AU mod: The Privateer

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Krill
1) the scout can only be built by expansionist civs

Right, so it makes sense for Scouts to be "better" than Curraghs.

2) It costs 50% more than a scout, and is no where near as useful, because any contacts you can get with a curragh you can get with a galley (IE no trade agreements)

I think you're underestimating Curraghs. If you're not Expansionist you can use them to get early Contacts just as easily as Scouts by circling around your continent's perimeter. And once you've done that, you can send them off to discover civs on other continents as well, something Scouts cannot do. Scouts upgrade to nothing useful; Curraghs upgrade to Galleys, Caravels and Galleons.

3) No/very little land is discovered

Who cares about land, it's Contacts that are more important! You have to pop a lot of Goody Huts (barring Settlers) to make up the advantage you get by getting early Contacts and trading all your techs around for profit.


Dominae

[ZargonX]

The AI below Sid never builds Curraghs

That is incorrect. I can speak from experience that on both Monarch and Emp. the AI will build curraghs.

[Theseus]

I am not convinced that either Curraughs nor Privateers need changing. Haven't seen enough C3C AI behavior, and haven't messed about with Privateers lately.

[ducki]

I'm with THeseus - I don't think the Privateer needs changing, but a discussion about changing the Pirvateer turned into a discussion about putting Middle Age transports at a sinking risk from the very first boat you can build, so I agreed that if the panel thinks Privateers are underpowered(I don't) and if the solution is to weaken two other units of the age instead of buffing up the Privateer then I would see curraghs, and to a lesser extent Galleys, as overpowered in a domino effect.

I do not think Curraghs should be defenseless - 1 defense is weak enough - but they also should not be able to take out middle ages ships.

But again, I don't think the Privateer has any problems. a Hidden Nationality unit at that time is, to me, worth it's weight in gold.

Edit: I sidetracked myself - I do like the idea of a 0-attack curragh in and of itself, but that may be supported by the propsed change to other units and may be due to personal playstyle. In the end, I don't think any of these units needs changing and if consistency with transports is a problem, we could buff that guy up. You can't go much lower than 1 and the C3C discussions about averaged combat showed that at the lower end, the difference between two units is magnified. Let's not change this guy. He's a good, fun, strategic tool.

[Aqualung71]

Curraghs should definitely by 0 attack.

I'd be happy for them to have 0 defence too, even though it would p**s me off every time I sight a barb Galley (as it does now, actually!)

[nbarclay]

I strongly oppose reducing the defense of caravels and galleons. Reducing the defense of caravels would pose two serious problems.

First, it would make them too vulnerable to galleys, and especially to Dromons and Carracks. One of the biggest advantages to caravels over galleys under the normal rules is that caravels offer an opportunity to invade without much risk of being sunk by contemporary non-UU enemy ships and can defend themselves reasonably well against the UUs. Reduce their defense value and naval invasions using caravels become a lot more difficult and dangerous. I don't view that as a good thing either in terms of strategic choices for human players or in terms of helping AIs.

Second, and even worse, consider the impact on a civ (whether human or AI) that is lagging a few techs behind and still stuck using caravels when enemy frigates and privateers make their appearance. Even if the civ stays at peace, privateers could place its ships at very serious jeopardy.

Reducing the defense of galleons would be a bit less problematical since a suitable escort is available at the same time that galleons are. But the idea of giving galleons a lower defense value than caravels would be abusrd, and the change is not necessary.

There is one other important point that I don't remember having been brought up, or at least having been given adequate consideration. When privateers sink transport ships, they often cost the enemy far more than just the value of the ships they destroy. A privateer that sinks a caravel carrying a knight and two MedInfs or longbowmen sinks almost four times its own cost in enemy units. A privateer that sinks a galleon carrying four units in a combination of riflemen and cavalry sinks more than seven times its own cost.

Thus, when transport ships are loaded and traveling without an escort, privateers already average destroying far more value than they lose even before the possibility of enslaving a defeated enemy is considered. It is simply not true that the fact that caravels and galleons have a defense value as high as a privateer's attack value makes escorting them unimportant.

