Pirates!

Pirates!
Scenario information
Game	Age of Empires III
Campaign	Act I: Blood
Civilization	Knights of St. John
Color	Blue
Scenario no.	3
Previous	Into the Caves
Next	The Ottoman Fort
Setting information
Year	1566
Map

“

Seeking to beat the Ottomans to the mysterious Lake of the Moon, Morgan sails for the New World... but is forced to make an unexpected stop.

”

Pirates! is the third scenario of Act I: Blood in Age of Empires III. The Knights of St. John begin a voyage to the New World, but encounter pirates on the way.

Summary

In the cutscene Library of Stone: Morgan and Alain discover the real reason the Ottomans had attacked Malta. After Alain is conveniently able to decipher the Circle of Ossus writing he sends Morgan to the New World to stop the Ottomans from getting their hands on this "Lake of the Moon".

In the cutscene Lizzie the Pirate: The Knights of St. John are waylaid by a band of pirates, led by Elisabet Ramsey. Her Fire Ships severely damage the knights flagship and sink its escorts. The knights are stranded until help arrives and they can force their way past the heavily fortified pirate base.

Like the previous scenario, there is no access to the Home City, and no shipments can be sent for. Experience collected here, though, is handy for when it is possible to select Home City Cards and send for shipments.

Starting conditions

• Starting Age: Commerce Age
• Ending Age: Fortress Age
• Population limit: 200
• Starting units and technologies:
  • Morgan Black
  • 4 Veteran Crossbowmen
  • 3 Veteran Hussar
  • 3 Veteran Pikemen
  • 1 St. Elmo (Morgan's Flagship)
  • 1 Covered Wagon
• Starting resources:
  • Stockpile: 1000 food, 1000 wood, 1000 coin
  • Crates: 1000 food, 300 wood, 200 coin

Objectives

Primary objectives

• Build a Town Center
• Build a Barracks and a Dock.
• Find and collect three Navigation Charts.

Secondary objectives

• Build a second Town Center (500 XP)

Players

Player

• Morgan Black ( Knights of St. John) - The player starts in the Commerce Age, with a Caravel and Morgan's Flagship, the first immediately sunk by a Fire Ship. Land forces include three Hussars, a Covered Wagon, four Crossbowmen, three Pikemen and Morgan Black himself. Morgan's Flagship is severely damaged, once a dock is built the player will receive free ships and units periodically.

Enemies

• Lizzie's Pirates ( Pirates) - The first attack by the enemy consists of two Fire Ships that ram the player's starting ships. Other than them, they also have more Fire Ships at their disposal, as well as Privateers. Land forces include Pirates, Skirmishers and Carib Blowgunners, who are disembarked via Canoes. Their base is sited to the west island.

• Caribs (Native Americans) - Consisting of hostile natives (including Carib Blowgunners and Canoes), they are found in the player's island, as well as in the southernmost island. They will occasionally raid both on land and land from canoes.

Treasures

This scenario has an unusually large amount of treasures with 9 in total, excluding objective treasures:

• 3x Navigation Charts from a prior expedition worth 100 XP each and all being a scenario objective. Guarded by a Buccaneer Captain, a powerful variant of a Barbary Corsair.
• A nearly mature pet jaguar you can tame. Has 3x Jaguars as guardians.
• A pair of trapped settlers. Defended by 2 Pirate and 2 Outlaw Pistoleros.
• A Cassava worth 40 food. Guarded by 1 Outlaw Blowgunner
• A free Covered Wagon. Guarded by 1 Pirate. (eastern island)
• A free Covered Wagon. Guarded by 1 Pirate. (western island)
• Lost Moche Gold worth 140 coin. Guarded by 2 Jaguars.
• A pool of quicksilver worth 40 coin. Guarded by 1 Outlaw Blowgunner
• Another pool of quicksilver worth 40 coin. Guarded by 1 Outlaw Blowgunner
• A cactus covered with Cochineal worth 40 coin. Guarded by 1 Jaguar.

In addition to treasure, the map has crates of supply commonly found scattered about, especially near pirate mining operations. They are generally guarded though.

Strategy

Naval supremacy strategy

You begin with a handful of military units, resource crates and a Covered Wagon for building your new Town Center. It will prove to be your greatest weapon repeatedly during this battle, though your Flagship will be no slouch either.

The strategy runs mostly on naval superiority, the town center anti-ship attack, and Galleons as mobile Barracks. Building up your base is once again not overly important, however the position of your town center is of utmost importance. Initially you can get by with just crossbowmen. Do not use cavalry such as hussars at all during this battle, they are weak against pirates. They have no such multipliers against crossbowmen (Ranged Infantry), and pirates range limitation lessens the dangers to crossbowmen. Also for the first little bit you do not want to spend coins on rodeleros, stockpile it for getting to Fortress Age as quickly as possible (this seems to be the trigger for more ships and armies being sent to you automatically from Malta). 15-20 crossbowmen should be enough for the first ten or fifteen minutes of the game when used with Morgan's swashbuckler attack.

