#Improved Treasure Fleets Legacy Path

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steady glen
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TL;DR for those who don’t want to read a massive post:

  • Increase speed at which Treasure Fleets are spawned based on naval tech (1x for Cartography, 2x for Shipbuilding, 3x for Gunpowder)
  • Give resource slot-providing buildings the additional function of making Treasure Fleets their settlement spawns worth more points
  • Add a Pirate Ship unit earned on the Civics tree with the option to “raid” Treasure Fleets instead of just commandeering them
  • Create plausible deniability on Treasure Fleet theft, allowing for theft without being at war
  • Give Independent Powers the ability to spawn Pirate Ships to raid other players, either for their benefactor’s benefit or out of sheer aggression
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Introduction

So now that I have almost 1000 hours of this game under my belt, it’s come to light for me that the Treasure Fleet Legacy Path, while a really cool concept, has some major design flaws. These issues can be boiled down into three major points:

  1. Treasure Fleets spawn too late and too slowly to have an impact before the end of the era
  2. The player has no direct control over Treasure Fleets beyond the luck of the draw based on where Treasure Resources are located
  3. Piracy is nothing more than a function of war, and even then it’s too tricky to pull off

From my experience, by the time a player has reached the first Treasure Fleet benchmark, they’ve already completed one if not more other victory paths, as the Culture and Science paths have a much more direct method of completion. Meanwhile, Piracy is, while really cool conceptually, simply too much of a pain to pull off properly.

With all that in mind, I would like to suggest the following balance tweaks to make this legacy path more engaging:

Start earning Treasure Fleets sooner

From both a historic and gameplay perspective, it makes little sense for Treasure Fleets to only start spawning with Shipbuilding; as soon as early island colonies were developed, spices and gold were being sent back to the homeland. With that in mind, I would recommend that Treasure Fleets begin spawning from islands with Treasure Resources as soon as Cartography is unlocked. In addition to allowing these resources to begin their slow trickle in, it would also provide the fun challenge of navigating Treasure Fleets through open oceans. One way to make this more engaging would be for Treasure Fleets to take more damage than other units pre-Shipbuilding, making them extra vulnerable to these open seas. However, if they are escorted by a military naval ship (i.e. a Cog), the Cog takes the damage instead, forcing you to have to decide if you need to expend the resources to defend your Treasure Fleets from the elements or if you can afford to run the risk of sending them home alone. This would provide much more interesting gameplay choices early on in the Exploration Age.

Make Treasure Fleets Spawn Quicker

While the spice trade did exist as soon as colonies were developed, the advent of Shipbuilding magnified these trade ships from risky excursions to core national businesses. That is why I would suggest the following change: the Shipbuilding tech increases the speed at which Treasure Fleets are spawned, coming out twice as often as they do when you’ve only researched Cartography. Likewise, Gunpowder and the advent of the Galleon would triple the spawning speed.

Now, the numbers here would require some playtesting. It’s very possible that this would cause the Treasure Fleet Legacy Path to end too soon, as opposed to taking too long like it does now. A simple fix to this would be to increase the maximum number of points required to clear benchmarks, or to adjust the base speed at which Treasure Fleets spawn. One might argue that this would change little; since Shipbuilding Treasure Fleets would come out twice as fast and you wouldn’t have to navigate dangerous waters, you’d still earn far more points with Shipbuilding than with Cartography. However, having that early trickle would provide a small, early stream of gold, and would also reward players who grab islands early with some early progress towards the Legacy Path, rather than having everyone suddenly start exploding with points once they reach Shipbuilding.

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Money Begets Money

Currently, the Economic Legacy Paths of both the Antiquity and Modern ages follow the mindset of “money begets money”. How do you hoard more resources in Antiquity? You build Markets and Lighthouses. How do you get more resources? You set up trade routes. How do you improve Factories? You trade for Oil and Coal, you set up Factory towns, you buy buildings that can hoard more resources to store more Factory resources. The Exploration Age’s Economic Legacy Path is the black sheep here; if the player has the money to spend, they should be able to have the agency to move this track along.

With that in mind, an elegant solution would be to make it so that every resource slot provided by an Exploration era building would also make that settlement produce more Treasure Fleet points. In other words, any Distant Lands settlement with a Bazaar adds 1 point to all Treasure Fleets spawned, 2 if they have a Wharf (3 if both). While this is a pretty strong swing, this also requires the settlement in question to be a City, meaning a major financial investment. Again, though, this means that Civilizations investing heavy in their economy will be rewarded by being able to spawn more expensive Treasure Fleets, bringing it full circle.

