*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* = SID MEIER'S PIRATES = * LIVE THE LIFE * = PC VERSION = * FAQ / STRATEGY GUIDE * =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Author: Sashanan Date: 12 May 2008 Version: 1.5 DISCLAIMER This document is a copyright of Peter "Sashanan" Butter, 2005-2008. All rights reserved. (Arr.) You are granted permission to make copies of this FAQ (electronical or physical) for your own, personal use. Furthermore, non-commercial, freely accessible websites are allowed to upload a copy of this FAQ as long as it is posted in its full, original form (including this disclaimer) and credited to Sashanan. You are not authorized to upload this FAQ on a commercial website and/or charge for its viewing, or make money off it in any other imaginable way, without my explicit written permission. Furthermore, you are not allowed to edit this guide in any way, use it as a basis for your own guide, or post it without giving proper credit. This is considered plagiarism. This FAQ is protected by international copyright laws and failure to comply with the terms in this disclaimer will result in legal prosecution. =============================================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS =============================================================================== [1] Introduction [2] Overview [3] Character creation [4] Strategies [4.1] Crew and recruiting [4.2] Crew happiness [4.3] Gold and plunder [4.4] Ranks and promotions [4.5] Ships to use [4.6] Overall strategy/walkthrough [5] Minigames [5.1] Naval battles [5.2] Fencing [5.3] Land battles [5.4] Dancing [5.5] Sneaking [6] Quests [6.1] Criminals [6.2] Named pirates [6.3] Pirate treasures [6.4] Lost family members [6.5] Lost cities [6.6] Marquis de la Montalban [6.7] Romance [6.8] Treasure Fleet [7] Reference lists [7.1] Ships [7.2] Ship missions [7.3] Ship upgrades [7.4] Crew specialists [7.5] Special items [7.6] Ranks and benefits [7.7] Fame points [7.8] Retirement jobs [7.9] Crew happiness calculation [8] Frequently asked questions [9] Miscellaneous [9.1] Bugs [9.2] Weird things [9.3] Trivia [10] Version comparisons [10.1] New since Pirates and Pirates Gold [10.2] XBox/PSP version differences [11] Revision history [12] Final words =============================================================================== [1] INTRODUCTION =============================================================================== Arr! Only one more arr in this document, promise. After the release of Pirates! in 1987 and the subsequent appearance of Pirates Gold, it's been very quiet for years. November 2004, however, brought a full remake of the game to the PC, all updated to meet modern expectations in terms of graphics, and with the gameplay fully redone as well. The concept is still the same: sail around the Caribbean, plunder ships and ports, and retire a wealthy and high ranking privateer who has saved as many of his missing family members as he can. That part hasn't changed. Everything else has, though; the game centers around a set of fully redone minigames, and to be successful at Sid Meier's Pirates, you'll need to master them. Additionally, an overall strategy is still required to get the most out of your pirating career. Sid Meier's Pirates comes with a very good manual, and the purpose of this FAQ is not to restate what's already in there. Consider this a hint book, rather, meant to add to the information already in the game's documentation. This FAQ is based on my own experiences and those of others I've discussed the game with online, and has a twofold purpose: to inform you about the game's concepts in more detail than the manual does, and to give you the advice you need to become a superior pirate. This FAQ was written with the PC version of Sid Meier's Pirates in mind, and reflects the changes made in the v1.0.2 patch. The XBox and PSP versions of the game, while very similar, have some differences; if you're playing either, you'll find that not all the info in this guide applies to your version of the game. I've noted what differences I know of between the versions in paragraph 10.2, but I don’t have access to these versions of the game myself. I’ve had to rely on information I've been able to find online or get from other players. Veterans of either or both of the previous Pirates games - the original Sid Meier's Pirates and Pirates Gold - may want to read paragraph 10.1 which gives a quick overview of the differences between the new game and the old ones. Although I consider this FAQ completed, future updates based on new insights or useful reader input are not ruled out. The latest version of this guide can always be found on GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com), so be sure to check there if you got this guide anywhere else. Might just be an updated version waiting for you. So, without further ado, on to the 17th century Caribbean! =============================================================================== [2] OVERVIEW =============================================================================== When you are still a boy, your family is enslaved by the evil Marquis de la Montalban, and only you manage to escape. Ten years later, now a lad of 18, you decide to set sail for the Caribbean to try your luck there, and hopefully find a trace of your family and get your revenge on the evil Marquis while you're at it. Every game of Sid Meier's Pirates starts with the creation of a pirate. Except for the very first game after installation, where you only enter a name and all the other options are preset to the easiest available, as a tutorial of sorts. You also choose a starting nationality by signing up with any of the four captains. Your choice between the Dutch, English, French and Spanish has some consequences on your starting position, but you are in no way required to stay with the nation you decide to start with. You can work for or against anybody you choose and change allegiances however much you want during your career. Once you've chosen who to sign up with, a short scene describes your voyage to the Caribbean, and how a mutiny on board eventually sees you as the ship's new captain. As the game begins, you have one ship and a small crew under your command, and you'll start outside a random port (usually one of some consequence) of the nation you've chosen to start out with. From there on, the game is completely in your hands. Where you sail and what you do there is now up to you. Some of the activities you might engage in are buying and selling goods, plundering and capturing ships, sacking towns, and getting to work on a variety of quests including hunting down other famous pirates, rescuing missing family members, finding treasure and lost cities, and getting your revenge on the evil Marquis. The majority of the game takes place sailing on the world map of the Caribbean, and conducting your business in ports. Apart from that, most activities are structured as a minigame of sorts, which includes naval battles, land battles, swordfighting, dancing, and sneaking in/out of hostile ports. All these activities are described in detail in this FAQ. Version 1.4 of this guide introduced a section on overall game strategy, containing my thoughts on how to best get to the maximum fame score of 126. This being an open-ended game, there are, of course, many other ways to get there. You'll find the new information in paragraph 4.6. =============================================================================== [3] CHARACTER CREATION =============================================================================== Except for your very first game session, every game requires you to select various options before you begin. Specifically, you must choose a name, a difficulty level, a special skill, an era and a starting nationality. The last two also determine your starting ship. ---- NAME ---- This is purely cosmetic, so pick whatever has your fancy. My only advice here is to remember that if you name yourself Jack Sparrow, you are not the first player to do so. You might also want to steer clear from naming yourself Blackbeard, as there already *is* a Blackbeard among the other pirates in the game. Otherwise, your name (obviously) has no effect on gameplay, so if you want to go into history as Duke Bob the privateer, nobody's stopping you. ---------------- DIFFICULTY LEVEL ---------------- There are five difficulty levels in Sid Meier's Pirates, and they affect many different factors. As such, the difference between the levels is quite significant, to the point where the first one is very easy (at least once you get used to the game), and the highest is almost sadistic. I strongly recommend starting low (especially if this is your first Pirates game) and going up once you grow more confident. The following aspects of the game are affected by the difficulty level chosen: - Apprentice level has a lot of tutorial messages and visual hints during minigames that you don't get on any other levels. This goes as far as governors offering you a free training session with their swordmaster if you lose a sword fight on this level. - Enemies, on the whole, strike more quickly in sword fights on higher levels. It varies per enemy and depends on the advantage bar as well, but in general you can expect harder fights on higher levels. - Enemy AI in naval battles improves on higher levels, and the enemy is capable of quicker turns and sailing. You'll find enemies circle or escape you much more easily on higher levels. In addition, on Apprentice, the top speed of your ship is two knots higher than its normal maximum; on Journeyman, one knot. On Adventurer both you and the enemy are limited by the normal max speeds for your ships, and on Rogue and Swashbuckler they get the advantage by one or two knots. This seriously impacts your ability to catch smaller ships on the highest levels as they can reach impossible speeds. - The damage dealt by your cannons and those of the enemy is dependent on level. On lower levels, you'll do a lot of damage while enemy cannons barely faze you. On higher levels, it will be the other way around. - Your crew will remain happy for longer on lower levels (see paragraph 4.2). - You require less map pieces for the various map quests on lower levels. Often you will receive several at once instead of one corner at a time. - On higher levels, dance sequences contain more complex move combinations and there are also more different music styles; some quicker, others having a tricky rhythm. - You tend to lose more crew in naval and land battles on higher levels, making it harder to keep your crew at a decent size. On the highest levels, there's a real risk of running out of recruits in friendly ports, especially when starting out. - The camera zooms in farther on your party during treasure hunting sequences on higher levels, giving you less of an overview of your surroundings. You'll need to get closer to landmarks or your target before you can see them. - Guards are more numerous during sneaking sequences on higher levels, making it harder to remain unseen. The size of the town garrison appears to be a factor in this as well. - Nations are much more forgiving to pirates on lower levels. The higher the level, the more likely you are to get a reward on your head and pirate hunters after you if you attack a nation's shipping or towns. - Opposition on miniquests (such as escorting a new governor) is stiffer on higher levels. On lower levels, a single privateer is spawned to thwart you, but on higher levels, it’ll be two and on Swashbuckler, three. - The wind is less predictable on higher levels, and harder to sail against. On Apprentice, the wind is *always* straight west. On higher levels, it changes much more, though it will still tend toward west. - On higher levels, information on towns on your map does not stay up to date as long. - On the lowest levels, when you start the game, an enemy trade ship will spawn just outside of the first port after you talk to the governor, for an easy first target. On higher levels, the governor will instead let you know that he's sending a warship to blockade an enemy port, and suggest you tag along to bag a few prizes. There are also two advantages to selecting a higher level (apart from making the game more challenging): - Your share in the loot when you divide up the plunder is directly based on the difficulty level, allowing you to get much richer if you're successful on higher levels. Share is as follows: LEVEL SHARE SIZE Apprentice 5% Journeyman 10% Adventurer 20% Rogue 30% Swashbuckler 50% - If you play on Apprentice, you are not allowed to select a different era than 1660 (which is, incidentally, the easiest one). The transition from Rogue to Swashbuckler