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Now that the Rules survey has some results (61 responses as of this post), I think it would be a good idea to discuss some various options in detail.
“Why would you not want to unload standard treasure at your home island?”
Trade Route (whether used by you or an opponent), gold is safer on ship X, do not want the game to end, etc.
-Follow up: If standard treasure unloading was optional, would it hurt or break the game?
Gold bonuses could be abused more easily.
…do not want the game to end…
Even though it’s in the context of unloading treasure, this speaks to a larger issue that needs to be considered with many potential rule changes. Anything that allows one player to artificially manipulate the length of the game has to be handled with a delicate touch. If it’s made too easy to do, history has proven time and time again that it WILL be abused.
On the one hand, you’ve got things like refusing to unload treasure or simply always sailing as far away as possible to avoid fights, which can make games last well beyond the point of when it should end, and often past the point where it’s obvious which player will be the winner. Official tournaments often included extra rules specifically to minimize issues with players that would purposely stall games, but it’s better when the game itself addresses it somehow.
On the other hand, there are things like suicide fleets designed specifically to end the game as quickly as possible, with just enough of an advantage to claim the win, or simply to irritate other players who had longer-term plans. A single, lightning-fast ship with a skeleton crew and some icebergs nearby is potentially enough to completely spoil large, carefully designed fleets and strategies.
In either case, they can be extremely difficult to stop unless an opponent both realizes what’s happening early enough to counteract it, and actually has the means to do so.
-Follow up: If standard treasure unloading was optional, would it hurt or break the game?
Gold bonuses could be abused more easily
This issue, also significant, could be resolved by completely revamping how gold bonuses work.
For example, instead of applying it when the treasure is eventually unloaded, which requires extra tracking and gets messy with HI raiders and such, it could instead be applied when treasure is first loaded while exploring an island, to increase the value of what’s found. If you found a pile of 2s, but had a +2 Gold ability on your ship, you could instantly “upgrade” one of those to a 4 by removing the 2 and literally replacing it with a 4 from outside of the game. You could add a variety of restrictions and variants to it, like a maximum starting value before the upgrade, affecting multiple coins at once, etc.. (Thematically, instead of the character making better deals or something at home, they’re better at finding the treasure.)
This would eliminate any need for tracking, makes HI-raiders slightly more valuable, and prevents all sorts of shenanigans that can occur by keeping a Gold-adder parked just offshore at your home island. PLUS, from the moment that the “upgraded” gold is loaded, what happens to it becomes irrelevant. The modified value is locked in whether it gets stolen, sunk, unloaded, or anything else.
Connecting that back to the above issue, unloading treasure to your home island could be made entirely optional as long as other endgame triggers are used. The gold on ships can counts the same as gold at home or in forts, ships could carry it around as long as they wanted. Unloading at home would be available only as a way to keep it more protected (think of it like the “stash” in Merchants & Marauders).
You could even go so far as to decouple gold storage from cargo space on ships, by making treasure take up no space, or at least less space. (Cargo values in general could be revamped to reflect this change.) It’s always been thematically odd how a 1-value coin takes up just as much space as a 6 or 7, when they represent drastically different amount of loot. If the 1 is just a small amount and the 6 is a large pile (or a fully-loaded treasure chest), why can’t the 1 just be tossed in with the rest, or why couldn’t it be consolidated with other low-value treasures?* If ships were still meant to be focused on carrying treasure (or other duties instead), they could all be given a maximum total value limit. A small ship like Banshee’s Cry might be restricted to a total value of 5, while a monster treasure galleon like La Joya could be allowed 30 or more.
*Sidenote: Automatically making change with coins could be a worthwhile switch. Instead of handling a bunch of random small ones, they automatically stack together to make larger values. Make the maximum stack size a 6 and you could track them with dice kept on the ship’s deckplate card (or even literally placed on the ship itself). Or just keep a bunch of extra higher-value coins off to the size for this purpose if you’re concerned about the die values getting bumped.
On the other hand, there are things like suicide fleets designed specifically to end the game as quickly as possible, with just enough of an advantage to claim the win, or simply to irritate other players who had longer-term plans.
