Who are the Pirates?

...that other races are sometimes at war with?

from GalCiv2 Forums
On the trade window, if I replace the viewscreen with the 'relations report' option, it sometimes says that the race is "at war with the Pirates!"

Who are these pirates?
6,816 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just what it sounds like, pirates. They raid your shipping lanes in many games.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What you're talking about appears to be a bug/glitch. I've seen it a few times on the relations screen, they say "at war with pirates." This is the first meeting, neither of us have trade or even an army. The Arceans in particular nearly never aren't at war with them. Anyone else noticed this?
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't paid much attention to it. Although having pirate ships pop up now and then would be kind of cool. Would also be nice if you could loot unarmed enemy ships, and bases rather than just blow them up.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I hear that the pirate ships are usually VERY powerful when they do show up, although I have never actually seen them. My last game had an event that said that Pirates were now in the universe, but I never saw them. (It was a gigantic universe though, so they may have been hanging out in places I didn't usually go.)
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The only times I've seen pirates are when I get the galactic prison and the inevitable "escape" event occurs a few turns later. Give them one or two turns after that, and a pirate fleet appears near its planet and starts attacking stuff.

Unfortunately, they're too few in number to be relevant, as far as what I've seen. It'd be nice if SD raised the ante a bit with regards to how prevalent the pirates get.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have had some absolute monster pirate fleets before. The Pirates seems to have a very large logistics score and most definitely use large and even huge hulls.

One game many moons ago, a flotilla of pirates appeared deep in my territory but within mostly empty space. They managed to destroy some really late game starbases. I sent down a fleet of my toughest ships - they were the toughest by far in the galaxy - the pirates ate them for breakfast! It took a serious amount of my forces to deal with them. Unfortunately, this is the only time i have seen them come out in such numbers. It would be nice to have pirates appearing every game and for them to appear in deep space and near trade routes - it would give the AI and the player something to do to protect their trade.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
just because you havent seen the pirates doesnt mean they dont exist. in many games. i've gotten a message that says as commerce grows etc etc.... there are now roving pirates etc etc. and there are random pirate ships and later on MASSIVE pirate fleets that do attack everybody. they arent fun in the later stage of games
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
They can be truly beastly....I had fleets of huge ships, each battle-hardened till they had several hundred HPs apiece, with a fleet attack of like 200beam/200 missile and 150 shields....and the pirates ate them for breakfast with a fleet score of several thousand HPs and a 900ish (900!) gun attack. They rampaged, and it took the combined efforts of like 3 civs to bring them down.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Pirates have destroyed several of my trade routes with individual ships. these individual ships couldnt destroy my heavily fortified starbases though, and suddenly sent in a huge fleet. managed to bring back my "top fleet" back to destroy them in time. Pirates are a fantastic part of the game, which definitely adds spice. Oh, and it gives you a chance to level up your ships without starting war!
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When I was playing on normal, priates appeared around one oif my planets, but they never started anything with me, just sat there, and in truth they weren't all that powerful, I would say that they probably at the tech level of say a ship with photons and phasors, but not much more than that, a few good well armed cruisers made short work of them, even with I at I think a level where I was still using stingers and low end plasma weapons. So not all that powerful, and I have never seen them in the relations screen, but mabye I missed them