Pirates (Civ6)

Pirates is a multiplayer scenario in Civilization VI that was released as part of the October 2020 Update.

Gameplay

The Pirates scenario is centered around four playable pirate factions on their quest to obtain riches, and is heavily influenced by Sid Meier's Pirates!. They are:

• The Dread Pirates
• The Privateers
• The Swashbucklers
• The Hoarders

The gameplay is based on collecting treasure and Infamy with the help of special Relics that impart special effects onto your ships, while avoiding the Spanish, English, French and Dutch navies. Pirates cannot found cities, so their units have powerful self-sustaining effects to compensate for the inability to build more. The scenario can be played on the handcrafted Caribbean Islands map or a random Pirate Islands map. The player starts with a single Brigantine, which has a special Flagship ability and can be considered your main ship for combat. The Flagship ability makes it immune to captures and losing due to mutiny. The flagships in the scenario are marked with the Armada icon (as well as Infamous Pirates).

Victory

There is only one way to win Pirates: surviving until the turn limit, at which point you must have the most total score. There are three types of score: Treasure, Infamy, and Fightin'.

Treasure

• Burying treasure chests (30 points)
• Sinking Treasure Ships (20 points)
• Plundering treasure chests (5 points)
• Plundering a Building or District (2 points)
• Plundering a Trade Route or Improvement (1 point)

Infamy

• Revealing hexes as the Swashbucklers (1 point for every 50 hexes)
• Capturing a ship as the Privateers (5 points)
• Sacking a port (15 points)
• Sinking Infamous Pirates (20-50 points)
• Clearing Buccaneer Forts (5 points)

Fightin'

• Destroying or capturing a pirate player's unit (10 points)
• Destroying or capturing a colonial or buccaneer unit (5 points)
• Surviving combat (1 point)

Factions

Playable

• The Dread Pirates
  • Active Ability: Walk the Plank (Instantly defeat a badly damaged enemy ship to grant +5 Combat Strength and +3 Movement to all units for 5 turns.)
  • Passive Ability: Fightin' is What We Do Best (Grants additional Gold whenever a unit engages in combat.)
• The Privateers
  • Active Ability: Bring Her Home (Capture a badly damaged enemy ship for the Privateer's patron in exchange for Gold and Infamy. Takes 5 turns to recharge.)
  • Passive Ability: Letters of Marque (All ports owned by your patron civilization are permanently revealed to you. Gain extra 100 Gold from pillaging Trade Route.)
• The Swashbucklers
  • Active Ability: Tack Into the Wind (Gain a large temporary Movement boost. Takes 6 turns to recharge.)
  • Passive Ability: Sailing the Open Seas (Grants Infamy for revealing more hexes of the map.)
• The Hoarders
  • Active Ability: Chain Shot (Spend any unit's action to temporarily immobilize an enemy ship. Takes 5 turns to recharge.)
  • Passive Ability: Mine! Mine! Mine! (Unit maintenance cost is decreased. Gain bonus score for burying treasure. Gain up to 1000 extra Gold per turn from interest.)

Non-Playable

• The colonial civilizations
  • England, Spain, France, and the Netherlands all control various cities across the pirate-infested waters. While it can be beneficial to visit the taverns that lie in their cities, they (with the exception of the Privateers' sponsor toward them) want the pirates in Davy Jones' locker, and deploy their ships across the map to hunt down pirates. They also frequently send nautical Trade Routes that pirates can pillage. Finally, every few turns, a Treasure Fleet will be deployed from a random city. The Guard Ships that comprise their military might be powerful, but the Gold Ships that they guard can be well worth the risk- pillaging them grants a high amount of Gold as well as Treasure points.
• Buccaneers
  • This scenario's equivalent to Barbarians, the Buccaneers also reside in camps that randomly deploy units hostile towards every civilization. Their camps can be pillaged.
• Infamous Pirates
  • Special enemy units that spawn randomly, Infamous Pirates are stronger than any normal unit. They also appear to spawn as Fleets or Armadas, an otherwise inaccessible development in this mode due to the lack of a civics tree. Defeating them grants Infamy points.

Special features

Units

• Brigantine
• Galleon
• Sloop
• Shore Party

Unit actions

See List of unit actions in Civ6

Terrain

• Buccaneer Fort
• Buried Treasure
• Floating Treasure

Relics

Relics are powerful items that can be picked up by pirate ships and used to enhance their abilities. Up to three can be equipped at a time.