level in particular is a difficult one. At this point, smaller ships become particularly hard to catch because their speed bonus and your penalty now put you 4 knots apart, hard to compensate for. More importantly, at this point rapier-armed enemies in sword battles may become impossibly fast if the advantage bar swings their way. ------------- SPECIAL SKILL ------------- You can choose one of five special skills when you start the game. Each offers an advantage in a specific area. You can use this to tone down the difficulty somewhat in an area you have trouble with; for instance, if you like the Adventurer difficulty level but find that swordfighting becomes too hard for your taste there, you can compensate that by picking the Fencing skill. Which skill is the best to pick depends on your playing style; they're fairly well balanced. Your options are: FENCING Makes your character quicker in sword fights, both on the attack and the defense. All moves can be pulled off quicker. This skill also appears to improve the chance that dodging at just the right moment makes your character counterattack automatically. This is a solid choice because you will probably do more swordfighting than anything else. Especially on the higher levels this might be your best bet, especially once your character's swordplay slows down because of old age. On Swashbuckler level, I go with this one without question. NAVIGATION Makes your ships move quicker both on the world map and in battle, which is especially useful when sailing against the wind. You'll find this a good choice if you get annoyed by the long time it takes to sail from west to east, or if you get outmaneuvered during battle a lot. Navigation skill basically makes the game more forgiving in these areas, allowing you to focus on the action. It is my personal favorite for most levels as I hate having to crawl back to the east, but on Swashbuckler I cannot go without fencing skill. GUNNERY Lets your crew load their guns more quickly and makes the game more forgiving in terms of accuracy. Since hitting enemies on higher levels can be tricky, Gunnery skill can make the difference there. This one's not particularly popular since many people prefer not to fire on enemies too much to keep their ships intact. But don't discard it too quickly; it also makes the difference when using different types of ammo that don't harm ships so much, and having the ability to get off good Grape Shots can be very important on higher levels. WIT AND CHARM This skill makes the dancing minigame a lot more forgiving, and since most players consider that the hardest part of the game, that is a very important consideration. Like the dancing items, this skill gives you a set percentage to avoid stumbling when you input an incorrect move. It does not appear to protect you if you fail to input a move at all (which the dancing items do). While the scope of this skill is limited, it does make a difficult but very rewarding (in terms of items and information) minigame considerably easier. As such, you may find Wit and Charm every bit as useful as the more direct special skills. Additionally, Wit and Charm has been reported to lower the minimum rank requirements for getting invited to the ball by an attractive or beautiful governor’s daughter (normally Colonel and Baron respectively). I haven’t been able to confirm this yet. MEDICINE If you feel you don't really need any of the skills above, Medicine will prove useful. It basically extends the health of your pirate, allowing you longer careers before your health gets in the way of your ability to fight properly. You'll be able to start new expeditions for longer, and hold off the ill effects of age for longer as well. The difference is significant but not earth shattering; expect to get about 4 more years out of your pirate. ------------ STARTING ERA ------------ Except on the Apprentice level, you can pick five different eras to start your career in. The era you choose affects the balance of power between the nations and the relative wealth of each. Generally speaking, the effect is like this: - In earlier eras, Spain is much more powerful and the other nations only have a few small colonies. In later eras, the other nations become more powerful at the expense of Spain. In 1660, all nations have a few viable ports, and in 1680 Spain is only a little more powerful than the rest. - The overall wealth of all ports increases in later eras. In 1680, all nations (not just Spain) have a lot of wealthy ports and ships full of gold sailing around. On the other hand, Spain is richer in the earlier eras; you can definitely become a very rich man in the 1600s, but you won't have nearly as many ports to run off to for repairs (and you likely won't have any good places to sell off captured cargo). - In earlier eras, nations have less resources at their disposal to ward off piracy. There's less to be plundered, but it's also not as well protected. As time goes by, piracy is taken more seriously and nations work harder to prevent it. In 1680, pirate hunters are as common as pirates and any attempt to make off with the great wealth of just about any nation will result in harsh retribution. For the most part, 1660 is the most balanced and easiest era. It's the default era for a reason, and if you play on Apprentice you can't even choose a different one. Picking different eras makes for a slightly different and more challenging experience. 1680 is of special interest to players who'd like to work *for* Spain instead of against it for a change; it's the only era in which the other nations have almost as much to plunder. Just be aware that you'll face a lot more resistance than usual. ----------- NATIONALITY ----------- What nation you work for and who you pick as your enemies can affect your game quite a bit. However, your starting nationality has very little impact on this. You don't have to keep working for whoever you start out with; you don't even have to work for them at all. You can betray them right away if you so choose, regain their trust a year later and then betray them again. In that sense, what nationality you pick to start with is mostly a cosmetic choice. It affects the following: - You always start out near a port of some significance belonging to the nation you signed up with. - You get a ship based on the nationality and era you chose. In 1660, this is always a Sloop, but in the other eras your starting ship changes depending on the nation you choose. Check just below in the 'starting ship' subsection for the whole list. - The nation you start out with gives you a free Letter of Marque when you visit a governor for the first time (though on Apprentice level, they all do this). Regardless of which nation you start out with, the following is of note when working for specific nations (assuming the 1660 era): DUTCH Ports of call aren't very widespread if you side with the Dutch. You've got St. Martin and St. Eustatius next to each other in the east, and Curacao as a lone haven (quite a wealthy one, even) on the Spanish Main. The English and French don't have any ports near the Spanish Main, so Curacao is actually an important advantage. If you decide to side with the Dutch, you might find it a good idea to stay friendly with either the English or the French as well, or capture some more home ports for when you're a long way from both St. Eustatius and Curacao. Port Royale is a good place to have on your side, one way or another. ENGLISH The English have their ports spread out pretty well, so they're easy to work for. The only place where you won't find any refuge is on the Spanish Main, so if you do your plundering there, you may find it beneficial to keep the Dutch on your good side so you can flee to Curacao when necessary. Or you could just try to take over a few of those easier to capture ports like Rio de La Hacha and Gibraltar. One disadvantage of the English is that Barbados, the best place to sell goods for high prices, is somewhat remote. But Port Royale is nice and central, there's a bunch of ports huddled together on the east side of the map (perfect for recruiting) and a few desolate havens in the far north. FRENCH Like the English, they have a good presence in different parts of the Caribbean. No less than four ports are available just to the east of Jamaica (where Port Royale is), and south of the Dutch and English presence in the east you'll find three French ports in a row. To the north, Florida Keys is nicely situated for raids on Havana and further west. The Spanish Main itself, however, has no French ports anywhere near it. Once again, you'll find it useful to either befriend the Dutch and sail from Curacao, or capture a smaller port or two for your own use. SPANISH Working for the Spanish appears counterintuitive at first, because that means the best targets are not available for you. However, there are advantages: all those wealthy ports will buy the goods you steal from the other nations off you for very high prices, and wherever you are sailing, there's almost always a good sized Spanish port nearby to replenish your crew and get your ships repaired. Just how viable working for the Spanish is depends on the era you chose; in 1600, there's not much to attack that isn't Spanish, but in 1680 there is plenty for you to prey on, and you can easily afford to be hunted by all other nations at the same time. The one thing you might want to refrain from is to take over other nations' ports and give them to the Spanish, lest you run yourself out of targets. A favorite approach of mine is to leave working for Spain (to achieve Duke rank with them) for last, and win their favour mostly by recapturing ports I took from them earlier in the game. ------------- STARTING SHIP ------------- This is not something you get to choose directly. However, what ship you start with is determined by the era and nationality you chose. In 1660, the default era, you get a Sloop no matter who you sail for, but in the other eras there's quite a different selection. This alone may be a reason for you to pick a nationality that starts with a proper ship. For instance, if you decide to play a 1600 game, you probably don't want to be Dutch, unless the idea of capturing a proper ship with only a lousy Fluyt at your disposal sounds like a fun challenge. I've included a 'suitability' column for a quick idea of which ships are viable for piracy and which aren't. Starting ships based on era and nationality are as follows: ERA NATIONALITY STARTING SHIP SUITABILITY 1600 Dutch Fluyt very low (1) 1600 English Merchantman medium 1600 French Sloop high 1600 Spanish Pinnace medium 1620 Dutch Brig very high (2) 1620 English Brigantine high 1620 French Barque low 1620 Spanish Pinnace medium 1640 Dutch Brigantine high 1640 English Sloop high 1640 French Pinnace medium 1640 Spanish Mail Runner very high (3) 1660 Dutch Sloop high 1660 English Sloop high 1660 French Sloop high 1660 Spanish Sloop high 1680 Dutch Sloop of War very high 1680 English Sloop of War very high 1680 French Brigantine high 1680 Spanish Fast Galleon low (4) 1: there's something very sadistic about having to start with the single worst ship in the game for piracy purposes. Capture something slightly better, but easy to catch to start out with; a Merchantman, perhaps, preferably a Brigantine. Then use that to get something even better. Trying to capture a Sloop or something with the Fluyt is pointless unless you're playing on a low level; you'll never catch it. 2: this is one of the best starting ships in the game. Brigs are very powerful and well balanced. 3: excellent ship, but for experts only. Its strength comes from its awesome speed and agility, but it can't carry a lot of crew or guns. You'll come to appreciate this kind of ship as you get better at ship and sword combat, and play the higher levels. Also, since the Mail Runner is one of the toughest ships to find in the game, starting with one is a tempting offer indeed. 4: while the Fast Galleon is a combat ship, it's pretty slow, worth it only for its high gun count and max crew. Neither of which you will have early in the game, and its inability to catch smaller ships on high levels will likely infuriate you. On Rogue or Swashbuckler, you'd need to capture a Merchantman or something to have a shot at getting a Brig or a Sloop next. =============================================================================== [4] STRATEGIES =============================================================================== This section describes overall gameplay strategies, not specifically related to any of the minigames. For those, refer to section 5. