Nerf Blackbeard.

[strong cairn]

He is completely unplayable in multiplayer, his ability is way to powerful. The ability to convert taken boats is wild. If played correctly you can have an insane navy force by halfway through Antiquity.
I played a multiplayer game that by turn 50 in Antiquity I owned more than 60 boats from only buying/ creating 3!! 3 boats made a net gain of 57, not to mention the gold generated from this. The free naval army allowed me to do everything else.
He's currently being banned in higher end multiplayer games because of the ridiculousness of what he can do.

Its thematic to allow him to take boats that you conquer, but it needs to be checked. Maybe like Trung(her unique commander) you get 1 unique boat that has this ability. This allows for keeping the money gain passive and still keeps things thematic.

[molten tiger]

Yeah his ship stealing ability is OP and could use a nerf. Although if he's reliant on a fleet commander to do it, that'd also make him pretty weak in antiquity unless he can also have one there.

Maybe hijacking ships could cost gold or influence? they should also start at half health at most.

[rugged yacht]

I like the idea of a unique commander that has this ability- it could be Queen Anne's Revenge. Though that would mean he has a Naval Commander in Antiquity, unless you meant it should be a basic unit which would create other balance issues- what if he loses it?

[mint lichen]

Making the ship stealing random might be good - maybe a 50% chance

[forest peak]

33% I will say

[weak tendon]

I think ship stealing is a great mechanic but unfinished. We have too many ships and nothing to do with them. Maybe, as a leader he will have some ability to do something with his excessive amount of ships.

Like, this new hijacked ship could:

1. settle town in distant lands
2. make a water trade route
3. add 1 citizen to a settlement when dismissed there

I like this more than just making it 33% chance to capture.

[strong cairn]

In the current state of blackbeard I would personally prefer him having a unique commander in Antiquity OR make it a unique unit that if it dies you could "upgrade" or purchase a new naval and it becomes queen's Anne again

[plush pawn]

he is OP on water maps only though. if you play pangea you can just smash him easily. i was playing pangea yesterday and he was too weak to do anything to me, since i had no settlement with water tile for the most part.

[strong cairn]

It feels like you have yet to see the power of ship stealing or the someone abuse lakshim with incite raid over and over before converting a settlement. The mechanic of conversion of troops just doesnt work. Lakshim proves that Firstly with conversation of CS troops and somehow the devs ignored how ridiculous it is and made blackbeards ability.

[plush pawn]

Are you complaining about Lakshimbai, Blackbeard or both? Sounds like they executed a fine strategy

[strong cairn]

Its more the concept of unit conversions with blackbeard originally.
Most "competitive" multiplayer games will ban blackbeard, ban Incite raid or limit it to 1 per CS. The reasons for this are simple.

Blackbeard gets out of control on non pangea maps and lakshim can do devasting things with incite raid.

If you've never seen either mechanic abused I would implore you to try it out on your own and see first hand before continuing to debate

[plush pawn]

As I stated, he is something only on watermaps, thanks for the re-iteration. Tell your competetive PVP friends to ban the maps instead of leader. It solves the problem without a patch. It's faster, easier to do.

[strong cairn]

Limiting to specific maps is not a fix. I am trying to seek solutions to mechanics that are overly powerful.
They limit specific mechanics or ban leaders because of how oppressive and out of control they are. The day you play against a lakshim who incites on you 9 times and then converts all those units will be the day you understand.

[strong cairn]

Thats a decent idea, having to pay influence or some currency to actually convert. I like what you proposed with influence, if he needs to spend influence to secure stolen ships it makes endeavors and war more challenging (War support). Blackbeard would have to play a more stategic game rather than boat horde for free. Solid idea

[plush pawn]

If you kick out that ability from Blackbeard then there is basically no incentive to play with him. Tell me, why should I pick him if not for that ability? They may give it a 20% chance as someone said and that would just fix it I think. Right now it happens with every other ship and that's too OP on watermaps, if this is done with 20% chance I think it would be fair.

[molten tiger]

Personally I'd hate playing around chance based capturing. I'd prefer it be a consistent ability that can be used strategically, even if it means having a gold/influence cost or only something a fleet commander can do

I understand there are people who like relying on luck but it's just not my preference

[strong cairn]

I absolutely agree with you, luck based things should not apply in a game like Civ.