Have you seen fleets like that be effective at winning games? Unless there are always icebergs around, it seems like it would be tough to suicide at the right time after getting enough gold.
I love your idea about fixing the gold bonus abilities.
Connecting that back to the above issue, unloading treasure to your home island could be made entirely optional as long as other endgame triggers are used. The gold on ships can counts the same as gold at home or in forts, ships could carry it around as long as they wanted.
Do you think that only one player being able to give future move actions would be the optimal endgame trigger if gold on ships counted towards victory? I’m wondering about how to tie that in to the points in play house rule.
From reading this, it seems I’ve been playing gold bonus ships and crew wrong. When a ship unloads treasure and has a bonus, I get a new coin to represent that bonus and place it on the home island.
For example: La Santa Isabel docks at home and unloads 3 coins. The gold bonus kicks in, giving one of them a +2 to value. I go and get a spare 2 coin from outside the game and add it to the home island.
I keep track of bonus coins by placing them face-up, since I never place normal gold face-up during games.
From reading this, it seems I’ve been playing gold bonus ships and crew wrong. When a ship unloads treasure and has a bonus, I get a new coin to represent that bonus and place it on the home island.
For example: La Santa Isabel docks at home and unloads 3 coins. The gold bonus kicks in, giving one of them a +2 to value. I go and get a spare 2 coin from outside the game and add it to the home island.
I keep track of bonus coins by placing them face-up, since I never place normal gold face-up during games.
That’s what I remember doing in T1/T2 and completely fine. The Pirate Code details the options on page 15.
From reading this, it seems I’ve been playing gold bonus ships and crew wrong. When a ship unloads treasure and has a bonus, I get a new coin to represent that bonus and place it on the home island.
For example: La Santa Isabel docks at home and unloads 3 coins. The gold bonus kicks in, giving one of them a +2 to value. I go and get a spare 2 coin from outside the game and add it to the home island.
I keep track of bonus coins by placing them face-up, since I never place normal gold face-up during games.
That’s what I remember doing in T1/T2 and completely fine. The Pirate Code details the options on page 15.
For the most part it works just fine to grab extra coins to represent the bonus. It gets a little messy with abilities like HI-Raiders and Parley if those “bonus” coins could be taken instead of the higher-valued coins they might have been attached to. That’s why the PC specifies that the bonus gold be kept separate.
On the other hand, there are things like suicide fleets designed specifically to end the game as quickly as possible, with just enough of an advantage to claim the win, or simply to irritate other players who had longer-term plans.
Have you seen fleets like that be effective at winning games? Unless there are always icebergs around, it seems like it would be tough to suicide at the right time after getting enough gold.
I’ve never seen it actually used in Pirates, much less result in a win, but the potential is still there. I have seen similar “spoiler” strategies used in other games, and with those it’s often not even about winning. Some people just want to watch the world burn. They suck as people to play games with, especially if they make a habit of it, but unless it’s your regular group you won’t always know that until it’s too late to keep them out.
It’s also somewhat different between 2-player and 3+ player games, but playing to disrupt the game is pretty closely related to various other sportsmanship issues like kingmaking and purposely trying to take down one particular player at your own expense. You really can’t prevent it entirely, but it’s good to try to minimize any obvious places for it to occur.
Connecting that back to the above issue, unloading treasure to your home island could be made entirely optional as long as other endgame triggers are used. The gold on ships can counts the same as gold at home or in forts, ships could carry it around as long as they wanted.
Do you think that only one player being able to give future move actions would be the optimal endgame trigger if gold on ships counted towards victory? I’m wondering about how to tie that in to the points in play house rule.
It works okay in practice, but it was always a clunky way to write out what feels like a fairly intuitive rule. It’s written that way to provide as much cover as possible for all of the various ways a ship could remain in action (oarsmen, shipwrights, etc.) even after being completely crippled by opposing players and/or bad luck, but ends up sounding more complicated than it actually is.
A points-in-play rule should still count all ships that are in play, even if they’re incapable of being given actions. If an opponent doesn’t want them to count, they’ll need to take the extra effort to sink (or capture) them instead of just knocking off the masts and sailing away.
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