Now, I can already hear some people saying, “Well, when you get down to it, these changes would make the Treasure Fleet Legacy Path a tech race, since ships spawn quicker the more Science you have.” That does seem like a bit of a balancing problem, and it would be beneficial if Culture or Diplomacy could play into this Legacy path some more. That brings me to the most significant overhauls:

Yar Har Fiddle Dee Dee

In its current state, piracy is not a particularly feasible method for netting Treasure Fleets. There are two significant roadblocks to piracy at the moment:

  1. You can only pillage ships belonging to people you are actively at war with
  2. There is no way of knowing where enemy Treasure Fleets are, making them impossible to catch before they are cashed in

The biggest issue with current piracy is that it only works when you and another player are in open warfare. While yes, warring nations did pilfer each others’ ships, that wasn’t the only manner in which they did so. You also have no clue which enemy settlements are currently creating Treasure Fleets unless you keep a constant look at the entire map, tracking which resources have been improved, and know the enemy’s technology level to see if they have reached Shipbuilding. Plus, with no way of knowing when a Treasure Fleet is actually spawned unless you have military units constantly at their coast, it’s almost impossible to actually catch these Treasure Fleets before they return home and are cashed in.

With that in mind, I would suggest the following piracy improvements:

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Nationally Sanctioned Pirate Ships

In Civilization VI, there were two distinct naval unit trees: Naval Melee and Naval Raider. I would suggest expanding on that idea here with an Exploration-specific unit type: Pirate Ships. These boats would only be unlockable on the Culture tree, helping solve the issue of this Legacy Path being so centered around Science, and would give Culture-focused players a unique way to even the playing field.

Pirate Ships would move quicker than standard naval combat units, unless within an enemy naval combat unit’s line of sight. Once this occurs, they remain visible to any enemy naval combat units and their movement is reduced to standard naval speed; while Pirate Ships should be speedsters, if an enemy combatant catches them in the act, they should be able to chase them down, or in the very least track them so they can have another ship cut off their advance if need be. To compensate for their increased speed, these ships would be less powerful than standard naval ships; while Pirate Ships excel at picking at unprepared civilians, they were no match for fully armed combat ships.

In addition, Pirate Ships would be invisible to Treasure Fleets, but not to military units. This would allow pirates to snipe unprotected Treasure Fleets, forcing their owners to either escort them or roll the dice on having their Treasure Fleets be snatched. Another reason for their invisibility is that, unless an enemy military ship catches them in the act, it should be an unknown surprise as to who it was who kidnapped your ship; the owner would simply get a notification saying “Your Treasure Fleet was abducted by Pirates!” with a visual indicator on the map showing the general area they were in. This indicator will remain for a certain period (let’s say 3 turns); that way, if they have units nearby they have a chance to quickly swoop in and save their ship. If they fail to do so in 3 turns, the visual indicator goes away, and the fleet is considered “lost” unless the player manages to track it down on their own.

While it’s true that we currently have the “Corsair” unit that can be created by becoming a Military Independent Power’s suzerain, building all of this new functionality into an Independent-specific unit would be a severe balancing issue, creating a major race to grab the nearest Military Independent Power. As such, for both this reason and to give Culture-focused players more agency, I would instead suggest keeping these units available to all.

Wee-Woo Wee-Woo, Free Food Alert!

While you always have the option of having your Pirate Ships post up around other players’ coastal settlements, I would suggest adding a notification whenever another player’s Treasure Fleet is spawned, something to the effect of “The settlement of X has created a Treasure Fleet worth Y points!. This notification would only start popping up once the Pirate Ship civic is unlocked. In a similar vein, later civics could improve Pirate Ships by dramatically increasing their sight range, letting them spot out Treasure Fleets from far away.

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Plausible Deniability

In the event that one of your Pirate Ships catches an enemy Treasure Fleet out on its own, the aggressor has total plausible deniability. After all, Pirate Ships are invisible to Treasure Fleets, so who knows who captured it? Isabella could capture Charlemagne’s fleet, and while Charlemagne could say “My treasure fleet was captured!”, Isabella could go “Whaaat? That’s awful! I hope you get that dastardly fiend!”