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [4.1] CREW AND RECRUITING -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Your crew is central to all your pirating efforts. They sail your ships and fight your battles. The more crew you have under your command, the bigger the targets you can face, and the more you can afford to lose. This doesn't mean, though, that a bigger crew is always better. The more men you have, the more food you need to stock to keep them fed, and the harder it is to keep them happy. Unhappy crews appear to be lost more easily in combat, and may even become mutinous if you don't tend to them soon. Keeping your crew happy is mostly a matter of satisfying their greed, but there are a couple of factors. You start each game with 40 men, and the first thing you'll want to do is recruit more. Since you always start just outside a friendly port, the best thing to do is visit it and go to the tavern to pick up a few more men. After that, for the rest of the game, your options are as follows: - Recruiting from taverns. Can be done at any town and pirate haven; not at settlements. When you've just done this at a specific town you can't do it again for a while. How many men you can recruit is affected by the following factors: - your rank with the nation in question; Captains receive a bonus to recruiting, and Barons receive an even bigger one. - the wealth of the town (richer towns have more job opportunities and thus less people looking for a captain to sail with). - the size of the town (bigger towns yield more recruits). - whether or not you have recruited here before recently (new recruits take time to amass). - the happiness of your current crew (you get less new recruits if your crew morale is already low). - your reputation for having profitable voyages. Basically, if this isn't your first expedition in this game, the crew share of your past voyages will apply a positive or negative bonus to all recruiting. I have no details on this, but the manual mentions it and it does feel like it makes a difference; I’m never short of recruits after having divided up a good amount of plunder once before. - Recruiting from other ships. If you defeat an enemy ship and a lot of its sailors survive, some of them might be willing to join you instead. The size of your current crew and their happiness are also a factor in this. For the most part, this method is less reliable; it's good to replace losses taken in battle, but if you need to get more men you're generally better off finding them on shore. - Sailors picked up after they’ve been thrown overboard in battle by cannon impacts. Such sailors are added directly to your crew for the duration of the battle, but it seems like only half of them stay on afterward. The impact on your game is usually negligible. You have a maximum crew size determined by what ships you have. For instance, say you have one Royal Sloop (max 125) and one Barque with the Triple Hammocks upgrade (max 100, increased by 50% for Triple Hammocks, so 150). This lets you have a maximum crew of 275. Contrary to what the manual states, you cannot go over this. Excess crew is lost as you lose/sell ships, and any excess you recruit is ignored. Losing crew this way is, by the way, painless. They do not take any gold along. Your crew is automatically divided among all your ships. Each ship has a minimum crew requirement, which is higher for bigger ships and also goes up a lot if a ship is damaged. After each ship you have has been assigned the minimum number of men, the remainder fill up your flagship; these are the men you'll use in ship battles. If you change your flagship, your crew is immediately and automatically rearranged. If you capture extra ships, always make sure to check how many men remain for your flagship. If you're in the habit of badly damaging ships before you capture them, you may be surprised by how many men have to be relegated to keeping them afloat. You do *not* want to accidentally enter a difficult ship battle and then notice there's only 20 men on your flagship. Also, if you should ever have so many (damaged) ships and so little crew that you cannot meet the minimum staffing on all your ships, your fleet's speed is reduced. That's a good time to limp to the nearest port, or if none are in sight, to let go of some of your most damaged prizes. Crew can be lost in ship and land battles. However, not all the crew that goes down in either battle is necessarily dead (or at least too injured to continue sailing); some of them are only down for the duration of the battle. In land battles, this is particularly noticeable. In ship battles, you only seem to get wounded men back after the battle if you have a Surgeon. Surgeons, incidentally, cut permanent casualties in half. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [4.2] CREW HAPPINESS -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- --------------------- DETERMINING HAPPINESS --------------------- Recruiting a crew is one thing; keeping them happy is a different story entirely. Crew happiness is one of the most complicated (and, unfortunately, obscure) calculations in the game. Courtesy of Wes Atkinson, I can finally provide the full formula on this - see the details in paragraph 7.9. I will summarize the findings here. Crew happiness is primarily a factor of three things: - the size of your crew; - the size of the loot in your holds; - how long your current expedition has lasted. Basically, your crew happiness is determined by the amount of gold in your holds divided by the size of your crew. Plus the longer you have been at sea, the more gold your crew expects to see for their trouble when you finally divide up the plunder. If your voyage is taking too long and you’re not bringing in enough gold, your crew will become unhappy and eventually mutinous. The share per crew member can, of course, be increased in two ways: either find more gold, or reduce your crew size. Your crew doesn't care if you have 20000 gold to be divided up among 50 men, or 40000 among 100. It's the same to them. Thus, losing crew in battle can boost happiness among the survivors as much as plundering a fat target can. Contrary to what I’ve stated in earlier versions of the guide, how much of the share goes to you as a captain does *not* factor into this. On Swashbuckler level, half the loot goes to you, leaving a lot less to be divided among the crew than on Apprentice. But the crew does not seem to realize this – what matters is the amount of gold in your hold, not how much is shown as each crew member’s individual share when you (prepare to) divide up the plunder. Apart from this basic calculation, there are other factors that impact the happiness of your crew. Having the Cook specialist, as does having the 3- Stringed Fiddle or even the Concertina. The Quartermaster is likewise supposed to boost morale, but does not actually seem to do anything. The other three effects will basically make your crew more forgiving, and let you get away with longer voyages (or bigger crews) without loot to match. But with or without them, in the end it comes down to keeping your loot growing, and the larger your crew, the more loot it takes. This is the primary reason why you should not keep a bigger crew around than you need. If you're only hitting small ships, don't take 500 men with you. That kind of crew is only needed if you intend to take over large cities. For the most part, I find around 200 men sufficient for expeditions that don't involve attacking well defended towns. Plenty to win even tough ship battles. If you maintain multiple ships, you may need a few more to keep enough men on your flagship. As you get better at ship battles and the usually ensuing sword fights afterwards, you may find you can make do with even smaller crews and make it that much easier to stay at sea for a long time without mutiny. How small a crew you can risk will depend on your own skill level and the difficulty level you've chosen. My personal preference for sailing a sole Royal Sloop on the highest difficulty levels caps my crew at 187 (with Triple Hammocks), which is usually enough but makes land battles tricky, and also means I’ll have to stop for new recruits if I lose too many. Since crew happiness becomes harder to maintain late in an expedition, you will find it relatively easier to have a large crew during the early parts of a voyage. If you have both city and ship attacks in mind, consider getting a large crew quickly at the start of an expedition, plundering the fattest cities in the Caribbean, then reducing your crew size and going after ships for a few years before dividing up the plunder, after which you can repeat the cycle. Crew reduction can be accomplished by deliberately losing men in battle, or by selling so many ships that you're forced to leave some crew behind. Either method gets rid of some crew while leaving the loot in your hold untouched. You'll also need to make sure you keep your crew fed. If it's large, you will need to take a lot of food along, which can get expensive and takes up a lot of cargo space. A Cooper specialist helps keep food from spoiling, effectively halving the rate at which it is consumed; thus you can get away with buying less. Running out of food is no fun - your crew can go from full happiness to full mutiny very quickly if you starve them. Don't let it happen. If you're going on a long voyage with little food, restock at settlements and villages along the way. If you are really running low on food, attack any ship you see to plunder their food stores. If it actually belongs to a nation you are trying to win the favour of, too bad. You can make it up with them later when your men aren't hungry. In the end, you'll find it harder and harder to keep your crew satisfied as your expedition goes on. Usually, you will have to divide up the plunder eventually, and start with a fresh crew if you intend to ever see them happy again rather than bordering on mutiny. Dividing up the plunder has two disadvantages: 1. You get to keep only one ship (so you'll have to sell off the rest, like it or not); 2. You lose 7 months of game time starting your new expedition. You also start with a small crew of 40 again, but if your last expedition was profitable, you'll be able to recruit new men very quickly, so that's usually not a big concern. You'll have it right back up to size by visiting just a few ports. The real pain is if you used to rely on several ships. Perhaps you used both a Royal Sloop and a Ship of the Line and switched depending on what you were attacking. In that case, you'll now have to make a choice as one of the ships has to go. Most players prefer to stretch their expeditions for as long as possible to minimize the downtime between expeditions. How far you can stretch is mostly dependent on the difficulty level and, as mentioned before, the size of your crew. However, there is a cutoff point where, if your loot is especially big compared to your crew size, your men will never become unhappy even if you keep them at sea forever. This is due to the fact that after a certain amount of time – varying per level but it’s roughly six and a half years – the crew’s gold demands stop increasing. After you get past this point, adding on 10, 20, even 30 more years does not reduce your crew’s happiness further. So if you gather enough gold per crew member to keep them happy (or, at least, anything better than mutinous), you can sail forever. The exact calculation for the cutoff is described in paragraph 7.9, but the rule of thumb is 1000 gold per crew member to keep your crew from sinking below “unhappy”, and thus never becoming mutinous. Likewise, roughly 2000 will fix them at content and roughly 3000 at happy. The obvious problem with this is that 3000 per crew member is a lot, requiring you to either have stacks and stacks of gold in your holds, or to have a very small crew. 1000, however, can realistically be done by going after the most profitable quests in the game, like getting revenge on Montalban and finding the Lost Cities. Montalban alone provides enough gold to keep a crew of 100 sailing forever – add all four of the Lost Cities and you could do the same with 300. To take advantage of the above, you'll have to get used to sailing with a small crew. I wouldn't worry about doing this until you're an experienced player - having to divide up the plunder isn't THAT bad. But once you're at the level where you want to minimize your downtime as much as possible, or if you frequently make use of different ship types that you don't want to give up, it's something to keep in mind. I find that on the higher difficulty levels, I usually end up having to divide the plunder once about 5 years in, then for the second expedition I nail Montalban after about as many years and never see a mutiny again. ------------------------------- CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNHAPPY