Pre-warp pirates - How to find the right balance?

[tppytel]

I've been struggling to complete my first "real" game of DW all day now, mainly due to pirates. I'm not sure if I need better strategy or different settings, but I could use some advice because the game really hasn't been fun for the last 10 hours. I'm at 78% and I'm sure I'll eventually get that last 2% I need, but gameplay is very tedious at this point.

Game Settings: Human, 10x10, 700, Tech Level: Pre-Warp, Expansion: Pre-Warp, Difficulty: Normal, all storyline events turned off, all other settings are Normal/Default

I managed the pirate threat well enough in the early game and expanded well, starting from the center of a spiral galaxy. I found that part quite fun. I basically paid off all the pirate factions early on. By the midgame I was comfortably ahead of all the other non-pirate empires - two were within striking range of my overall power, a few more were minor powers worth considering, and the rest hadn't left their home systems. The balance seemed reasonable at that point. With a couple solid fleets built, I went after the two nearest and most aggressive pirate factions and destroyed their bases, but they had already built backup bases elsewhere. From this point on (probably 15-20 hours of gameplay, though there was lots of learning time in there) the game has basically just been me against the pirates, endlessly. As more and more pirate factions (more than the number of "real" empires) were revealed, I couldn't reasonably pay them all off so I've only maintained protection agreements with a couple of the larger and friendlier ones. But the others all attack me constantly almost everywhere in my empire. There have been a handful of serious attacks by major pirate fleets, but those are actually kind of fun. Mostly it's just an endless war of attrition, with most attacks immediately repulsed or doing only minor damage. At this point, I'm vastly stronger than the other empires, with almost double the military, population, and strategic value of the two larger ones, which are at least 15% behind me in victory level. I've had little reason to interact with them throughout the game, because they pose no threat compared to the pirate menace. That's extremely unsatisfying in a 4X game. Given the storyline, I don't mind the idea of the pirates being the main threat for a good chunk of the game, but this has gone way too far now.

So given all that, do I need a change in settings or in strategy for my next game? I've tried to do some amount of dedicated pirate eradication in this game, clearing nearby system of mining bases and taking out 4-5 pirate space ports. But there are always backup ports, and some of the other known ports are just so far away. I don't really want to have to send fleets 2-3 sectors out to clear a space port, but the pirates seem happy to target my colonies from that distance. I tried to fund one group of pirates to attack another's base and the mission was accepted, but was never successful. I eventually just did it myself. Do I just need a more clever and intense pirate eradication strategy? Better pirate diplomacy? Can I tweak the other empires to do a better job developing? It would be a lot more fun if the other empires were strong enough to actually accomplish anything, and maybe help clear some pirates along with me. Should I just make the pirates weaker and/or less prevalent?

Any advice appreciated. I really like the idea of starting pre-warp, but this seems way over the top.


edit: Wrote "Expansion: Starting" by mistake, though I did try that in a different game. It's far too much of an advantage for the AI's. Checked in the editor, and several of them have 6 colonies by the time I finish researching Colonization.

[Bingeling]

The key to "getting rid" of pirates is destroying the bases they attack from. 2-3 sectors is probably the limit of their range, and any base they attack from must be included in the bases you destroy. Make a few dedicated pirate busting fleets. Have some spare, smaller fleets to mop up pirate mines that you discover.

As thing quiet down, notice the name of the clans that bother you, hunt them down. A pirate crew at the fringes of your pirate clearing area, that never bother you, is not really an important target.

Build long range scanners to cover pirate approaches and pirate spawn areas to find their bases. A pirate flying around is probably traveling between his base and a target.

If you fail to find a pirate base you know must be there (and is annoying), consider to steal the pirate's operation map with spies.

And if you do this, the only pirates around will be the ones that live outside your attack range. And you live outside theirs. Every now and then they will probably build a new base nearer to you. When you see one, destroy it.

When Universe launched, I did an AAR with lots of pirates, nearby, and no protection deals after my spaceport had shields and weapons. Slow research and dhayut race did not help in getting funds to hunt pirates early.

In the image below, I am the red guy in the upper left area. The yellow dots was the known pirate bases at the time. Defending the smaller colonies from that amount was impossible, so it was just a matter of destroying them all.

[tppytel]

Thanks for the advice. Are you sure stealing the Operations Map is enough to locate a pirate space port? I had read that you needed their Galaxy Map for that, and that's really hard to steal. Espionage in general seems kind of underpowered - quite high risk and time-consuming, whether against pirates or empires. I looked at the odds for stealing a Galaxy Map and passed on them, but an Operations Map might be a lot easier. Can you train up spies' Espionage skills effectively by running easier missions? That might help too, but I don't know just how fast the character skill levels increase.