However, if you catch an enemy in the act, that’s a different story. This would require the defending player to witness the capture in action with a nearby military unit. Another way to tell would be the Treasure Fleet itself; there would be a visual indicator on it stating that it was captured and who it was captured from. Once the fleet is delivered, it’s fair game, nobody saw you do the deed. If, however, the Treasure Fleet’s former owner spots their own former Treasure Fleet out in the wild before it’s delivered, they will know who captured it.

So if, for example, Charlemagne’s Carrack witnesses Isabella’s Pirate Ship ransack his Treasure Fleet, then he knows that she was responsible, which would cause a severe relationship plunge as well as giving Charlemagne a major Influence surge. The same would apply if the capture happened in secret but he spots the captured Treasure Fleet before it’s delivered. In the event that a third party (say, Pachacuti) notices the capture or spots the stolen Treasure Fleet in the wild, the victim will receive a mild influence boost and there will be a minor relationship drop. After all, it’s just a salacious rumor, right?

Dead Men Tell No Tales

When a Pirate Ship ransacks a Treasure Fleet, they should be given the option to either commandeer or raid the fleet. If they commandeer it, it behaves identically to how capturing enemy treasure fleets works now; the pirating player gains control of the fleet, which moves at normal speed and earns full points when delivered (the only difference being the previously-discussed label showing that it was stolen and who stole it).

If they raid the fleet, though, the treasure fleet is destroyed, and the treasure transfers onto the Pirate Ship; the Pirate Ship can then sail home and deliver the Treasure (which does not destroy the Pirate Ship in the same way that Treasure Fleets are eliminated). As discussed above, Pirate Ships not only move quicker than treasure fleets, but they also have plausible deniability. After all, dead men tell no tales; if Charlemagne spots your Pirate Ship roaming the seas, he doesn’t know if you’re coming for him or Pachacuti without any solid evidence. However, sinking a Treasure Fleet is dirty work; as a result, some of the treasure is lost, reducing the number of points they recover by 1 or 2. This number could be fudged around with to see what feels balanced.

So that covers Pirate Ships officially sanctioned by a nation’s government. To anyone who knows history, though, there are also two categories of pirates that should be factored in:

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Sir Francis Drake, or “Looking the Other Way”

Throughout history, there were pirates that were treated as bloodthirsty pirates by their targets, but as noble knights by their patrons who, importantly, had plausible deniability. This ability could be implemented via Independent Powers. In a similar vein to the poorly maligned “Incite Raid” function, an “Incite Piracy” Influence action could be added. When performed (targeting a specific player), after a certain number of turns, the Independent Power would generate a Pirate Ship. This ship would then lie in wait until detecting that the target enemy has produced a Treasure Fleet, at which point it would chase down that Fleet and raid it (because these are simple Independent Powers, they lack the chain of command necessary to commandeer a Treasure Fleet). If all of the Treasure Fleet’s points are destroyed from the raid, then the Pirate Ship will return home and wait for another enemy Treasure Fleet to spawn; if some points are salvaged, however, they will then travel to your nearest settlement and deliver them, earning you those points. Once this is done, the enemy Pirate Ship will sail home, but will no longer be working for you, serving as a neutral unit controlled by the Independent Power. If “Incite Piracy” is triggered again, then the Independent Power will produce a new Pirate Ship to start this process again. As this Pirate Ship is controlled by an Independent Power, there is total plausible deniability on who captured the ship, meaning if they’re caught in the act, you don’t receive any penalty. However, if a player (be it the victim or a third party) witnesses the Pirate Ship delivering their haul to one of your settlements, the same penalties as described above are applied.

That leaves the third type of pirate: the truly free agent.

Piracy for the Love of the Game

History had many pirates not affiliated with any nation; these were essentially “barbarians” of the Age of Exploration. Seeing how Civilization VII’s barbarian equivalency is Independent Powers, they would serve this purpose well. Basically, if the Independent Power controls any Pirate Ships (either via the “Incite Piracy” action above or created on their own whims), they will track players they are hostile to and, if they detect a Treasure Fleet being spawned, send a Pirate Ship out to raid it. If the Treasure Fleet’s owner destroys the Independent Power’s Pirate Ship, then that Independent Power will be forced to wait until they produce another Pirate Ship to attempt another raid. If they successfully raid an enemy Treasure Fleet (again, commandeering will not be an option here), they will return home and deliver the Treasure Fleet to themselves. These points will not be lost, however; once that Independent Power is either converted into a City-State or annihilated, all of its accrued Treasure Fleet points will be netted by their new master.