His ability should either have a cost as you suggested or be completely revamped as a new unit/ unique commander/ maybe even give him the ability to levy boats that are not his for a reduced cost.

As far as cost for converting a boat, what would you feel is appropriate? For online speed I feel something slightly lower than the cost of an endeavor would be nice, or even possibly slightly lower than the cost of levying a boat from a CS.

When it comes to the unique commander I feel it would be so easy to implement, give him a bonus tree like Trung and possibly allow him to sail into distant lands much like the Tonga do. Or instead make him similar to Trung with the unique attack.

A unique unit could work as well as a lot of antiquity already has that, making it the only unit that can convert with a cost. So the units it converts don't have that ability, only it does.

[drifting flare]

I think chance base would be best, and most realistic. Capturing vessels after a fight was common in the age of sail, but getting them home afterwards was often based on 'luck'. I.e. how damaged they were, or how far the journey was or if a storm hit.

For example, after Trafalgar, the british captured 21 ships, but in a subsequent storm, at least 14 (potentially 18) of those were lost.

[strong cairn]

What you mentioned somewhat folds on itself as the game provides storms for ships to possibly die in? Although I feel most players have the settings for events to be as low as possible

I do enjoy what you wrote however, thematic. I wonder if maybe the ships have a special ability on them for capture that resets after X amounts of turns, much like losing a commander. You cant just throw the boys out every other turn, they gotta rest!

[drifting flare]

Also, not really sure how its supposed to work in the modern age. Battleships etc were incredibly rarely captured. Perhaps the mechanic should be somewhat limited to Exploration Age...

[strong cairn]

The games dont typically last until Modern with him in the seas, and if they do the remaining players dont both even touching the water because there is no point hah

[molten tiger]

That's also why I suggested having captured ships start at half health at most.

If you're looking for realism, oceans could probably use more weather effects too like more storms, fog, rough waves

[drifting flare]

Which i suppose is the point of this thread!

[strong cairn]

100% Its actual insanity having such a fleet for doing very little to create it. You should give it a whirl, plant a ship or two outside some city states or enemy bases and just kill everything boat, you only need 3 or 4 to start and then it takes off something fierce while youre free to do everything else lol
I won't lie, its fun to see a few hundred ships blocking off everything in exploration. You can't even get a settler past the boat walls haha

[long agate]

I don't see how it's completely unplayable in a MP game. What I think you're describing here is one situation you had where they were able amass a lot of ships from the ability, which is the point of it. Modern era usually end up amassing units anyways.

As it being broken or needs a nerf, I don't think it's that powerful. This is something you can play around.

[strong cairn]

I am primarily talking pre modern.
It's not just a personal anecdotal game, this is a common issue amongst higher end play.
I think until you personally try it out, you wont really understand.

I did understand that making this post was going to have many people like yourself have the opinion that its fine, I just wish people would actually try something out before saying so. On paper, his ability does not seem that bad at all, its only until you see someone abuse it that it becomes quite clear how insane it is. Its much like the leader Lakshim, on paper it seems fine until you have someone incite raid on you 10 times and then convert all those units

[merry quail]

If he needs a nerf I would hope they just lean into his existing downside: high maintenance. Having an enormous fleet with nothing to do should be a crippling expense. If you do capture a bunch of ships the pressure should be on go conqure something both to make the expense worth it, and hopefully lose a few of those expensive ships in the process.

[strong cairn]

I agree with the higher mainenance for sure, thats a great potential fix to bring up

[molten tiger]

Yeah on second thought he probably doesn't need to have his capturing reworked. If he had increased gold maintenance (maybe 4 per age) from captured ships and they started at half health, he wouldn't be as oppressive.

[jaunty tulip]

I very much do not think he needs a nerf. He has a hard time snowballing and the only thing he can do is snowball with ships. He needs some help against ai ships, while player combat has much larger space to exploit his current weakness.