Also, what were the settings you used in the game from that screenshot? Your AI empires did a far, far better job than mine did. I feel like the pirates would be significantly less annoying if I could get the other empires strong enough that I'm not the only one wiping them out. I did finally finish the game I posted about and quickly started a new one. This time, I set the opponent empires to Pre-warp tech but Starting development instead of letting them auto-generate. I'm hoping that will give them enough of a leg up to develop better. I checked out a test game in the editor and it looks like the only change is that the AI homeworlds start with 10b population compared to your 2.5b. We'll see how that works.

[Bingeling]

In that game I did lots of pirates. That hurts the AI empires too. You can see pirate owned colonies, and pirate colonies in AI empire systems, the others struggle more than I do.

I had them starting close, that hurts me and those starting near me.

I had the Dhayut race by random, that is not a strong early game race. They breed slowly which is bad in the early days. I ran with mostly automation, so no "low tax" boosts that the AI empires won't have. No rush for wonders or stuff since research and design was automated.

I did not have any protection deals. I could only keep the capital spaceport and a few "forgotten" mines alive at times. I took two independents too early, which gave more to try to defend and almost no extra income. If nothing else, they worked as decoys helping leave some capital system mines alive.

I had expensive research and pre-warp, that benefits the pirates.

By the time I could control the pirates, the other empires were no match. Partly due to some rich Atuuk independents up north, two of them being mine by the time of that screenshot.

The AI does not appear very good at dealing with pirates. I have not watched them for quite a while, but they used to love to attack pirate bases with weak fleets that have no chance.

[tppytel]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

By the time I could control the pirates, the other empires were no match.

That's precisely what I'm trying to avoid happening. It's just not the gameplay I'm looking for. I don't mind the pirates being the main threat for a while, but I'd like at least the second half of the game to be more about empires, trading, and diplomacy than fending off pirate swarms.

But I still don't understand how your AI's did so well. You were running what seem to be more beneficial settings to the pirates than I was, but my AI's were far less developed than yours. Your AI's have equal your number of colonies or better, whereas the best couple of my AI's were at least 2-3 colonies behind, and many were much worse. I don't get it.

[Bingeling]

Many colonies is not a good thing when they have no population, they are just drains on the economy. Look at how small the colony circles are, there are only a few good ones apart from the capital circles. And that is the ones populated by the fast breeders.

The main reason why I have so few colonies is that I avoided taking more than the initial 2. The two in the north are later conquests (independents) which are very high population and swiftly become richer than my capital.

I forgot about the operations map: Stealing it gives you full access to view all his stuff for a few seconds, then it is gone. So when it pops up it is time to pause the game and take notes. You can see all his ships and fleets and their orders. It can be very useful during war as you see attack order of fleets, and can take note of where the enemy is heading for fuel. And while up, you can of course also see all his bases and mines on the map. I am not sure if bases discovered that way will stick with the flag on the map or not, but I guess they will.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

I like my games popping with fights right off the bat so I set pirates to max population and difficulty which literally covers the map in pirates. I get around the ai issues of so many pirates by making custom race profiles for the ai to use by modifying icemania's ai mod. These are mainly boosts to the economy and other core stats to make them much stronger than a comparable human controlled race. It's a brute force approach and have only done a couple of the insect races but it's looking promising so far and might expand to an ai only branch of each race to see if it works for getting the neutral and friendly ai races more competitive in a very hostile map setting.

[aaatoysandmore]

You do realize what Pirates is don't you? It's just something to get in your way from the other pitiful AI players. It's just something to keep you busy until the real wars begin. Granted it makes the difficulty higher but I think it's a bandaid to the ai more than something unique to the game.

I remember when this game first came out and all the complaints about the bad AI. Expansion after expansion came out with no improvements. Then the last one offered up difficulty levels to extreme and the choice of number of stars in the system and some new infantry techs. I still found it pretty easy on normal as before. The pirates were more like gnats than they were a challenge and I know when you raise difficulty you aren't getting an improved AI you're just getting more numbers to have to deal with. I never liked difficulty levels like that. I much prefer the AI to do something differently like in SPARTAN where it would start at a different time and build a different way. Why it was sooo good that daddy's were posting for changes to the "easy" level as their little 8 year old boys couldn't beat it. haha Now, Slitherine, especially PIP swear they didn't do anything to the AI but I noticed a difference immediately in patch 1.017 when TROY came out. It was much easier and no challenge at all. I went back to 1.013 patch and never changed again. To me messing with the files that effect the AI is messing with the AI. I don't care what PIP says. I know what files were changed I can read script. [:D]

Spartan was a good game for modding the AI to improve it though. You could even mess with the way it built things and what its priorities were. It's one if not the best game Slitherine ever made. Too bad they didn't go on to make Legion II like they said they were gonna do.