Note: Difficulty - on the hard difficulty, caravels lack the durability to take the bulk of the punishment, always try to have a galleon or the flagship taking the hits. Natives are not overly dangerous on easy and moderate, they are only dangerous on hard due to relatively large numbers by comparison. However after one large raid they will typically stop attacking.

Note: Pirates do not possess any type of cavalry, so pikemen will be useless in this battle except as siege troopers.

Note: Fishing - even after the pirate docks are destroyed, enemy fishing boats will continue to spawn, they have a limitless and free supply on any difficulty. Their appearance is restricted by time, taking much longer to appear than training a fishing boat which costs wood. The enemy only uses their docks for training warships. Any fishing boat is capable of squeezing through the northern gap at the rear of the pirate base to hide in the self contained bay, large ships cannot enter at all unless a dock is built to train them inside. Enemy fishing boats will only hide here, they will not begin gathering fish, instead they prefer trying to fish near your town center or the eastern side of the map.

To start with place your town hall here (after clearing the enemies), your town centers anti-ship attack will constantly harass enemy fishing boats and provide fire support for assaulting the nearby ships. Use your flagship (damaged as it is) to grab a quick kill on the pirate vessel south southwest of your starting position (move the ship to the docks after they are constructed to heal it). It is one of only three enemy pirate ships on your side of the map (which now comprises the entire eastern portion of the map).

The base at 00:05:18, build a dock first south of your town center between the small cliffs to avoid drawing enemy fire. Then a house and finally the barracks, train a caravel and 15-20 crossbowmen before saving for the Fortress Age. Do not begin to explore the islands with your land army until the pirates are defeated, otherwise you may be caught unaware and lose many Settlers. Only purchase the unit upgrades for crossbowmen and rodeleros. Keep sending new ships from Malta to the frontlines and amassing the units unloaded from them (if any) when they arrive for one big push or to reinforce your base defense.

The attack at 00:13:23, major holes begin to appear in their defenses (see the minimap in the image) after using bait and lure tactics to draw out their ships and then focusing on the outpost southwest across the waterway from your town center. Next focus on the first dock (just northwest of the outpost), diminishing their naval power is the first step to overall victory. Resource gathering was not optimized for most of this battle, food and wood are the two primary resources to focus on until you begin training rodeleros.

The attack at 00:14:24, the northern end of their base is wide open and the pirates have no adequate defense versus the ships now. They are free to provide fire support for the new soldiers trained out of the galleons. Rodeleros work the best, their speed allows them to escape certain annihilation and bunker inside the ships until a fresh wave is trained to reinforce them. They can also dash in quickly to kill the pirates only functional cannon (until they reach the fortress age, but they should be crippled by then).

The attack at 00:25:18, you may be forced to retreat and repair your ships or train a new invasion force from your main base. However, by this point the pirate economy has slowed to a crawl and their military capabilities have been significantly diminished.

The renewed attack at 00:27:39, the resistance on the beaches is obviously weaker. They've been worn down by your naval bombardment, units from your beached galleons and destruction of their fishing boats.

The attack at 00:29:28, the battle is essentially won thanks to mortars being delivered from Malta. All that's left is to collect treasures, navigation charts and wipe out the natives. Any construction at this point is entirely optional, as is leaving the game running to build experience.

Victory achieved message received at 01:19:22, after construction of several mills for experience. Trees and space began to run low, so the scenario was ended.

Speedy strategy

Technically all you must do to win this scenario is collect all three navigation charts, the time taken to win can be reduced to a mere three to five minutes to achieve victory. Do not worry about placing your town center anywhere specific, have it begin constructing right away. The hardest one to acquire is inside the pirate base (near their town center), with focused determination you can have Morgan and a small squad commit suicide in order to claim it. All of them will die, but with luck not before Morgan gathers the chart.

Land at the northern end of the pirate base (near their docks), skirt the shoreline while moving west, proceed southwest still hugging the shoreline and behind some houses to approach the treasure guardian (southeast) from behind the enemy defenders (mostly guarding the gates). Kill him quickly and grab the chart before Morgan is knocked unconscious. Settlers can gather the remainder while escorted by a ship and a handful of units. Leave the settler bunkered inside until it's got a clear run on the chart once the guardian is dead, do not be afraid to put them in harms way to achieve the goal.

Trivia

• Although Elisabet Ramsey is present in this scenario as a player, she does not actually appear as a hero unit and cannot be found in her base, although her flagship Paris Burning can be found.
• This scenario and the campaign's next scenario (The Ottoman Fort) refer to Hospitaller colonization of the Americas.