Attacking Pirate Hideouts:

Before you can attack hideouts, you have to find them. Thera are up to 5 hideouts at any one time and about twice as many possible locations. If you wait a while, the hideouts will be revealed automatically. They will appear as black dots on the mini-map. You can find a list of pirates in Chronicle -> List of known pirates.

Locations:

- West of New Orleans
- Between Vera Cruz and Villa Hermosa
- Slightly northeast of Grand Bahama
- Slightly Southeast of Port of Spain
- Slightly south of Havana
- Southeast of Roatan
- Between Guadeloupe and Martinique
- Others

Attacking pirate hideouts is almost the same as attacking a town by sea. To attack a hideout, select a convoy with escort ships and right-click on a hideout. You don't need to check "Attack towns" since you aren't going to dock in the hideout.

If there are any defending pirate convoys, you will have to defeat those. You can't see what types of ships are in them until you start a battle, but you can left-click on a hideout to see how many of them there are. If there are multiple defending convoys, you will have to defeat each one in turn. You don't need to sink any of them--forcing them to retreat is enough.

Unlike military convoys in towns, pirate convoys in hideouts are always repairing and always defending. You can't put them out of commission by doing a small amount of damage and running away.

Pirate convoys can also immediately and fully replace their sailors between battles. After you get through the defending convoys, you have to deal with harbor cannons. Hideouts have up to 10 cannons. You can see how many they have by left-clicking on them.

Harbor cannons in hideouts are usually arranged in patterns resembling triangles or semi-circles. They are more spread out than they are in towns, so they should be easier to deal with. If you retreat from this part of the attack, any cannons that were damaged but not destroyed will be instantly and fully repaired.

If you retreat from the attack on the cannons, you won't lose any ships (unless some have already sunk). You don't need to command each ship to retreat, either. Just have your current ship do so and wait a few seconds. Your convoy will appear outside the hideout.

When you're done with the cannons, you will have to win a duel. This duel is the same as any other duel. See the 'Duels' section for more information.

If you lose the duel, your convoy will retreat. The hideout will have 1 cannon and will attempt to construct more.

If you win the duel, the hideout is destroyed. Your relationship with all nations will improve and you will loot some money from the hideout. The amount of money you receive depends on the strength of the pirate. A 10-cannon hideout that's been around for a while might yield a few million gold. A new hideout that has 1 cannon might yield 200K gold.

After some time, another pirate and another hideout will appear somewhere in the Caribbean, but you'll have a few months of peace before that.

If the pirate had any convoys when you destroyed the hideout, you will receive a message informing you that some ships escaped and may set up a new hideout. This doesn't mean much because new hideouts will appear anyway. The only difference is that the pirate will have the same name.