Closing Thoughts

To those who read through the entirety of this post, thank a ton! I hope you either agree with these suggestions, or in the very least found them insightful!

For more Independent Power balance suggestions, check out my https://discord.com/channels/1307104947426295818/1381748618972893244 post. For other Exploration Age balance suggestions, check out my “Improved Non Sufficit Orbis” post (in development). And for more suggestions on improving diplomacy and warfare, check out my “Bring Back Casus Belli” post (in development).

Thanks for reading, and here’s to hoping Firaxis implements some of these changes!

coarse lantern
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Well the vibe of this suggestion is absolutely top notch. Some of the mechanics seem a bit more complicated than i would expect from a game like civ (like the deniability bit) but overall i think this would be great stuff to implement. You've got to imagine that the devs had much bigger dreams for treasure fleets than what they installed so hopefully something like this makes it into the game sooner or later.

steady glen
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Well, the whole “plausible deniability” aspect really boils down to “did you see them take the boat”, which isn’t hard to implement at all. Did Charlemagne spot you raiding his ship? He gets major influence. Did Pachacuti spot it? Minor influence. No one saw it? No penalties, you ninja you.

supple zephyr
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yes yes no no yes

steady glen
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Improved Treasure Fleets Legacy Path

heavy swallow
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I'd also like to suggest that non-coastal settlements that are connected to a coastal settlement should also spawn treasure fleets...

hasty cargo
steady glen
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I didn’t even about borrowing the scout’s scan function, that would be an easy way to use existing functionality to improve other areas of the game

neat forge
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Seems like they fixed it or at least made it better

steady glen
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They let treasure fleets walk on land. That’s it.

neat forge
steady glen
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Hardly. It doesn't cover a single thing I go over here.

twilit zinc
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Let's wait for patchnotes before we make conclusions

coarse lantern
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It seems clear that they're going to make this version of treasure fleets work properly before looking into major reworks. Would probably be 6months minimum before an idea like OP's could be implemented so it makes sense to do the easy fixes now.

cedar dust
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Agree with some of your points, but definitely not a fan of fleet production scaling based on tech. Economic already has the problem of being a pseudo-science path in Modern; no need to do the same in explo.

The tech advantage comes from having better units to conquer more settlements to produce more fleets. Creating a direct scaling system based off the tech tree just ties yet another non-science thing to science.

steady glen
cedar dust
# steady glen I mean, piracy being based on culture was thrown out there exactly to counteract...

Right, but my point was that settling is the default, which doesn't scale off of either tree, and then if you want a scientific advantage, that's where conquest comes in.

The "default" way to pursue each path should be relatively independent from other paths imo, because otherwise you end up with weird situations (like modern economic) where one path is almost acting as a pre-requisite from another.

Culture and science might have smaller or indirect interactions to help you speed up treasure fleets, but shouldn't be fundamentally required in any meaningful quantity (just as having loads of money can help you bring science online faster but isn't ultimately required at all to get a big science yield and push through the tech tree).

(Something you're getting at in your OP that I think is pretty accurate is that treasure fleets don't really scale off of your income/economic scaling in any meaningful way. Yes, the economic paths are also about resources, but it feels weird that how rich or poor you are plays little to no role in the legacy paths. Points scaling from gold buildings is a nice idea.)

coarse lantern
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I feel like science is, and should be, the primary driver over development in civ just as it was in real life. I don't especially mind if science appears to be more valuable than culture, because to be honest that's quite realistic, so i'm with OP on that point. Scientific innovations drive the world!

cedar dust
# coarse lantern I feel like science is, and should be, the primary driver over development in ci...

I don't disagree with that, I just don't like the idea of having tree progression be a hard pre-req for something that just objectively makes your others paths better, because I think they should exist fairly independently of each other (ie. I can do a culture game where I just do the culture path and progressing that is perfectly viable even if all my other yields are in the gutter)

Like with the modern economic path, it'd be one thing if factories were a starting tech, but having them be fairly deep in the tree means you straight up have to have a good science yield to get factories online on a competitive pace. And sure, scientific advancement was an integral aspect of the irl industrial revolution, but from the game perspective of civ, I'd much rather economic success was determined simply by resources and wealth.