CREW ------------------------------- Unfortunately, the manual isn't very clear on which aspects of the game are affected by having an unhappy crew, and it's hard to tell in playing the game exactly where happiness factors in. There's a few clear spots, but rumours fly on forums about a host of other things it might or might not affect. Over time I’ve come to believe that most of these are either untrue or have so little impact that it’s hard to tell the difference. Nonetheless, I’ll list the suggested areas. The following have been confirmed to be affected by crew happiness: - If a crew becomes mutinous, some of them may abandon you while in port; they do not appear to take any gold along if they do, though, so this is mostly painless. However, if it has come to this, you'll find it hard to recruit new crew anymore and should consider dividing up the plunder soon. - At sea, only if you have more than one ship, mutinous crew may attempt to depart with one of your other ships. If they do, they take more than their fair share of cargo and gold along as well. You can, however, overtake and recapture your mutineers to get your gold back. This kind of mutiny never occurs on your flagship. - If your current crew is unhappy with you, it becomes harder to get fresh recruits. Eventually you may find it impossible to maintain a crew size you can get anything done with. - Unhappy crews are poorly motivated in ship battles, and will take noticeably longer to reload your cannons, or raise and lower your sails. Crew morale is also a factor in determining, during boardings, which side loses men every couple of seconds. Unhappy crews get picked off far quicker during prolonged battles. The following have been *suggested* to be affected by crew morale, but I have been unable to confirm them one way or the other (though they seem plausible enough): - Unhappy crews may perform poorly in land battles, although it must be noted that the morale your units have within those battles is unaffected by crew happiness. You'll never see units starting at 'angry' or worse even if your crew is mutinous. - Unhappy crews may cause your turning rate to drop in ship battles. - Unhappy crews may cause your sailing speed to drop in and out of ship battles. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [4.3] GOLD AND PLUNDER -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Although wealth only makes up a fifth of your final fame score, you'll likely be pursuing gold as your main objective throughout the game anyway. If only because that is what your crew is after, and if you don't keep gold pouring into your holds, they will soon become unhappy. Some good ways to make gold are: ---------------- PLUNDERING SHIPS ---------------- This is the most obvious one and probably what you'll spend most of your time doing. Any ship you capture is likely to at least carry some gold which goes directly into your hold, and possibly valuable cargo as well which you can sell for gold later. How profitable this is depends a lot on the targets you are striking. Bear the following in mind: - Indian War Canoes bear either no or very little gold. Not worth it; only attack these to win the approval of European nations. Warships of most kinds also have little in the way of gold and goods, though there are exceptions. For the most part, neither of these targets will be a good choice if it's gold you are after, though both are advantageous for promotions (hunting Indians makes you popular with all four nations, and warships will boost your reputation quicker than trade vessels). - Grain Transports usually have little gold, and only food on board. You can safely ignore these if your crew is not close to starving and you're not particularly interested in attacking ships of that specific nation for rank purposes. - Regular merchant ships (the ones without any special label on them) tend to have a decent amount of gold and cargo, sometimes low value (goods/sugar), sometimes high value (luxuries/spice). Loot varies a lot on the small ship types (Trade Galleon/Merchantman/Fluyt), but if you see a bigger ship in one of those classes, it's usually bigger for a reason. They tend to have a good supply of gold and cargo. Also, if any merchant ship has an escort, that's a clear sign it has something worth protecting on board. Escorted ships rarely disappoint, but obviously you do have to deal with the escort. Occasionally you may find that it's the escort that carries the bulk of the gold. - Smugglers tend to have nice cargo (a small load of Luxuries or Spice) and a little gold as well. In addition, smugglers have a higher than usual chance of having specialists on board. As an extra bonus, they tend to be easy targets; only the lucky ones sailing Brigantines pose some threat. The main problem with smugglers comes into play only on Rogue and Swashbuckler levels, where small ships like Pinnaces become increasingly hard to catch. - Unnamed pirates are sometimes down on their luck and sometimes they had a good run before you catch them. You can never be sure, but it's usually worth it to go after them. If nothing else, it'll improve your reputation with all four nations at once. They carry only gold and usually no decent goods. - Ships carrying immigrants or transporting new governors tend to have a good amount of gold; presumably the personal fortune of their passengers. Immigrant ships have the added advantage that they have the best chance in the game of carrying specialists. Both are fairly easy targets, too. - Military payroll and treasure ships have good amounts of gold on board, easy profit which doesn't require you to sell cargo first. Payroll ships tend to have hard cash only; treasure ships often have a good load of Luxuries and Spices in addition to it. The Treasure Fleet, if you can find it, consists of several Treasure Galleons with a better amount of gold than normal, depending on how far it was on its route when you grabbed it (see paragraph 6.8). Be aware that both payroll carriers and treasure ships will usually be well defended, so don't bite off more than you can chew. The Treasure Fleet is an especially dangerous mark; if you attack one ship, you can expect a second Treasure Galleon to jump in as an escort, both brandishing 30 guns. I’ve lost more than one flagship in the crossfire. - Named villains are always fat targets. Mendoza has 2000 gold, Raymondo 3000 and Montalban 5000, every time you capture their ship. If you spot one, take them out immediately; but be wary, they're among the tougher targets. - Named pirates have the best loot of all, especially the most famous ones. Furthermore, their loot increases over the course of the game, as you get 10% of what the Top 10 Pirates screen lists as the total amount of gold they’ve plundered. I've heard of one lucky player who got no less than 70000 off Henry Morgan's ship. More realistically, you can expect to get at least 12000 off him, and up to 30000 if you capture him after 15 years or so in the game. Do make sure you have what it takes to take these guys down, as the more notorious pirates sail very powerful ships. - If you frequently talk to barmaids, you will be dropped hints about nearby ships with a lot of gold on board. This can be any ship that carries at least 700 gold; I've once been pointed to Raymondo's ship this way. Usually the ships that get pointed out like this are payroll carriers or treasure ships, but occasionally it's a completely random ship (I've even gotten 1200 gold off an Indian War Canoe after a barmaid told me to grab it). Long story short, if you get a hint about a fat target, check its route and see if you can easily go after it. It is almost always worth doing, and sometimes you’ll be surprised at what kind of mundane ships secretly carry an enormous treasure. - Barmaids can also put you on the track of the Spanish Treasure Fleet, or you can easily run into it by accident considering it stops by most of the big Spanish ports. It can be tricky to defeat as all ships in it are well armed and have large crews, but it's profitable if you're up to the task. Between the gold they carry and the valuable cargo (depending on which part of the journey they're on), you can usually make a couple thousand gold off each ship. - It appears that the overall wealth of all ships belonging to a nation is directly affected by the power level of said nation. Spain's ships, in particular the larger merchant vessels and the payroll carriers, always seem to be richer than English and French ones, and those in turn seem to be richer than Dutch ones. However, if you capture ports for a certain nation and have them become more powerful, their ships seem to gain slowly as well. This also appears to cause a weird calculation bug in the unpatched version of the game, if a nation runs out of ports completely (due to you capturing them all for other nations). Players have reported seeing ships with ridiculous amounts of gold in them after they've taken out all ports of that nation, and one player reported getting *negative* gold from a ship after this (which also caused his game to crash directly after). This seems to have been fixed in most cases by the v1.0.2 patch. ---------------- PLUNDERING TOWNS ---------------- While it takes bigger crews to pull off than plundering ships, you can earn yourself some serious money by sacking the various towns in the Caribbean. The best targets are Wealthy ones, followed by Prosperous; Modest isn't really worth doing and if you raid Poor towns for the money, you need to rethink your priorities. (It *is* a sound tactic if you intend to capture the town, though.) The size of the town is another factor. From what I can tell, the wealth of the town (in terms of poor/prosperous etc.) is a relative indicator depending on the size of the town. A big modest town might still have more gold among its citizens than a small wealthy one. So, basically, pick a target that looks profitable in all ways. It appears that how long it takes you to grab a town – i.e. how quickly you resolve the land battle – affects your eventual profit. If so, this is a leftover of the previous Pirates games where you’d be informed the town had been warned of your approach and hidden some (or most) of their gold while you were fighting. Wealth and strength of defenses in a town are not necessarily balanced. Poor towns might have a surprisingly strong garrison and it's possible that a wealthy town - especially one that became wealthy only recently - is poorly defended. You don't need me to tell you which of these two examples would be the better target to go after. Here are a few tips on plundering towns: - Be sure to talk to mysterious travellers at all times, and to stop in ports whenever you have the time, to keep your information on as many towns as possible up to date. Visiting a port will update your information on it, and travellers can give you free information on a random other town. You can review this information when you click on a town on the world map. On lower levels, information about a town sticks on your map for longer, whereas on the higher levels you will have to rely much more on travellers and your own visits to keep your map updated. Often you get information about a town just by sailing close to it without actually having to enter. This will save you a little (game) time, as every visit to a port takes a week. - When you attack a town, try to have at least as many pirates as there are soldiers defending it. You *can* beat greater numbers, especially on lower levels, but it's risky. If your numbers are as good as theirs, you can be pretty sure you'll win it if you don't make a lot of mistakes. Of course, if you're confident about your ability to win land battles, feel free to go up against superior numbers. The AI generally doesn't play these battles as well as you can. - A town's defenses can be softened up by going to a nearby pirate haven or Indian village and convincing them to attack it. Note that each haven/village can only be set on whatever town belonging to a nation is closest to them, but you can usually find one (especially if you have the Rutter items). This approach is not entirely without risk, however. If the attack in question fails (likely if the garrison is bigger than about 300 soldiers, but never a guarantee), the garrison will be thinned out and the town is otherwise not harmed. If the attack succeeds, on the other hand, it's a different story. A pirate attack will reduce the town's wealth rating to poor instantly, and a successful Indian attack will scare off a sizable portion of the population. Both are detrimental to the size of the loot you're going to get. In other words, make use of Indians and pirates only if you don't care about the loot size (perhaps you