Privateers

[SkeL]

How does it work? Where should I use it as England for example?

[bri]

As England you really should only be privateering if you need the power projection. In that case you send them to the nodes where your rivals have significant trade power.

[Marcos_DS]

Get an island in/at the Sevilla trade node or in the carribean and take all the new world trade and weath from portugal and spain.

Or you take an island in the carribean and privateer from there for central and south american trade. Very profitable for England (unless you own the carribeans yourself of course), esp. if you add a flagship with extra privateering capability addon...

[Rodi]

You dont as england
You protect trade instead and steer value to your node
Privateering needs to be a seen as a way to "deal damage" To places you cant get the trade value from (for example asian trade going to italy).
If theres value to be steered into your nodes, you should do that instead and collect. It is more profitable than privateering elsewhere usually.

[Preacher]

Use it to kneecap rivals.

[Malvastor]

Privateering steals a bit of trade value from a node and gives it to you as cash. As others have pointed out, Englang can make much more money legitimately, because they're the default dominant power in the world's best trade node. So the best play is to focus on gaining power in the nodes upstream from it, via conquest, colonization, and light ships protecting trade.

[Marquoz]

Right. Privateering is a noob trap. It costs money to build the ships you need for privateering, and those ships eat up your naval force limit as well. Why bother? Instead, build heavy ships and transports and conquer the nations you would have privateered. The payoff is much, much higher.

[Black_Rat]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Right. Privateering is a noob trap. It costs money to build the ships you need for privateering, and those ships eat up your naval force limit as well. Why bother? Instead, build heavy ships and transports and conquer the nations you would have privateered. The payoff is much, much higher.

And is also not always feasable. Privateering is best used by smaller nations to take wealth from larger nations. Since this does come with the downside of pissing off the larger nations its usually best done to an area of the map that is both wealthy and you have no plans on reaching any time soon. For instance the italian minors can steal trade from portugal/castile without too much worry. The point is to use it in the right circumstances and it is very powerful, otherwise its a waste of resources.

[Marquoz]

As far as I'm concerned, it's always a waste of resources. As a smaller nation, I focus 100% of my force limit on conquest so that I become the largest nation as fast as possible. But hey, whatever works for you and is fun is what you should do.

[Rodi]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

As far as I'm concerned, it's always a waste of resources. As a smaller nation, I focus 100% of my force limit on conquest so that I become the largest nation as fast as possible. But hey, whatever works for you and is fun is what you should do.

While you are not wrong
Light ships should fill out your navy FL, almost always, after you made whatever ships you needed for your warfare(they can be used to fill up CW aswell i guess).
Protecting trade upstream almost always pays more than your ships cost in maintenance, and scales with your trade efficiency and with value in your node.

[bri]

Pretty much the only time I'll privateer is when it's the difference between 49 or 50 pp. There are some nations where it might make some sense to plunder nearby nodes for a little while with your starting navy but it can also damage your diplomatic efforts to do so as you get the penalty with every nation present in the node.

[Shogun_Potatoe]

When you want to go pirate

[Tomboeg]

Spain/Portugal.
You'll get constant silver fleets.

[Probably Tim]

Just want to note for anyone reading this thread: Ignore everyone else. All the other comments are dumb.

Privateering will rarely be more cost effective for *you* than protecting (exceptions: privateering nodes where treasure fleets are arriving). But there are obvious things no one else has mentioned. First, privateering a rival gets power projection. Second, privateering reduces incomes of other countries in the node.

To put it another way - privateering isn't about making you money, it's about weakening rivals. What little money it makes you is just gravy.

For example, I'm playing as England right now. Sending a 10 ship trade fleet to one of my own nodes will net me about 2ish ducats per month. Sending them to privateer sevilla takes about 17% of their 50 ducat value node. That's eating almost 1 ducat/month from the income of a rival for each trade ship I send. Plus, I just got a slice of their treasure fleet for 70 ducats. Factor in the treasure fleets, privateers make me more money there than protecting my own trade. And it's crippling a rival's trade income, and gaining me power projection. It's a win-win-win.

[QTV]

Originally posted by Shogun_Potatoe:

When you want to go pirate

Not even when you go pirate, no.
You are better off doing a healthy chunk trade to get highly yearly income and use Scourge of the 7 seas reform and actively hunt flagship for money.

It takes a few thousand ships to even privateer the world and then you get like 1k ducats in spoils of war, instead of several thousand ducats per month from trade income, because you only get half the plunder and no trade efficiency or other multipliers come into effect.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Probably Tim:

Factor in the treasure fleets, privateers make me more money there than protecting my own trade. And it's crippling a rival's trade income, and gaining me power projection. It's a win-win-win.

While it's true that privateering can be more lucrative than protecting trade, both protecting trade and privateering are inferior to outright conquest. Conquer their colonial nations so you get 100% of the treasure fleet income, not just a fraction (or conquer the mother country outright and inherit their colonies). Conquer their trade companies and route all that trade home to (in your case) the English Channel, the game's best node. Spend your fleet capacity on multiple large transport fleets and on combat-capable galleys and heavy ships.

Unless a mission requires me to do so, I never build light ships. I'll use those I begin the game with or capture for a while until I have better things to do with my fleet capacity. But then I sell or disband them in favor of more effective choices.