I think there can be cross-benefits between the paths (better science = better army is an obvious example of how science always advantages military), I just don't like the idea of "you NEED to be good in path X to progress/accelerate path Y"

feral crypt
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We had the privateer in civ 4 which worked an awful lot like this - a unit weaker than military ships, which appeared as a barbarian to other civs. It was allowed to make any hostile acts against other civs, but really struggled to defeat serious military opposition, so was more for raiding/attacking transport ships (which where a thing back in the day when units couldn't magic up their own transport). That would seem an efficient solution.

steady glen
# cedar dust I don't disagree with that, I just don't like the idea of having tree progressio...

As is, science already is a driver, as you need shipbuilding to start getting treasure fleets. Literally the only two science things I changed were:

  • Cartography starts a slow trickle (that’s a first tech, so even someone with the worst science is getting it)
  • Gunpowder supercharges fleet production (that’s near the end of the tech tree, so if you’ve gone that hard on tech, a bit of an Econ boost is merited, in the same way that some late techs include Relics).
cedar dust
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Oh, whoops, I forgot to mention in my original post that imo shipbuilding (or at least the capacity to produce treasure fleets) should be where cartograpy is

steady glen
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I wouldn’t mind that. But I also like the idea that focusing on improving your navy also improves you ability to produce naval fleets, hence the scaling mechanism. You’d think a civilization producing galleons would have gotten better at this whole “fleet production” thing than those making Viking cogs.

cedar dust
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I think naval scaling could be a slightly more indirect factor if stealing treasure fleets was more of an issue (I really like the ideas about piracy in the OP). If losing fleets is a serious threat, escorting them will become necessary, and the better your navy, the lesser the risk

steady glen
orchid cedar
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Please at least add more functionality to pirate other civs treasure fleets

hasty cargo
steady glen
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Putting all this aside, it recently dawned on me why Treasure Fleets feels so bad in its current state:

It's because it's entirely based on expansion or conquest.

Like, you could literally put the exact same goals under the military legacy path and it'd make just as much sense.

How do you get treasure fleets? "Own distant land territory in the correct spots." Can't trade for them, can't speed them up with tech or science or money. I've run like 4 different games in a row where my #1 goal was treasure fleets, and unless you are actively trying to murder enemies, it won't happen, because the clock is gonna run out and there's no way to speed it up. It's this game's equivalent of diplomacy victory in VI, "Wait out the clock and hope for the best." It's kind of depressing how they made Songhai's river fleets super good in a recent patch, yet natural fleets are still terrible. I'm glad songhai fleets are good now, but holy god normal fleets need to be reworked. And no, "Treasure Convoys" does not solve the problem at all: if anything I fear it'll just encourage focus on conquest even more.

hasty cargo
# steady glen Putting all this aside, it recently dawned on me why Treasure Fleets feels so ba...

I think the key difference is treasure fleets rewards you for going "first" and rushing out to Distant Lands whereas military is happy for you to get there second and attack.

But I think as I mentioned above, if you got there first-- you should spawn treasure fleets right away.. what's the point in getting there first of you then have to waste 50% of the age for ship building.
It's like The Amazing Race where you rush to get to the checkpoint first and then you just get stuck at the airport for 6 hours, lol.

I agree with you though, you should be able to max out the treasure fleet requirements with zero combat (as long as you're fast! If everyone else settled first that's on you!)

steady glen
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Another easy option I thought up of: trade routes.

Trade routes facilitate all other economic paths, I don't see why they wouldn't here. Let's say someone in Distant Lands has 3 Treasure Resources. Set up a trade route with them, get a one-time 3 point surge. That would give players the option to either swarm the new world or funnel trade routes into those who already did, but either play into the whole "getting resources from the new world" fantasy.

hasty cargo
neat forge
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Seems like they're moving away from tech requirements since they cut the shipbuilding requirement

steady glen
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I was ecstatic when I saw that. While I still think later naval tech giving you more points is a cool idea, I'll gladly take getting points asap instead of needing to wait for shipbuilding.

quick rose
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Definitely second:

  • Increase speed at which Treasure Fleets are spawned based on naval tech (1x for Cartography, 2x for Shipbuilding, 3x for Gunpowder),
  • Give resource slot-providing buildings the additional function of making Treasure Fleets their settlement spawns worth more points