just want to capture the town?) or if the garrison is so big that their chances of success are minimal. Unfortunately I don't have good stats on that yet. - If a town is particularly big and rich and poorly defended, you may sometimes find it worth it to plunder it twice in a row. If your first attack went well, you will hopefully still have most of your pirates whereas the garrison is battered and bruised. The second attack will be a piece of cake and you can milk that much more gold from the town. As an added bonus, the second attack will often let you capture the city for another nation if the first did not. - It is possible to soften up a town with a coastal bombardment by pressing the space bar repeatedly when you are close to it. However, if it's plunder you are after, this is not a good idea. It will only damage the garrison slowly, and do a lot more harm to the town's population and wealth rating. If you’re going to do this at all (I don’t bother), reserve it for towns you intend to capture, when you don't care about how much gold it'll earn you. - It may be worth it not to always intercept governors of enemy nations if you see them sailing. You can chase them until they enter their destination port and upgrade its economy, then sail in right after them and plunder the town's newfound wealth before it has a chance to strengthen its garrison. - If you are serious about robbing a specific nation's towns, aggressively attack its troop ships and military payrolls to keep it from strengthening its garrisons. Payroll ships are a good idea anyway; they tend to have a lot of gold on board. Towns will still gradually increase their garrison size if their economy is in good shape, but without troop ships and payroll carriers to help them, it's a slow process. ------------- SELLING GOODS ------------- Goods of all kinds can be obtained in two ways: they can be purchased from merchants in towns (and in the various types of smaller settlements), or they can be stolen off ships you capture. Unlike in the previous Pirates games, you don't get any goods when plundering towns anymore; only gold. No matter how you obtain your goods, you can then sell them in any town you desire, and if you pick the right place for the right commodity, you can make a hefty profit. It's even possible to have a moderately successful game as a peaceful trader by buying low and selling high. Some tips for getting a profit off selling goods: - You have better results selling in the towns of a nation you are a Colonel in, or better yet, a Marquis. These two ranks give you trading bonuses: the town will have more goods for sale and also have more gold in reserve to buy your goods with. Prices won't be any higher, but at least you won't run the merchant out of gold before you've unloaded even half your cargo. - Bigger towns don't necessarily offer better prices, but they do tend to have more gold in reserve. This is a bit of moot point, however, as you can sail out of a port and right back in after you run the local merchant out of gold, and he will have a fresh supply of it. The only thing this costs you is time (which you might actually find significant; every town visit takes up a full week of game time). - Wealthy towns pay better and also have a better gold reserve. If you don't sell in the right towns, you might find they run out of money before you've unloaded more than a fraction of your cargo. The best towns to sell in are, unfortunately, Spanish. Since you won't find yourself on Spain's side in most games (presumably because you're plundering all those wealthy towns), you'll need to know the good places that other nations have to unload your goods. Which towns are rich varies a bit from game to game, but safe bets are Curacao (Dutch), Guadeloupe and Martinique (French) and Barbados (English). Otherwise, any port that happens to be Prosperous or Wealthy at the time is typically a good place. - If you do keep Spain on your side, you will find you can make almost as much profit selling stuff to their richest ports as you can stealing from them. This is particularly true in 1680 when the other nations are rich enough for a Spanish privateer to succeed. Cartagena, Havana and Santiago are all very good places to trade. Vera Cruz as well, but it's really out of the way. Panama tends to be the single richest Spanish town there is, but it's not a port, so you'd need to walk there every time you want to visit it. Panama's the kind of place that easily pays 40-50 gold for 1 ton of Spice and has enough gold to buy it in bulk, if you don’t mind the long walk. - The False Mustache and Theatrical Disguise items often let you trade in Spanish ports even if Spain is hostile to you. Regrettably, they don't help you actually get into the ports, making them fairly pointless as far as I can see. Typically if you can get into a Spanish port without being fired on, you can probably trade there as well. The only exception I can think of is if you sack a Spanish town and then visit the merchant before leaving – not exactly a good time to get much profit out of your cargo. - Goods and Sugar sell well in smaller ports. Spice and Luxuries fetch the best prices in larger ports. Both fetch better prices in rich ports than poor ones. For the most part, Spice and Luxuries are more profitable; give these priority if you need to choose what to steal off a captured ship. - Settlements often pay very well for goods and missions pay well for food, but both always have very small supplies of gold. Barely worth it. You *can* do the same thing as you can with ports and just sail out and back in to sell more, but this is a very tedious process if you have to do it after every five tons of cargo. Not to mention that this could take weeks, even months of game time. Better to spend all those days attacking ships. - For the most part, Spice and Luxuries are worth grabbing off captured ships, and Goods and Sugar less so. They're a nice bonus if you have the room for it, but they're not where the profit is. Excess food, similarly, can net you some extra gold but nothing stellar. - Cannons aren't worth it in terms of selling. This is new to Sid Meier's Pirates, as they fetched a good and consistent price in the previous games. Never take cannons along instead of any other kind of cargo; just the max you need for your flagship. You can take extras if you like in case you lose some in combat, but as soon as you need the room for something else, ditch the excess cannons. ------------- SELLING SHIPS ------------- If you capture a ship at sea, it's not just its gold and cargo that is of value to you. The ship itself can be quite valuable as well, up to 1800 gold for the bigger ships if they have a lot of upgrades. You can actually make a decent profit just nabbing and selling ships, if you know what you're doing. Here's what you want to keep in mind: - Try not to damage your prizes. The repair cost of a damaged ship goes off its selling price, and if the ship is heavily damaged it may well exceed the prize, leaving the ship at the minimum value of 10 gold - for firewood, probably. Even if you have a Sailmaker and a Carpenter working for you, the repairs they can do to ships are only minor. Try to board ships without shooting too much at them, and rely mostly on Grape Shot and a little on Chain Shot if you do need to fire a few broadsides. Round Shot is devastating, especially in numbers, and you can forget about getting much of a profit if you shoot a lot of holes in the enemy's hull. Not to mention the fuss of actually bringing a heavily damaged ship home. - A Major gets cheaper repairs in port, and can thus get away better with damaging his prizes a little. If you're a Count, repairs are free, and at that point it doesn't matter anymore if you bring half-destroyed ships in. But they will still slow you down while you've got them in your fleet, and tie up a lot of your crew. - If you can have a ship repaired for free (Count rank or higher), you do not need to have your ship repaired before you sell it. The selling price is automatically fixed to that of an undamaged ship, saving you a mouse click. - A Duke gets to upgrade ships for free. If you're lucky enough to be a Duke with any nation, bring your ships there to sell, and upgrade them before selling to increase the value of the ship. - You can only have a maximum of 8 ships in your fleet. Plan a return to a friendly port (preferably one where you have a high rank) when you get close to that maximum. And keep an eye on your crew, so you don't end up short as it is divided over the ships. If you have little crew left on your flagship you will find it hard to win any more battles. Even worse, if you don't have enough crew to meet the minimum requirements of all your ships, you will slow down a lot. ------ QUESTS ------ The most important source of money in the game is undertaking quests. There are a bunch of different ones, some random and recurring, some set. And some are worth a lot more than others. The following quests will bring in money for you: - Capturing a fugitive criminal: a reward between 1000 and 5000 gold, and easy to get. Get these quests by dancing with governor's daughters. You get them with a moderate dance from a plain looking daughter already, and as a substitute for various other (better) rewards if they no longer apply. You may find yourself swimming in these quests in the late game. See paragraph 6.1 for more information. - Finding a buried pirate treasure: between 2000 and 10000 gold. Talk to travellers in taverns to get map pieces for this. See paragraph 6.3. for more information. - Defeating a named pirate: depending on the notoriety of the pirate and how long the game has run on, you get a sizable chunk of money off their ships. They start with roughly as much money as their buried treasure (slightly less), but their wealth increases over the course of the game as they plunder more ships. You can easily get double or even triple the value of their buried treasure if you only take them out many years after the start of the game. To determine in advance how much you'll get for defeating a pirate, check their plunder in the top 10 pirates list (updated monthly), and divide by ten. - Finding a lost city: this brings in a whopping 50000 gold, but it's hard to do. Get map pieces by rescuing family members or kidnapped governor's daughters, or by dancing perfectly with a beautiful daughter. See paragraph 6.5. for more information. - Vanquishing Marquis de la Montalban: the main quest of the game; it's complicated, takes a lot of preparation, and ends with a fairly tough battle (depending on level, though). But for 100000 gold it's hard to say no. See paragraph 6.6. for the whole story. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [4.4] RANKS AND PROMOTIONS -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- One of the most important aspects of your final fame score is the rank you achieve with each of the four nations. Furthermore, getting rank with any nation gives you certain benefits in their ports which are worth having. Getting promoted by any nation is a matter of making them happy with you. This works on a point system, where certain actions bring in a happiness point and others 2 (possibly more) at once. You cannot look up the actual tallies, but you can see when you scored points with a nation by calling up the captain’s log and looking at the little nation flags next to certain actions like attackin ships and towns. A little flag (with a [nation] happy tooltip) indicates a happiness point, while a bigger flag (with a ‘very happy’ caption) indicates at least two, and possibly more. The following actions will bring in points: - Attack a ship belonging to a nation they are at war with; especially a warship. Any ship will bring in a point, and it doesn't matter if you only damage it, capture it or sink it. In the case of a warship, if you capture or sink it, you’ll get two points. If you damage a ship but then let it get away, it will be listed as “engaged a [ship type]” and still get you a point. Occasionally you appear to get credit even if you didn’t fire on the ship at all, but not always. - Plunder a town belonging to a nation they are at war with; the attack must succeed for it to count. This is worth at least 2 points. - Capture a town for a nation. It doesn't matter if they're at war with the one you captured it from or not. If they are, you get the bonuses for both the sacking *and* the capture; they're cumulative. Once again, this is worth several points. - Damage, capture or sink any Indian or pirate vessel. All four nations are happy if you do this. Named pirates are worth even more points; you get a point for stopping the ship *and* some points for taking out the named pirate. - Stop (= capture or