Do pirates attack?

[wolfhound-22]

So I've been playing through a campaign with the Moors and I've been noticing tons of pirate ships spawning and sailed one of my little dhows into a place that was thick with them. Thought he was done for, but they didn't attack. I was kinda mystified and just left him there for a few turns and watched the pirate ships sail around him and the English ships attack the pirate ships. Have I run into a bug here or do they just not attack? :o

Reason I ask here is I seem to remember hearing something a long time ago about how pirates never actually attack in Medieval 2.

[Prozn856]

Strange, Pirates usually attack me

[wolfhound-22]

Strange, Pirates usually attack me

You sure you don't attack them first? ... Course, it might be that I'm playing retrofit (basically vanilla M2TW with kingdoms rebalancing and features).

[King William the Conqueror]

You sure you don't attack them first? ... Course, it might be that I'm playing retrofit (basically vanilla M2TW with kingdoms rebalancing and features).

Retrofit AI tends to be a bit more passive in general, however I can't recall being attacked by pirates in a long time.

[wolfhound-22]

Retrofit AI tends to be a bit more passive in general, however I can't recall being attacked by pirates in a long time.

I think the "passiveness" of the AI in retrofit is due to the new autoresolve values for sieges. Which, while its nice that defenses are taken into account, it really throws a wrench in the AI's expansion unless you use AI mods like XAI (which also has an autoresolve rebalance). I noticed the way they couldn't seem to expand as well and did some checking with toggle_fow and realized that it wasn't for lack of trying. They had attacked several settlements but were getting creamed in autoresolve where in vanilla vanilla they'd usually win. The most glaring example is Jerusalem for Egypt. In retrofit that's like a big wall that shuts them out of the rest of the Middle East for a good while.

The pirates issue is something else I think.

[UndrState]

I get attacked by pirates all the time in the early game.

[Nzg]

Same here, they also tend to block ports.

[wolfhound-22]

Same here, they also tend to block ports.

Hmm... I wonder if perhaps its retrofit or XAI that is blocking the pirates. I'll try a test campaign in pure vanilla to see if they get some more pep.

[King William the Conqueror]

I play mostly vanilla and I don't get attacked by the pirates at all either. I remember when I first started to play the game I got hit a lot. This makes me wonder if there is a bug with all difficulties except easy?

[wolfhound-22]

Ran some games with the fog of war off. In vanilla as well as retrofit I observed them blockading ports. They also attacked AI ships in vanilla but sailed right around mine.