Pirates

Pirates are one of the groups of characters in Anno 1800. Every one of them opposes the current order of the world, though for different reasons and with different ambitions. It makes them generally hostile to other characters, which they manifest by using their pirate ships to sink ships of their enemies. Each pirate owns one small but heavily defended island and they do not claim other islands, do not expand. They engage in diplomacy and can establish peace, trade and alliance agreements with the player and competitors. Once a trade agreement is signed, they behave similarly to neutral traders and will trade with goods, items and ships.

Pirate characters

There are two distinct pirates in the game. Both of them are represented on the map by colour red. For more details about each pirate, including their personality, trade offers etc., see their individual pages:

• Anne Harlow - located in Old World
• Jean La Fortune - located in New World

Fighting and defeating pirates

Completely destroyed harbour of the island of Jean La Fortune

Pirates can be defeated by attacking their island and dealing enough damage to their harbour and its defences. This gets rid of the pirates for some time and causes all pirate ships in the region to become neutral and to leave the region. After 2.5 hours, however, they will come back with a small fleet and try to resettle on their island again. You have 30 minutes to sink the pirate fleet to stop them. If they are successful, the pirates will become active in the region again. If you sink the ships on time, they will attempt to come back after another 2.5 hours. In order to never let the pirates become active again, you need to regularly destroy a small pirate fleet every single time they try to resettle.

Pirate ships and their behaviour

The ships that pirates use are special pirate versions of regular ships:

• Pirate Gunboat
• Pirate Frigate
• Pirate Ship-of-the-line
• Pirate Monitor

Most of their properties are the same, but pirate ships are better than regular ones due to their higher speed and shorter attack cooldown (which means higher damage per second), they are also worth twice as many coins.

Pirates use their ships to patrol the waters of the region and attack enemy ships. Pirate ships may group up into squads, which sail and fight together. They prioritise attacking trade ships, while in case of military ships they may decide not to attack depending on how their strength compares. In both cases they leave alone those targets which are within the defended harbour areas. Pirates avoid losing their ships if they can, prioritise defending themselves and helping their own units over attempting to start new fights. Destroying pirate ships may reward you with items, mostly those that are tied to naval combat and ships.

They regularly deploy more ships until a limit is reached. The number of ships they can have, their type and the cooldown between ship deployment are determined by the game progression.

Pirates difficulty

Each pirate has two difficulty levels: normal and hard, which determines mostly their aggressiveness. On hard difficulty, their ships are much more likely to attack your ships and they can detect your ships from larger distances. Every pirate can also be disabled, then they will not appear in the game, their islands will not spawn.

Diplomacy

Pirates engage in diplomacy and can be befriended by establishing peace, trade or even alliance agreements, once they are at least peaceful they can offer you quests too. The same diplomatic interactions are available for the pirates as for AI competitors. Pirates, however, are always interested in cease fires, if they can receive coins in exchange. When you have positive relations with them but your reputation is low enough, they are also much more likely to give you an ultimatum. They may demand a lot of coins in exchange for maintaining current diplomatic agreement.

Most important ways of increasing your reputation with the pirates are: signing cease fires with them, gifting them money, finishing their quests, destroying ships of AI competitors or increasing your military strength. They dislike when their own ships get destroyed so fighting with pirates generally has a negative impact on your reputation with them.

Befriending pirates

The easiest way of befriending pirates is regularly signing cease fire agreements and sending money gifts, while also increasing military strength and sinking ships of your competitors, if possible. Signing a cease fire stops any attacks from the pirates for 2 hours and increases your reputation by 8 points. After the agreement is terminated, you can immediately sign it again, typically in exchange for some coins. Every time you do that, your reputation increases. Eventually, once the reputation is high enough, pirates will become more convinced to sign agreements which last indefinitely.

Pirates are always willing to agree to a cease fire, though usually in exchange for coins. The amount of coins they demand decreases when your reputation increases. Since you can sign a cease fire even when having zero reputation, you can avoid ever fighting with pirates, even from the beginning of the game, as long as you keep renewing the cease fire agreement every time it expires.

Pirates as trade partners

Pirates can be valuable trade partners and when having a trade agreement with them, they function similarly to neutral traders. They can buy and sell goods, items and ships, all via active trade. They do not engage in passive trade, they do not send any trading ships to player's islands. Depending on game progression, their offers and requests change, they offer more items and different ships, as the player progresses further with population.

When it comes to goods, they can sell Sails, Weapons, Gold and Advanced Weapons, having 150 storage capacity for each good. They will buy all goods for regular prices, except for Schnapps, Beer and Rum, which they buy for much higher prices than normal.

The items they sell mostly include items useful in combat, equippable in ships or harbourmaster's offices. If Sunken Treasures DLC is enabled, they will also sell treasure maps.

Ships they offer for sale are pirate ships or other special ships which can be obtained only either from pirates or via specific legendary items. Each pirate has a slightly different pool of available ships.