sink) a special ship belonging to an enemy of the nation, like a governor or an invasion force. You get extra points for this in addition to the ones you already get for capturing an enemy ship in the first place. - Escort a special ship belonging to that nation to its destination - e.g. help a governor reach his destination. For this purpose, it doesn't matter if you were actually assigned to protect this ship, or even if you're near it when it reaches its destination. If you've just spotted the ship once and it reaches its destination safely later, you're considered to have helped protect it, even if the nation in question is hostile to you. Obviously, while attacking a nation's enemies will make that nation happy, these enemies will become unhappy with you at the same time. The impact of attacking a nation's towns or shipping depends on the difficulty level. At Apprentice, you can often get away with helping both sides in a war at once, making a profit off capturing both sides' ships, and having both nations forgive you because you are also fighting their enemy. On higher levels, the penalties for preying on a nation are much higher, and the same approach would soon make both of them mad with you. Note that if two nations have a peace treaty - not nearly as common as war, but it happens - they consider an attack on their ally to be equivalent to an attack on themselves. However, they do not care about you helping their ally in any way; you still need to make them happy by attacking individual enemies. If you score enough points with a nation, they may decide to promote you. How many points it takes is dependent on the difficulty level; you also need more for higher ranks, so that going from Captain to Major is easier than going from Marquis to Duke. The ranks and their benefits are listen in paragraph 8.6. Here are some tips to get promotions the easiest: - Check who is at war with whom, and pick your allegiances early on. Stick with at least one nation, or better yet, two. For instance, if England and France are both at war with Spain, fighting Spain early will win you the support of both of them. You can often save yourself time in racking up promotions by picking on the most unpopular nation at any given time. - When you become a Duke with a certain nation, there are no more promotions to earn. This is the time to backstab them and work for their enemy if you want to become a Duke with them as well. You can, however, get easy land grants from a nation that has made you a Duke if you keep working for them. So decide what you're after and pick your targets accordingly. - To win a former enemy's trust, you could attack whoever they are at war with. For serious cases (large bounties on your head), it is easier to convince Jesuit missionaries close to that enemy's ports to speak to them on your behalf. If you pull this off, the nation will immediately drop the price on your head completely, allowing you start working for them with a clean sheet. Individual ports belonging to that nation may still be hostile if you harassed them badly, however. Finally, if you don't mind spending a little gold, you can also "buy off" a price on your head. For this you will need to get to speak with a governor, so you may have to sneak into an enemy town to do this. - Remember that hunting pirates and Indians makes you popular with all the four nations. If there aren't any around, you can go to a pirate haven or Indian village, incite them to attack a nearby town, then immediately attack them as they sail out of port. It's despicable, but it works well. Particularly with Indians who tend to send out three War Canoes at once. Easy to beat, and lots of points scored with all nations. There are players who reach Duke exclusively by spawning and then destroying Indian and pirate ships all over the place before they go after any specific nation's shipping. Bear in mind that if native hunting is what you want to do, especially on high levels of play, you need a small ship to have a realistic shot at catching them. Pirates may be a better mark on Swashbuckler, although they’ll also put up a tougher fight. - Check back with your benefactor frequently to see if you have a promotion waiting. You will also get hints if you're close to it ("Soon you'll be promoted to..."). If you wait for a long time and score more points than you needed, you still get only one promotion, and the excess points are paid off in a land grant (50 acres per point). These land grants are very good for your wealth score, but you can also get these *after* you become a Duke for a certain nation if you keep working for them. They're probably not a priority for you while you are still rising in rank, but the choice is yours. - If you've done a lot for a nation, yet you get just one promotion and no land grant, try visiting the governor a second time immediately. Sometimes, land grants do not trigger appropriately for some reason. In this case you usually get a second promotion straight away and you do get whatever land grant you were entitled to afterwards. This seems to happen only in the unpatched version of the game. - If you have a rank with a certain nation, particularly a high one, you can afford to betray them a little and get away with it. If you persist they will eventually become hostile to you, but they are more forgiving than usual, and the rank is never lost. Contrary to what the manual states, you do not lose the benefits that come with the rank either. No matter how hostile Spain is to you, if you're a Count they will repair your ships for free in their settlements. (In their cities as well but those you likely won't be able to enter.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [4.5] SHIPS TO USE -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- As you will notice if you study paragraph 7.1, there are a lot of different ships in Sid Meier's Pirates; many more than in its predecessors. It can be quite daunting to make a choice from the 27 ship types. Fortunately, it's not as complicated as it looks. For one thing, there really are only 9 different classes of ships, and 3 variants of each; a small, a medium and a large one. In nearly all cases, the medium and large variants perform just as well as the smaller ones, they just hold more crew, guns and cargo. Within whatever ship class you prefer to use, you are therefore always best off getting the biggest ship you can get. Frigates are good, but Large Frigates are better. It's that simple. (The Fluyt class of ships has the only exception, but you shouldn't use Fluyts for combat to begin with. Worst possible choice.) The question remains, then, which of the 9 ship classes to use. Which is best depends on what you intend to do with it. Presumably your fleet will consist of one flagship, or two that you alternate between if you like to have different types available (we'll get to that in a bit). Any other ships you have, not counting captured prizes that you intend to sell off at port, are likely only cargo or crew haulers, and the only thing you want from them is that they balance out speed and capacity. The best choice for that is Frigates, but they are typically hard to find. Just getting one as a flagship can be difficult enough. If you can get additional ones, great, but you'll likely have to settle for other types. Merchantmen strike the best balance between capacity and speed; Galleons carry more, but they will slow your fleet down quite a bit. Your flagship is a different story. You'll be taking this into battle, and thus you want it to be a sturdy warship that's fast, agile and well armed. Let's have a look at each type of warship: ------- PINNACE ------- The Pinnace class includes the smallest ships in the game; they have very low capacity for guns, crew and cargo, and are very vulnerable in battle. If they get hit, that is; because they are also the fastest and best turning ships, and perform well even against the wind. In the end, though, the weaknesses are a bit too pronounced. I'd say only the Mail Runner is viable whereas the other two simply don't carry enough guns and crew to be suitable in battle. To get a Mail Runner, talk to friendly governors and see if one of them will offer you a mission to escort a ship carrying a peace treaty or an ultimatum. These ships are often either Mail Runners or Royal Sloops. You will obviously have to betray the nation to capture the ship, but this is about the only way to get a Mail Runner during the game. They don't spawn randomly. The easiest way to get a Mail Runner, if you don't mind playing a different era, is to sign on with the Spanish in a 1640 campaign. You'll start with one if you do. Note: certain expert players prefer the War Canoe for its high speed and agility. However, as far as I can tell, the War Canoe has no advantages over the Mail Runner. It should perform precisely the same in combat, but carry fewer guns and a smaller crew. Either I'm wrong on this (I haven't used Pinnace class ships all that much), or using a War Canoe rather than a Mail Runner is only a matter of them being easier to find, or just a prestige thing. It IS quite cool to be kicking ass with the smallest ship in the game, after all. Anyway, War Canoe or Mail Runner, it's worth considering if you're a veteran player. By then you're hopefully skilled enough to avoid all enemy fire with it, and to win sword fights quickly enough so that the small crew capacity doesn't put you at risk. The major advantage comes in being able to capture small prey even on the highest levels, where a big Frigate or Brig, and sometimes even a Sloop, has a hard time keeping up with the speed bonuses your enemies get. ----- SLOOP ----- Sloops are excellent as small ships go. They are still fast, hard to hit and very agile, and they can carry larger crews than Pinnace types. The Royal Sloop, biggest in this category, and is one of the two most popular choices for flagship. Many people stick with them exclusively for their high speed and the fact that they rarely seem to take hits in battle. And with Triple Hammocks on them they can carry a respectable crew of 187, plenty for everything except attacks on well defended ports. To get a Royal Sloop, either see if you can backstab a nation allowing you to escort a treaty carrier (see under Pinnace), or track down and defeat the notorious pirate Roc Brasiliano, who sails one. Also, Spain may occasionally send these after you as pirate hunters, and since you'll be clashing repeatedly with Spain over the course of the average game, you'll probably see one sooner or later. ---- BRIG ---- Brigs are a bit larger than Sloops, but still have a good speed and can sail against the wind with some success. They basically strike the balance between the agility of smaller ships and the heavy armament and ability to take a beating that the bigger ships have. The Brig of War is an excellent ship that is the other common choice for flagship. It's also my personal favorite for the lower three levels (from Rogue on I prefer a Royal Sloop to help offset enemy speed bonuses). To get a Brig of War, the easiest way is to track down and defeat Captain Kidd, who sails one. You may also see them as pirate hunters and new warships. ------- FRIGATE ------- Frigates are the best choice in terms of large ships. They can carry huge crews - plenty for any ship battle - have room for a ton of guns, and can take quite a bit of punishment. Their inability to dodge salvos as easily as the smaller ships is offset by this, and for such large ships, they are still quite fast and able to make fairly tight turns - though on higher levels you'll find that small prey becomes difficult to catch. The famous Ship of the Line is the biggest of the Frigates and pretty popular (how could the single biggest warship not be?). It is also the rarest, however, not in the last place because Spain doesn't use Frigates of any kind. Getting a Ship of the Line is tricky. There's no real way to make this easier; they are all New Warship types and those are mostly random. They seem to appear more often if you harass a certain nation a lot, but it's mostly luck. I seem to have slightly more success going after the French for one than the Dutch or the English, but that may easily be luck of the draw. You should be aware that large ships in general become less desirable on the higher levels of play, when their relatively low speed starts to hurt. From Adventurer on you no longer get speed bonuses, and on Rogue and Swashbuckler, the enemy gets them. By then Frigates will have a harder time catching smaller ships, and you may find yourself wanting to tone down to Brigs or even smaller warships. Until then, enjoy the firepower. GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com) has a guide specifically on Ships