Pirates in Glory of Kings.

Good evening gents,
Hope everyone is keeping well in these awful times.
I have been away from the game for a while now having previously played Portugal in game 10.
I am returning to play a pirate for a change and was wondering if anyone else has tried out this option before. I guess it will be a totally different prospect from what I am used to. Any hints or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.

Glad to see you back in Agema world.

Playing pirates I always think is difficult and rather short term. Once nations and games get underway and after a few years good players with big nations tend to cover pirates. They employ large numbers of ships to protect shipping.

You could use your pirates to take over unused islands. Neutral islands not belonging to anyone. But somewhere down the line your biggest problem will be income. Attacking merchant shipping from nations with no or little navy is the best way to go. Or attacking land based trade caravans again steering away from the bigger nations who can employ large numbers of troops to protect trade routes.

Best of luck.

sammon wrote:Good evening gents,
Hope everyone is keeping well in these awful times.
I have been away from the game for a while now having previously played Portugal in game 10.
I am returning to play a pirate for a change and was wondering if anyone else has tried out this option before. I guess it will be a totally different prospect from what I am used to. Any hints or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.

Playing a "pirate" position in Glori is tough but as I see it you have three basic options:

1) The "Blackbeard" option - Play a classic Holywood Pirate....you and your crews respect no one and plunder all and sundry under your own flag. Live a glorious life of rum, girls and loot and become subject of a 1000 tavern songs. Great for getting up the honour list but not really a life style with long term prospects if you annoy the hell out of everyone.

2) The "Piet Hein" option - Basically play a merchant company like the Dutch West Indies Company but one who is happy to smuggle and arrange for "accidents" to happen to trade rivals, but try to hide these incidents under false flags and the like. If War breaks out you might consider a bit of legal privateering.

3) The "Forbin" option - Not unlike option 2 above but acting as a Officer or a Colonial Governor of the Crown. Exchange freedom for orders, but also a budget and ability to sale your prizes at full price and walk freely in your home country.

What probably should be noted is that many of the most successful "Pirates" flipped between these options. So Henry Morgan was a out and out option 1 but with Welsh charm, back handers and carefull target selection made it to Sir Henry Morgan Gov of Jamacia and a safe 2/3 before the hangman caught up with him. Same could be said about Francis Drake only in his case it was more like 2 to 1 to a Knighthood and rear admiral of the English Fleet rear admiral and option 3.

A lot will depend on your starting position and reaction of other players and how you approach them. Some may react with horror and want to hang you but others may be happy to turn a blind eye and even even extend a bit of under the table patronage.

Hi and many thanks,
Well this has given me plenty to think about! Luckily just finished a history of the golden age of pirates, so at least
I have some insight as to what was actually happening on the Spanish Main. Although I felt a bit cheated when I discovered that no one actually said Yar or Gar or even shiver me timbers. Oh well never mind lol.
Only just received my turn today which seems to indicate a far bigger undertaking than I expected it to be , but could be interesting.
thank you again for taking the time for comments and advice, it is very much appreciated.

Fairly recently I stumbled across a game called Uncharted 4 (Playstation) and while it was so-so as a game, the story and plot really intrigued me, probably because of LGDR. Its worth looking up the plot of game, but to summarise it was modern day treasure hunters seeking the lost treasure of Henry Avery. In the story they discover that a number of famous pirates, some presumed dead (but were not) pooled their treasuries and established the "famed" pirate colony Libertalia. In the game, the colony was intriguing, well hidden and suggested some great background stories of pirate activity, intrigue, betrayal etc.

I always thought it would be good to try something similiar in-game. Create a Pirate Brotherhood, a hidden away colony and create some interesting in-game stories.

Interestingly I read about Libertalia recently. Nice idea to have a pirates only station for trading, ship repairs and supplies. A safe haven from attack too with a fort to drive off would be pirate hunters. Sounds good to me thank you.

I tried pirates, but don't recommend the position. You're better off, I think, taking one of the small maritime positions and just engaging in naughty things if that is your inclination.