Just to be clear, I agree that Privateers are fairly well balanced as they are now. We will, however, have a vote

You seem to be saying that you intend to mark something as under consideration and put something up for a vote whether there is any real support for it or not. I don't suppose doing so would cause any great harm, but it seems like a waste of time when opinion seems clearly against the proposed changes without the need for a formal vote. If the absence of a vote is a mistake, panelists can easily correct the mistake by speaking out in favor of a change and asking for a vote.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

I think eliminating the attack value from curraughs would make good sense, but I don't like the idea of rendering them unable to defend themselves. Just the fact that ships need a port to heal makes curraughs vulnerable enough to being swarmed or worn down over time by barbarian galleys already. (I lost one of my curraughs to a barbarian galley swarm in AU 501, for example.) I think making them completely defenseless would make them too vulnerable.

In a very real sense, the curraugh helps make up for the fact that C3C has moved the ability to trade contacts back from Writing to Printing Press, and that is far more true for human players than it is for AIs. AIs tend to be pretty nice about letting each other send armed troops through their territory in order to explore or settle beyond, but AI cultural borders can usually stop human exploration cold for non-expansionist civs. With curraughs, human players have a way to reach around one AI to meet another without having to wait until they get Map Making and build galleys. I'm not in favor of undermining that ability.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
With curraughs, human players have a way to reach around one AI to meet another without having to wait until they get Map Making and build galleys. I'm not in favor of undermining that ability.

I am.

Curraghs undermine the changes of pushing back Contact and Map trading to Printing Press and Navigation (respectively). With Curraghs you can typically get most Contacts, plus a really good idea of the land form to boot.

Curraghs should be like Scouts: vulnerable.

Can we at least agree that Curraghs are the most game-altering change introduced in C3C? Given how powerful they are, I see this as problematic.


Dominae

[Aqualung71]

Might as well drop this in here, since the discussion is kinda heading this way.......

While the discussion on Curraghs "per se" is not the same as the discussion on the power of the Seafaring trait, perhaps we should also look at tweaking the Seafaring advantages which many people consider to be too powerful in the hands of the human. One way to tie these together would be to increase the sinking chances for Seafaring (and possibly even non-Seafaring), which would reduce the effectiveness of Curraghs in intercontinental exploration and bring their use closer to what it was possibly intended to be - exploration largely restricted to your own landmass (and therefore comparable to Scouts, as has also been noted here).

[Risa]

Originally posted by alexman


Hey, this is not true after all! Caputred non-Worker units do require support. I just tested it.

Huh? Which version of patch do you use?

Here is a screenshot of my latest SimuMove Multiplayer game (1.15).

[nbarclay]

[Edit: I'm moving this message to the AI Naval Exploration thread where discussion of curraughs probably really belongs]

[Stuie]

Getting back to Privateers, I'll agree with others (Arrian, etc.) that the only change really needed is a slight reduction in build cost. I don't like the idea of messing with units' stats to fix a perceived problem with some other unit - this goes back to the Cavalry issue; we ended up changing Cavalry's offense, not adjusting other units' defense.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Risa

Huh? Which version of patch do you use?

1.15, but I got confused. You're right that it's still a bug.

[alexman]

Another cosmetic change that I picked up from player1's mod:

Privateers (and all other sailing ships) become obsolete with combustion.

The change would remove these units from your build list in the late-industrial age, thus preventing the AI from possibly building them when it can be building better ships.

To implement this change you make the units 'upgrade' to destroyers but you don't add the 'upgrade unit' button, so you can never really upgrade them, but you can't build new ones either, unless you run out of oil.

The PTW version of the mod had Frigates and Privateers upgrading to Destroyers, and we agreed that the loss of a hidden nationality unit in the modern age was not a big deal.

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
You seem to be saying that you intend to mark something as under consideration and put something up for a vote whether there is any real support for it or not.

There has definitely been support for a change to the Privateer. I'm just trying to figure out which change is most popular.

[ZargonX]

Privateers (and all other sailing ships) become obsolete with combustion.

I think that's a very good suggestion. The AI is better of building stronger ships, not hidden ones.

[alexman]

Under consideration:

A. No change
B. Reduce cost of Privateer to 40.
C. Privateer does not require support.
D. Reduce defense of Caravel and Galleon to 1. Galleon would get 'requires escort' AI flag.

Voting in a week, by ranking the above choices.

Also under consideration, independently of the above:

Yes/No: Remove the ability to build Frigate, Privateer, Man-O-War when you can build Destroyers.