of the Line and how to get them if you're interested in reading up further on the subject. -------------- COMBAT GALLEON -------------- The Fast Galleon, War Galleon and Flag Galleon fall in this category. The Trade Galleon, Royal Galleon and Treasure Galleon do not; those are merchant ships, unsuitable for combat. Actually, the combat galleons aren't particularly suitable either. Their power is comparable to that of Frigates, but they are far slower. They are fast enough when running before the wind, true, but going against it is almost impossible in a galleon of any kind, and their turning circle is horribly wide. Smaller ships can and will run circles around these cumbersome vessels and pelt them with one broadside after another. If you like to use large ships, you really should go with a Frigate type instead. Even the smallest kind of Frigate is a better bet than the otherwise very powerful Flag Galleon. To get a Flag Galleon, either keep your eyes open for Spanish pirate hunters or New Warship types (though you won't see many Flag Galleons), or find and defeat Marquis Montalban. He always uses one. Summarizing the above, Combat Galleons are usually not your best choice, and Pinnaces should be considered only if you know your way around the game and are playing a high level. Usually, it's a toss up between Sloops, Brigs and Frigates, and it's mostly a matter of personal preference what works best. I find that the higher the level I play on, the smaller the flagship I want. On Apprentice I might consider a Frigate (but pretty much anything goes there), but for Journeyman and Adventurer my favorite is the Brig of War, and on Rogue and Swashbuckler I tend to go for Royal Sloops. At that point, Mail Runners are an interesting alternative too, although I find them a little too restrictive on crew size. A Royal Sloop with Triple Hammocks is just about big enough while still being able to catch most prey. On Swashbuckler level, it’s Pinnace class ships that still get away from me more often than not, and Sloops if I don’t get into a good position before attacking. Either can rack up a speed of over 20 knots in the ideal case, which pretty much ends the chase right there and then. Make sure that if you do use a larger ship, you recruit a crew to fill it up with. Not much sense using a Frigate if you're not going to put more men in it than you could fit in a Sloop. In fact, as a rule of thumb, the only reason to pick a larger ship over a smaller one should be that you need the crew and/or gun capacity in ship combat. If you just need to carry a large crew around for land combat, or you need space for captured goods, you don't need to have your flagship do the work - just capture a few additional ships. Your tactics in ship battles will probably change depending on what kind of vessel you are using. Sloops will want to thin out the enemy crew before boarding, and avoid enemy fire as much as possible. Frigates will probably be a lot more aggressive, heading for the enemy straight away with just a single broadside to soften them up if needed, and accepting the fact that they'll take a little counterfire in getting there. Use whichever ship works best for your style. You could even have both a Sloop *and* a Frigate available and pick a ship to use for every battle; for instance, using a Sloop against smaller targets and a Frigate against any enemy Frigate and Galleon types. This would be a sound choice on higher difficulty levels, where small ships are increasingly hard for a Frigate to catch, and where being hit by a large broadside from a big enemy target *really* hurts your poor Sloop. The main disadvantage of the dual ship approach is that if you find yourself having to divide up the plunder, you can only keep one. Whichever ship you choose, however, be sure to get all the upgrades you can find for your flagship. They're all worth having and can make a lot of difference. There's only one you might want to skip on purpose: Triple Hammocks. Think about how large you want your crew to be; perhaps you want to keep it small on purpose. If that's the case, upping the maximum may not be in your best interest. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [4.6] OVERALL STRATEGY/WALKTHROUGH -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- By request, I've added this new section which is about the closest thing to a walkthrough that can be made for an open-ended game like this. It discusses what I think is the best way to "finish" the game; by finishing, I mean achieving the maximum fame score of 126, although the game doesn't necessarily end there. This section is purely a guideline, as there are many good ways to achieve that maximum score, but this is the approach I find the most convenient. It does not include details on *how* to do the various steps that are described - that's what the rest of the guide is for. A typical game will consist of three phases: building up your initial power by recruiting enough crew and getting the ship(s) you want, building up your ranks and getting most of the quests out of the way, and cleaning up the final quests that take the longest to do (lost cities and Montalban, basically). Your first order of business should always be to build up. You normally start with a small ship (always a Sloop in 1660) and you'll want to find the third category vessel for whichever ship class you prefer; most likely, a Mail Runner, a Royal Sloop, a Brig of War or a Ship of the Line. Start by recruiting more men in the port you appear nearest to. Visit a few friendly ports in the neighborhood for more, assuming you can fit them at the moment. Capture a few easy targets so you can hold more crew and get your first few promotions out of the way. At this point it is wise not to make an enemy of everybody. You start every game without enemies, and it's a good idea to keep at least one, but preferably two nations on your side so you have plenty of safe havens to retreat to. Especially on higher difficulty levels, it is important to always be able to patch up your ships, and also to replace crew lost in combat. If you've recently recruited in a town, you won't be able to do so again for a while, and after that the available recruits pool will still be small. Keep this in mind before you fire at every ship you see. Who to work with and who to work against is a matter of preference and the current political climate. It is a very good idea to fight a nation that is at war with two or (even better) all three other nations, because then you'll be working at your promotions two or three times as fast. There's little point in attacking somebody who has no enemies at all, unless the individual target is tempting - maybe an immigrant ship that may carry specialists, or a fat payroll carrier or treasure vessel. In practice, you'll find Spain is almost always at war with somebody, usually several somebodies. I almost always start out fighting against Spain, and worrying about getting their promotions later in the game. The quickest route to promotions with a single nation is to attack ports belonging to their enemies and capturing them for your nation. For this, it doesn't matter if the port is big or small. Pick something tiny that you can overwhelm with your crew so you actually get to install a governor. If you don't get the option, sail around and attack them again until you DO get that option. The gold gains will be atrocious but we're working on rank here, not wealth. A good way to score poinst with all four nations at once is to actively hunt pirates and Indians. If you don't find enough sailing around, visit pirate havens/native villaegs, talk to whoever's in charge, tempt them to attack a nearby target, then intercept their ships as they send them out. This won't gain you as much respect as taking out enemy ports as above, but you WILL please all four nations at once, so it's still a pretty efficient way to get promotions. It is possible to use this technique exclusively to become a quadruple Duke without ever making any enemies. A note on spawning pirates this way: you probably know that if you take on a mission, like escorting a governor or a treaty carrier, hostile Privateers will spawn in your path trying to stop it (only 1 on Apprentice, up to 3 on Swashbuckler). These may be of any nation your employer is at war with, but will be pirates if they’re not at war with anyone. In what appears to be a bug, inciting pirates to attack a port will also spawn Pirate Privateers, which will not actually attack the pirate ship that gets sent out but just sail around in the area and eventually enter a nearby Pirate Haven. What this means is that if you incite one pirate to go out and attack a nearby port on Swashbuckler, what you get is four targets. I’ve gotten quick promotions all around on Swashbuckler by taking advantage of this; especially when there are two Pirate Havens right next to one another. Capturing eight pirates makes you popular with the governors in no time, if you have the resources to pull it off. But back to preparing for the midgame action. Don't hesitate too long on obtaining the ship you want, it's your primary way of becoming strong enough to tackle the rest of the game. You'll be facing off repeatedly against Raymondo and Montalban on their big galleons, and against a variety of named pirates. You don't want to do all that in your humble Sloop, so aim for one of the following: - A Mail Runner (repeatedly talk to governors hoping to get a mission to escort a treaty/ultimatum carrier, then if it happens to be a Mail Runner, backstab it); - A Royal Sloop (fight the Spanish until they send one out as a pirate hunter, or track down Roc Brasiliano); - A Brig of War (fight any nation until they send one out as a pirate hunter, or track down Captain Kidd); - A Ship of the Line (repeatedly harass any nation OTHER than Spain until you see one sailing by as a New Warship). In the meantime, grab anything that's at least something of an upgrade. A Pinnace, Sloop of War, Brig or Large Frigate can easily substitute any of the above until you're lucky enough to find the big one. Apart from a good ship, items and specialists will also make your game easier without actually adding any wealth. I wouldn't spend too much time hunting for them specifically, but if a barmaid lets you know about a specialist on a nearby ship, or you are offered an affordable item in a tavern, you might as well go for it. (For items, though, be sure that it's something you want, as there are a few that don't do anything useful in the current state of the game.) If you'd like to max both of these out, be sure to get items in all ways you can: talking to strangers, dancing with governor's daughters, and even taking bribes from captured criminals. For specialists, nothing fancy is needed. Finishing the Montalban quest will automatically give you all of them. You'll probably earn some promotions while working on getting the ship and the crew you want, and get offered the chance to dance with governor's daughters. Never turn this down unless you’re already wrapping up the late game and honestly don’t need what they can offer (at some point this will be wanted criminal quests only). Barring that, always dance, romance as many daughters as you come across, and get rewarded for your efforts. Even plain looking daughters can help you stock various useful items early on, or give you quests to track down wanted criminals (good for cash early on and helps promotion prospects too - alternatively, you can allow them to bribe you with items once you catch them). Attractive and beautiful daughters can put you on the trails of Raymondo and Montalban, and as soon as you're powerful enough to deal with these fellows, do it. The main thing to keep in mind with romancing governor's daughters is to always go and do what they put you on the trail of *before* you return with gifts or to fight their suitor, or the like. Otherwise, they'll just repeat the info they gave you before, rather than coming up with something new. You can safely take any romance subplot as far as you want, but if you go all the way and rescue a daughter from Mendoza, do NOT ask to marry her unless she is beautiful. You will only get maximum fame if you marry a beautiful daughter, and you can only marry once. Once you do marry - and I recommend you take care of this as soon as you locate a beautiful daughter and have the necessary rank (Baron, less with the right items) to get court her - be sure to revisit your wife regularly, potentially to the point of sailing out of port and coming right back. You get to dance with her as often as you like, messing up will not do any permanent damage, and every time you get it right you will be getting clues about Montalban and Lost Cities (by far the