Pirate positions are very limited, and since you're basically paying for a full position, you might as well have the treasury, recruits and options of a full position, even if it's a small position.

Yes I agree I am probably at a disadvantage playing a pirate but I previously played  a colonial nation and wanted to try something with less committment to the political situation and more on action. Only time will tell if that happens lol.
Thank you for your comments.

Stuart Bailey wrote:Playing a "pirate" position in Glori is tough but as I see it you have three basic options:

1) The "Blackbeard" option - Play a classic Hollywood Pirate....you and your crews respect no one and plunder all and sundry under your own flag.  Live a glorious life of rum, girls and loot and become subject of a 1000 tavern songs.  Great for getting up the honour list but not really a life style with long term prospects if you annoy the hell out of everyone.

2) The "Piet Hein" option - Basically play a merchant company like the Dutch West Indies Company but one who is happy to smuggle and arrange for "accidents" to happen to trade rivals,  but try to hide these incidents under false flags and the like.  If War breaks out you might consider a bit of legal privateering.

3) The "Forbin" option - Not unlike option 2 above but acting as a Officer or a Colonial Governor of the Crown.  Exchange freedom for orders, but also a budget and ability to sale your prizes at full price and walk freely in your home country.

What probably should be noted is that many of the most successful "Pirates" flipped between these options.  So Henry Morgan was a out and out option 1 but with Welsh charm, back handers and careful target selection made it to Sir Henry Morgan Gov of Jamaica and a safe 2/3 before the hangman caught up with him.  Same could be said about Francis Drake only in his case it was more like 2 to 1 to a Knighthood and rear admiral of the English Fleet rear admiral and option 3.  

A lot will depend on your starting position and reaction of other players and how you approach them.  Some may react with horror and want to hang you but others may be happy to turn a blind eye and even even extend a bit of under the table patronage.

I generally agree with this summary, but would add 2 more options based on the most successful pirate position ever run in any game (HWIC in G7):

4) pirate hunting - this will put you on the right side of most players so could give you an income stream, and it means you can eliminate potential future competition if you decide to swap sides.  This is different to the Forbin option, but if you do clear out pirates then many grateful nations may find you too useful to let you just drift off.

5) offering intelligence services - again this was something HWIC did very effectively.  It is very time consuming and costly for players to gather evidence, and there is always the risk that a character they send can get assassinated (as happened this month in G7) even when he was not a spy and all he tried to do was co-operate with Spanish authorities!  A 3rd party able and willing to undertake low level intelligence gathering such visiting a port to count the number of warships present, then passing information back to those willing to pay for it, is much less risky than capturing trading ships at sea.  It also gives players the option of denying involvement which some rulers have perfected!  Of course you will need to be prepared to put the effort in to diplomacy to build relationships with players and if you play both sides off against each other then you risk a backlash (as happened in the case of HWIC), but it could lead to an interesting game option.

A further thing to remember is that honour works differently for 'pirate' positions - so if you do try to be an 'honourable' pirate rather than a traditional 'kidnap, torture, loot' etc type, you may struggle to get to the top of the honour table.

So there are a range of options you might not have thought of.  If you are just trying to be disruptive and annoy as many players as possible your may have some fun at their expense for a few months before your ships are sunk, but as a longer term option it has limited appeal.  If you are smarter and work with nations to help them (as HWIC did very effectively in the early years of G7) then provided you avoid making the same mistakes they did, you could end up with a very interesting small scale position where you could try many things you would not be able to do in a larger country position.

I should add that the classic problem with a traditional pirate position is that the more successful you are, the more you are loathed and hunted down.  Most nation players tend to want to build up their honour score, economy or expand their territory - the kinds of tangible results which are hard to achieve without the support of others.  I can think of very few players who measure their success by how much damage they inflict upon other positions and therefore how quickly they are hunted down and sunk.  I guess you could avoid this by playing a kind of 'pirate brotherhood' type position so that you had a continual stream of characters, but you've made your choice and the challenge is now to make it work in whichever game you are trying.