Image	Name	Effects	Description
	Black Spot Branding Iron	+10 Combat Strength when fighting buccaneer or infamous pirates.	With this iron, you can mark your enemies with a curse that will follow them across the seas. It can never be washed off, so long as the curse lasts.
	Blackbeard's Short Fuse	Naval unit attacks deal -2 Movement to enemy ships for the next turn.	The dread pirate would put these in his beard and light them on fire to frighten his enemies. They were perhaps not necessary.
	Bonny Brace of Pistols	+1 additional attack for all units. All units can move after attacking.	Anne Bonny, born Anne Fulford, was the paramour of the pirate Calico Jack, but when she teamed up with Mary Read, they ditched Jack and set sail together. Here are her pistols.
	Captain William Kidd's Journal	50% chance of finding an additional treasure map when visiting a tavern.	The legendary captain's journal! And, perhaps, locations to his buried caches.
	Crates of Rum	+10 Gold per turn.	A hogshead of Nelson's folly! We can sell this for plenty o' pennies at the ports we visit.
	Cursed Lucky Pieces of Eight	+3 Gold per unit maintenance (higher chance of mutiny). 3% interest on Gold reserves every turn.	They say one Captain Cleveland took these from a Spanish galleon's hold, but lost them in a duel. The victor was rich for a time, but was poisoned by a spurned lover, who ran a tavern in Tortuga until she got the pox, and so on. These gold pieces have been lucky, and unlucky, and now they are yours.
	Dowsing Rod	Every ship can sense the closest treasure chest within 20 hexes.	A farmer's dowsing rod, used by superstitious men to find water. With a twist here and there, maybe it will point to gold.
	English Pointer Figurehead	Every ship will sense the closest unseen ship within 20 hexes.	The dog is pointing and holding a lantern hanging down from its mouth. The lantern mysteriously glows brighter the more that figurehead points in the direction of the nearest ship.
	Jack Rackham's Jolly Rogers	Gain 50 additional Gold when pillaging a tradeship. Makes the flags on the your ships look more tattered.	The black flag of terror itself. Most depicted a death's head, or a bleeding heart with a dart piercing it. The name may have come from the French "rouge", referring to a red flag, or from a sobriquet of the Devil.
	Krakannons	+1 Range for Sloops and Brigantines. +5 Combat Strength for naval units.	Twisting iron barrels and all the fury of the sea-beast! Cannons forged by Davey Jones himself!
	L'Olonnais' Cutlery	Gain Gold based on the Combat Strength of defeated units.	A fine dining set used by the dread pirate for his feasts. There is a rusty stain around the knife-handle that will not come out.
	North Sea Wind Fishing Floats	+2 Movement for naval ships.	A string of colorful glass fishing floats strung together with netting, these "witch balls" have been used in the North Sea trade routes for so long that they contain and are enchanted by the winds of their namesake. When hung by a ship's yard arms they glow and will fill a ship's sails even on the calmest of days.
	Screaming Skull Fireshot	+3 Combat Strength for naval ships.	Not an actual skull, but rather a cleverly made iron cannonball. But when fearful superstitious seafaring enemies see these flying through the air toward them, trailing fire from eye sockets and mouth and emanating a screeching whistle... try to tell them different.
	Singing Topmen	Reduces unit maintenance cost by 3 per unit.	Topmen - men who work high above the decks in the rigging - are known for their songs, and you have hired some excellent singers. Sea chanties dispel the gloom of fogs, ease the anxiety of stormy seas, and make calm days pass more smoothly.

Trivia

• The Pirates scenario draws a lot of inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates, a game developed by Firaxis and released in 2004.

Gallery

An island in the Pirates scenario.

The Relics display screen, showing Captain Kidd's Journal and the Crates of Rum.

Pirates sailing toward treasure, guided by the Dowsing Rod.

Videos

Civilization VI - First Look Pirates Multiplayer Scenario

Civilization VI - October 2020 Game Update Developer Livestream

Related achievements

Forced Retirement Lose the Pirates scenario due to mutiny. A euphemism for, presumably, the death of your final captain after their ship mutinies.

I am a Pirate King! Win the Pirates scenario. A song from The Pirates of Penzance.

I am Kind of a Big Deal Win the Pirates scenario using mostly Infamous Pirate Points. A quote from the 2004 film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

I Want You to Hit Me as Hard as You Can Win the Pirates scenario using mostly Fightin' Points. A quote from Fight Club (and the 1999 film adaptation).

Liquid Assets Sink or capture a treasure ship. A pun on assets that can be easily converted into cash without losing much value and ships moving over water (a liquid).

Love It When a Plan Comes Together Hoarders - Sink or capture a treasure ship while a treasure escort is locked by a chainshot. Catchphrase of John 'Hannibal' Smith of The A-Team.

Mine! Mine! Mine! Win the Pirates scenario using mostly Treasure Points. Catchphrase of the seagulls from the 2003 animated film Finding Nemo.

Naval Supremacy Privateers - Ensure that your patron has a naval fleet twice the size of any other colonial power. A reference to a famous British naval policy dictating that the Royal Navy had to be at least twice as large as the next two largest navies combined.

Port in Every Storm Swashbucklers - Visit the tavern of 10 ports in a single game. A play on the phrase 'any port in a storm'.

The Abyss is Hungry Dread Pirates - Sink 10 ships while using Walk the Plank across multiple games. A quote from the 1989 film The Abyss.