New Event: Pirate Invasion

Six Ships, Six Crews, One Map: Pirate Invasion Opens With the Whole Fleet

The sea has become the most contested piece of real estate in the world. With the opening of Pirate Invasion, six pirate crews have dropped anchor off the coast, and each of their ships now sits on the world map as a region in its own right. The fleet is not decoration. It is territory, and it is up for grabs.

Pirate Invasion runs from 19 August to 20 September.

What is actually out there

Six ships, each held by its own crew:

How a ship changes hands

A ship is taken by invasion, exactly like any other region: a country launches the attack and the battle is fought at sea. There is no shortcut and no special ticket, if your nation wants a deck, your nation has to declare and your citizens have to show up and swing.

The pirates are not scenery either. Every ship is defended by nine crewmates and a Captain, all of them ghastly old pirates and all of them hitting back for their own flag. Attackers walking in expecting a soft, empty deck will find that the defence has teeth, unwashed and stinky.

Why anyone should care

Holding a ship lets the conquering country build its Resource Depot, and this is where the event stops being a novelty and starts being an economic weapon. Every level of a ship's Depot grants an extra 10% production to every company in every region held by that ship's conqueror.

Read that again, because the scope is easy to miss. The bonus does not apply to the ship. It applies to the conqueror's entire territory.

A country sitting on a well-developed Depot is not just holding a trophy at sea, it is running its whole domestic industry hotter than everyone else's for as long as it holds the deck.

And the ceiling is high. The Depot runs to level 5, which means a fully built ship is worth +50% production across every company the conquering country holds. Hold two ships and the arithmetic starts getting genuinely ugly for everyone who holds none.

Critically, every ship's Depot starts back at level 0 when the event opens. Whatever was built last time is gone. The fleet is up for grabs again from zero.

The state of the sea

Nobody has taken anything yet. All six crews are sitting exactly where they anchored, undefeated and unclaimed.

That makes this the flattest starting line the map has offered in a long time. Six open positions, none of them owned by an established power, each one worth up to half again on national production. For countries that have been outgunned on land, it is a rare opening. For countries already on top, it is a problem they did not have last week, because whoever moves first starts stacking Depot levels while everyone else is still arguing about it.

The calculus is simple. Six ships, from 19 August to 20 September. Sink them, and the sea is yours.