[mint lichen]

The thing is, pirates didn't cost much - they paid themselves by looting! So I already don't like the increased maintenance cost thing, it doesn't seem right. Unless you think of it as you better pay them - or they'll loot YOU! I guess that works.
I still think random capture chance is a more fun way to go. People who hate randomness are ignoring all the other random systems in the game, natural disasters, terrain placement, city state placements and type - all have a random factor.

[molten tiger]

Looting is already reflected by his ability to plunder trade routes at peace and gain gold from defeating naval units. And like I've said, I understand there are people that like luck based mechanics but I'd lose incentive to play him if that is the nerf he's given. Just because I enjoy some random mechanics like the starting locations, exploration, and IPs doesn't mean I want it everywhere all the time but that's just my personal preference

[long agate]

Hmm.. no, I understand the ability and played with it, nice try though. Still disagree. You're still explaining 1 situation you had and flagging it as op and bad. Yes... leader with strong ability people will play to it for any leader, which is not "abusing" something. Abusing something is things like in Civ 6 the shift-enter tech for production, or the other tech for combat, I forget but you get the idea.

Higher maintenance cost would make him unplayable. His ability is not one that is always going to be used in all games and on top of that you're telling the player to either make ships and have no army or have an army and no ships.

[drifting flare]

I for one think Blackbeard is completely fair and balanced.

[long agate]

Showing the aftermath in 1 picture doesn't really mean anything lol

[drifting flare]

The thing i dont really understand about people that defend completely overpowered gameplay like this is 'is it fun for you?' Like is it fun to be so stupidly overwhelmingly in the lead that nobody can possibly keep up? I personally get very bored once there's no challenge.

[grave pendant]

Your picture is kinda funny for sure, but it also shows something important: if you want a challenge, maybe change your game speed to online speed and abreviated age.. you only ended up with this situation because you are playing on a slow mode and had all the time in the world to make it happen. I have not played a single game where I was at 44% of the age by turn 74 ! for me, the age would be long finished by then. in that case, building an overpowered armada like that would just ... not happen. A balancing that could be considered by the devs, (first of all, I have read people say "lower the ship's life" ?? I just played a game yesterday and to take a ship, you basically have to kill it and it becomes yours with 5% life... half of them get immediately destroyed by a random archer or catapult on lands.. so I believe that was already nerfed) would be to maybe make the probability of taking a ship increasingly lower depending on game difficulty / speed / age length. 80% for the fastest games, 50% for governor or standard speed, 25-30% for easier mode or marathon games... Let's not kid ourselves.. if you want to go for a global domination victory anyway (like on the picture) and you got the game for it, you WILL be overpowerful, you WILL crush ever enemies and yes, at the end, the game might "feel" too easy. But you got to get there first.. Once again, on abbreviated age or online speed, you can forget about global domination. You just don't have the time!

[drifting flare]

That’s absolutely not my pic btw. Just found it on Reddit.

[grave pendant]

ah lol 🤣

[strong cairn]

I've had a similar fleet more than once like this with blackbeard showing people how ridiculous he is playing online speed. Most multiplayer games are played via online speed.

[long agate]

Still good points are made, even when you take a ship it's like 5% hp. A human player would most likely either have multiple ships or retreat.

Then you have the case of being a pirate. You can't willy nilly wander the seas without being attack by everything.

Then there's also you investing your research and civics into the fleet, you're most likely behind in culture and science compared to everyone else. Not to mention you lose most of your units on age transition

[grave pendant]

fair point.. on maps with lands, you could easily lose to a science or culture victory due to all the concessions.

[jaunty tulip]

Online speed doesn't make a game harder imo. I think faster game speed makes the game easier with how both the requirements are reduced and how much yields the player can still get. Abbreviated would make it harder to accumulate ships. Just play on not continuity and all the antiquity ships go poof.

[strong cairn]

I had literally told you that its not just 1 situation, that it is in fact a mechanic highly abused in competitive gameplay. So much so that he's banned in many circles because of it.

Your arguments seem to be more hypothetical instead of real experience with the issue. The point is not needing to invest into your fleet because its already so overwhelming that you can do everything else. You can start exploration by having a giant wall of boats stopping anyone from distant lands.

Also you dont lose your boats on transition, most MP games are continuity.