Sweboz Ships?

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I view pirates as something the game engine doesn't use very well, and the AI doesn't use very well.

What pirate ships should be doing is sitting on a trade route and intercepting those tiny little merchant ships sailing between your ports, sinking them, and reducing your sea trade that way - visibly dropping your income. If this really happened in EB, we players would be mightily annoyed whenever pirates appeared, and treat them as a high priority!

So I pretend this really IS happening! Whenever pirate ships appear near my coasts, I force myself to lower taxes in the two nearest ports to the pirate fleet, reducing my income. And keep them lowered until the pirates go away to bother some other faction, or I kill them. More pirate fleets in the same area means I have to lower my taxes even more in the closest two ports!

Following this house rule makes me REALLY hate pirates! I build my smallest, fastest ships to hunt them down and kill them. I don't use big ships like triremes and quadraremes because they are too slow to catch a fast pirate ship, even though they're better at fighting them.