Edward Teach aka blackbeard!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Knowing CA's penchant for general's names that reference either history or humor (or both), yes.

[ninjahboy]

privateers i think would be more prominent

[NagatsukaShumi]

Hopefully you can hire your own privateers, if not, "rebel" pirates with historical pirates would be great.

[Zenicetus]

Ugh... I hope not. You'll be commanding flag fleets of up to 20 ships, including (late period) ships of the line. Any real pirate would turn tail and run, the minute he saw your ship over the horizon. There were a few exceptions (I think Morgan had 10 ships at one point), but pirates were mostly lone predators on merchant ships that weren't very well armed.

The way pirates/rebel ships have been represented in RTW and MTW never made much sense to me. All the big (user-selectable) ships on the strategy map are fully armed combat ships. Your merchant ships are those tiny things that crawl along the trade routes, and the "pirates" don't attack those. They just wander around waiting to attack your navy. Weird, and not at all how real pirates operate. They're acting more like privateers, except they're not under a clear allegiance to any other faction.

So I hope they aren't represented the same way in Empire. If they're in at all, they should be just a minor annoyance... there for a little local color in the Caribbean, the Barbary Coast, and maybe the Indian Ocean if you can navigate there around the tip of Africa. I think the game's naval combat will be more along the lines of Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey, Nelson, etc... conflict between nations and sizable fleets, not rag-tag pirates. I really hope they avoid the Disney route here. There should be enough "wow" factor with real navies pumping cannon fire at each other.

[Darkarbiter]

Ugh... I hope not. You'll be commanding flag fleets of up to 20 ships, including (late period) ships of the line. Any real pirate would turn tail and run, the minute he saw your ship over the horizon. There were a few exceptions (I think Morgan had 10 ships at one point), but pirates were mostly lone predators on merchant ships that weren't very well armed.

The way pirates/rebel ships have been represented in RTW and MTW never made much sense to me. All the big (user-selectable) ships on the strategy map are fully armed combat ships. Your merchant ships are those tiny things that crawl along the trade routes, and the "pirates" don't attack those. They just wander around waiting to attack your navy. Weird, and not at all how real pirates operate. They're acting more like privateers, except they're not under a clear allegiance to any other faction.

So I hope they aren't represented the same way in Empire. If they're in at all, they should be just a minor annoyance... there for a little local color in the Caribbean, the Barbary Coast, and maybe the Indian Ocean if you can navigate there around the tip of Africa. I think the game's naval combat will be more along the lines of Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey, Nelson, etc... conflict between nations and sizable fleets, not rag-tag pirates. I really hope they avoid the Disney route here. There should be enough "wow" factor with real navies pumping cannon fire at each other.

+1
Defenitly

[ninjahboy]

privateers would be more suitable i think

[NagatsukaShumi]

Ugh... I hope not. You'll be commanding flag fleets of up to 20 ships, including (late period) ships of the line. Any real pirate would turn tail and run, the minute he saw your ship over the horizon. There were a few exceptions (I think Morgan had 10 ships at one point), but pirates were mostly lone predators on merchant ships that weren't very well armed.

The way pirates/rebel ships have been represented in RTW and MTW never made much sense to me. All the big (user-selectable) ships on the strategy map are fully armed combat ships. Your merchant ships are those tiny things that crawl along the trade routes, and the "pirates" don't attack those. They just wander around waiting to attack your navy. Weird, and not at all how real pirates operate. They're acting more like privateers, except they're not under a clear allegiance to any other faction.

So I hope they aren't represented the same way in Empire. If they're in at all, they should be just a minor annoyance... there for a little local color in the Caribbean, the Barbary Coast, and maybe the Indian Ocean if you can navigate there around the tip of Africa. I think the game's naval combat will be more along the lines of Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey, Nelson, etc... conflict between nations and sizable fleets, not rag-tag pirates. I really hope they avoid the Disney route here. There should be enough "wow" factor with real navies pumping cannon fire at each other.

Yes they should be just a minor annoyance, whats stopping them being lone ships that merely cause a bit of hassle in your colonies?

Nobody would ask for pirates to get huge fleets that can stomp countries, because Pirates would never stand a chance against the full might of a country. But it'd be nice to just see them pop up with historical pirate captains in tow, just like El Cid appearing was interesting.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

All they'd need to do is blockade harbors and disrupt trade lanes. If you only see 3-4 a game, that'd be fine. It would be cool to have to organize task forces to hunt down a particularly annoying pirate...

[Freedom Onanist]

privateers would be more suitable i think

Yep. The golden age of piracy was the 16th & 17th centuries, Drake, Morgan, the French buccaneers, etc... By the 18th century the only left were small time psychopaths like Blackbeard. Whilst they made a lot of noise in print theynever really emulated the feats of their Carribbean forebears. I'd suggest a few pirate ships, not fleets, in out of the way regions.