[nbarclay]

I've already made my case against reducing the defense of caravels and galleons.

Regarding the idea of reducing Privateers' cost or otherwise making them more effective, I think it is very important to understand their proper niche. Think back to the time of England's Queen Elizabeth I, when England wanted to gain power relative to Spain but did not want a direct war with Spain. Privateers allowed England to attack Spain while maintianing at least some pretext that the two nations were not truly at war.

The legitimate role of Privateers in Civ is similar: when a player wants to weaken one particular opponent without actually going to war. Privateers are not and should not be a means to gain a relative advantage over several AIs at once. In order for Privateers to provide a relative advantage even over two opponents at once, they would have to be able to destroy more than twice their cost in enemy units, which would make them far too effective when focused on one particular target.

(So far, I haven't used C3C Privateers yet because I havn't had a game where that niche was particularly valuable. To the extent that I've thought about the possibility of using Privateers at all after how useless Privateers were in earlier versions, either I've been more interested in building up my own civ than in tearing down one particular opponent or I've been inclined to fight more directly.)

The question that remains is whether Privateers can fill their legitimate role properly under the default rules if they are used correctly or whether they need to be beefed up in order to do so. If Privateers focused on one particular target can kill more shields' worth of the target's units (including both ships and carried units) than they suffer in losses (both from the target civ and from being forced to fight third-party ships), then they are good enough already. If not, it would be very hard to find a useful niche for them under the current rules.

So far, I have seen no compelling evidence or testimony indicating that the players who have the most effective tactics for using Privateers are unable to make them worthwhile in their proper niche. Further, C3C has been out a short enough time that there hasn't been a huge amount of opportunity to develop tactics for C3C Privateers (and experience from previous versions certainly does not carry over well). I think we need a stronger experience base with clearer evidence that the current version is not worthwhile before we reach the conclusion that change is needed. Even aside from the conservative nature of the AU Mod, if we make Privateers powerful enough that they are easy to gain a net advantage from using in most games, we risk making them far too powerful when players who figure out or learn the best tricks for using them effectively use them in their proper niche.

Nathan

[Theseus]

Very well said, Nathan.

[alexman]

Time to vote! We have 48 hours.

My votes:

DACB and Yes

[Stuie]

CBAD and Yes

[ZargonX]

BADC and Yes

[lockstep]

CBAD and YES

[alexman]

Hmm, with Nor Me missing in action I predict some ties in the rank voting. The order of conservativeness, which we have chosen as a tie-breaker, is not clear.

How about ACBD?

[Theseus]

CBAD and Y

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
Yes/No: Remove the ability to build Frigate, Privateer, Man-O-War when you can build Destroyers.

I voted yes, but on second thought (just to be sure): Is there any reason why we didn't make Frigates, Man-O-Wars and Privateers upgrade to Destroyers?

(Note: you can upgrade Curraghs to Transports!)

[alexman]

Won't having Frigates upgrade to Destroyers make the Ironclad tech researched even less often?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
Won't having Frigates upgrade to Destroyers make the Ironclad tech researched even less often?

Only if you can find a way to research Ironclads less often than never. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but probably not much of one.)

On the other hand, having ironclads upgrade but not frigates does give human players more incentive to want to get the Ironclads tech from an AI when an AI researches it (which does happen in the AU Mod) and more incentive to build ironclads when the tech is available. Conversely, the lack of an upgrade path for frigates prevents a strategy of building a big frigate armada and then upgrading it into an instant big destroyer flotilla, a trick which could be especially powerful in conjunction with Leo's. So I think the current design is good enough that we don't need to change it in that regard.

Nathan

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nbarclay
... the lack of an upgrade path for frigates prevents a strategy of building a big frigate armada and then upgrading it into an instant big destroyer flotilla, a trick which could be especially powerful in conjunction with Leo's.

OTOH, I view building a bunch of horsemen and upgrading them to knights as a valid and (with C3C's upgrade costs of 3 gold per shield) 'non-broken' strategy, so I don't think that upgrading frigates to destroyers should qualify as a 'trick'.

[alexman]

But you can already follow that strategy with Ironclads.

If we allow Frigates to upgrade to Destroyers as well, that would make one more reason to ignore Ironclads, especially since they require a 50% greater shield investment than Frigates do.