best way to get those). It's largely up to you if you want to focus on catching Raymondo or earning ranks first. You can mix 'em if you like. For promotions, keep an eye on war and peace breaking out, and pick your targets accordingly. If possible, keep your efforts focused on one nation as an enemy (usually going to be Spain) so you have fewer people you have to make up with eventually. The way it usually develops for me is that I manage to achieve Duke with Holland, England and France first, with Spain having a sizable price on my head at that point. The best way to go about fixing that is to find a Jesuit mission near a Spanish port, and head in. They will most likely offer to discuss amnesty with the nearby Spanish governor on your behalf (if not, try another mission), then all you need to do is escort their ship to the nearby port. There will be a single pirate ship (two on higher levels, three on Swashbuckler) trying to stop them, but after that, the Jesuit will sail into port, and the price on your head will vanish at once. Years of piracy forgiven by just winning a single ship battle. Not a bad deal at all. You can do this as many times during a game as necessary, so even if you just need Spain off your back for a moment, this is worth doing. For Raymondo, Jesuit missions are your best bet too. From time to time, an informant in a tavern may offer to tell you Raymondo's current location for 1000 gold. Governor's daughters may give up this information after you dance with them. Jesuits, however, give the information often and always for free. If at any point in the game you don't know where Raymondo is right now and you sail by a mission, stop by and ask them. It'll save you a lot of time. (Incidentally, the way Jesuits work is that they give priority to giving you information on Raymondo. If you already know where he is or you’ve already finished this quest completely, you’ll get the amnesty offer if applicable. If the mision isn’t near a port belonging to a hostile nation, you’ll be offered an immigrants escort quest. All of these exhaust the mission for a few months before it offers up something new.) Chasing Raymondo (and for that matter, Mendoza and Montalban) around the Caribbean should be a primary objective by the time your ship and crew are up to the task. They're profitable targets in terms of gold and the value of their ships, you score points with whoever Spain is at war with right now, and you advance the relevant quests. Besides, the longer you wait, the harder it may be to figure out where they went. If you lose track of them, aggressively question bartenders around the area where they were supposed to be and you’ll be put back on the trail soon enough. Similarly, when you've captured Raymondo four times and gotten the full map to a family member - or ideally, if you can already work out their location from fewer pieces - go and rescue that family member right away so you can get started on getting the NEXT map from Raymondo. Making sure you hurry up and finish these quests when you can helps you finish the game before your pirate becomes too old; age will make swordfights harder and harder, and eventually take away the ability to divide up the plunder and start with a fresh crew as you'll be forced into retirement when you try it. The hunt for Montalban's hideout and the Lost Cities typically come at the end of the game just because they take the most preparations to do. For the Lost Cities, this is no biggie. It's a boring quest anyway which involves sailing all the way to Mexico, and sometimes having to go far inland, but there's no opposition to deal with. Montalban's hideout is a different story, as you need to win a land battle to get in (not a particularly difficult one, but you'll have trouble if you have a tiny crew), and Montalban himself is a very difficult opponent on the higher levels. The combination of playing on something like Rogue or Swashbuckler and your character having been slowed down a lot by age can make the battle almost unwinnable. Do yourself a favour and get that quest out of the way as quickly as you reasonably can. If you focus on it, it should definitely be possible to do it within 10 game years, long before your pirate reaches poor or failing health. To get a full score, you'll need to hunt down all nine of the named pirates and find their treasures. Treasures are a matter of talking to the mysterious stranger in every tavern you visit, and making sure to buy every treasure map they offer. Once you do have the first piece, you'll be quickly offered the rest by other strangers. Just stop by every port and settlement and it won't take long to get all pieces (or enough so that you can figure out where to go). Do make sure you visit different taverns, returning to the same one over and over does not appear to work. Finding the pirates can be a little trickier, as their locations are random. Barmaids will put you on their trail (or you can blunder into them without prior info), but for either, you need to be close to their home port. Although neither the names nor the locations of their home ports are fixed, they ARE always distributed over the Caribbean. Always a couple near the west, a couple near the Spanish Main, a couple around the eastern islands and one or two in the obscure northern area around Florida Keys and such. Almost always, when a player has captured 7 or 8 pirates and just can't find the remaining one or two, he's missed the one(s) lurking in that area, because you don't tend to visit there for any other reason. If you just can't find that last pirate, see if you can get a lead on him by asking barmaids in or around Havana, Florida Keys and Eleuthera. For both pirates and treasures, I tend to handle them when I come across them while working on other quests, then pick up whatever I missed at the end of the game. No matter what order I decide to tackle things in, though, I always seem to end up finishing my game by finding the fourth Lost City. Getting the maps is usually a matter of sailing circles around the port your wife lives in, dancing with her constantly to get her to give up more and more pieces of the map (why won't she just give it to you all at once?), then sailing all the way to Mexico to find the city, and all the way back for more map pieces. It might actually be a good time saver to marry a daughter around, say, Campeche or Vera Cruz, assuming a beautiful daughter happens to live there. Lost Cities usually spawn in locations that aren't too hard to find, with the coast visible on the map and ideally a named landmark as well, but other times they spawn far inland and can be very hard to find. A location hint like "north of Vera Cruz" or "south of Campeche" is rather useless because it can cover a LOT of territory. If it doesn't feel too much like cheating for your liking, you could keep a separate save of the instant just before you get your first map piece, then if the city does spawn in some hopeless impossible location, reload and see where it goes this time. The city is not placed in the game until you get your first map piece for it. Finally, if you've become a Duke with each of the four nations, captured all pirates, collected all treasures, found all four Lost Cities, married a governor's beautiful daughter, rescued your family members and defeated Montalban, the only thing that remains for a perfect score is to have gathered enough treasure. This will most likely have happened naturally through the land grants you got with your promotions and the vast wealth you got from defeating Montalban (100k), finding all Lost Cities (200k) and all the gold that pirates and evil Spanish noblemen yielded. If you're still short some (save before dividing up the plunder and then see if you got to 24 wealth points or not), the easiest way to add more is to privateer some more. Find two nations at war, join sides with one of them, and get land grants for every blow you strike their enemy because they can't promote you any further. Especially capturing cities will add up quickly, and get you to your max wealth quicker than additional gold will. =============================================================================== [5] MINIGAMES =============================================================================== Much of the gameplay in Sid Meier's Pirates consists of playing its various minigames. The premise and controls for each are in the manual, but of course, it does not go into too much detail about how to play them. But that's what you're reading this guide for, no? Each paragraph in this section highlights a different minigame, giving an overview and a set of tactics to improve your results at them. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [5.1] NAVAL BATTLES -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -------- OVERVIEW -------- A naval battle is always initiated by you. Enemy ships can never initiate naval battles, though they *can* bombard you on the world map, causing sail and hull damage, and potentially sinking trailing ships (but never your flagship). When one or more ships are in range of your flagship, press 5 and you will be given a list of ships you can attack. The size of the crew and the number of guns on the enemy ship will be mentioned and you can compare to what you have on your flagship, or switch flagships if necessary. Note that you can't see the guns/crew on a ship if it's a special type, like a Treasure Ship or a named villain like Raymondo. Those ships tend to have close to the maximum for their ship type, though. Please refer to section 7.1 for more ideas on what to expect certain ships to have in terms of defenses. If you choose to attack a ship, you will be thrust into naval battle mode. The positions of your ships relative to each other is the same as it was on the world map. A naval battle is usually against one ship at a time, with two exceptions: - If the ship has a dedicated escort sailing along with it, you'll fight both ships at once. Likewise if the ship is part of a group (Treasure Fleet, trio of Indian War Canoes or two or three Privateers spawned when you take on a quest), attacking one of the ships will cause it nearest partner to take on the escort role. - If another ship was actively chasing you at the time (normally a pirate hunter but it can be any hostile warship), it will join in. This can happen even if it wasn't strictly in combat range when you initiated the battle; in that case it'll need a while to catch up, but it will eventually. The warship will serve the same role that a dedicated escort would if this happens. It may even belong to a different nation than your target. In a naval battle, you and your opponent(s) will be able to exchange fire, run away from the other by creating enough distance, or start a boarding (and a sword fight) by sailing into the other. Controls during a naval battle are as follows: 4, 6: turn your ship left and right, respectively. Turning rate is dependent on the type of ship, whether or not you are turning into the wind (which is a lot slower), and any damage/lack of crew. A ship with Copper Plating gets a slight bonus to its turning ability. 8: raise sails. By default, sails on a ship are raised. This allows the ship to sail faster than with reefed sails, but the sails are also vulnerable to combat damage. Your cannons will not be reloaded while you're raising your sails. 2: lower sails. This reduces the ship's top speed, but allows for slightly tighter turning circles, and provides a lot of protection against sail damage from enemy cannons. Your cannons will not be reloaded while you're lowering your sails. 1: switch to grape shot. This ammo type has a short range, but is effective in taking enemy crew out of the fight while doing little damage to the enemy ship. Great for preparing for boarding while leaving your prize intact. You can only switch to this if you ship has the Grape Shot upgrade. You do not need to reload your cannons, the switch to the new ammo type is instant. 3: switch to round shot. This is the default ammo type; it has the longest range and does damage mostly to enemy hull and cannons. It also damages crew and sails, but not as much as the ammo types specialized to do so. Remember that enough hull damage will sink a ship, which is rarely your intention - its treasures will sink along with it. Use round shot carefully, especially against small targets. Again, no need to reload your cannons after switching. 7: switch to chain shot. This ammo type has a shorter range than round shot (but longer than grape shot), and is meant specifically to destroy sails with. It does little damage to a ship otherwise. Excellent for reducing an enemy's speed, either to be able to catch up with or outrun them – furthermore, 100% sail damage forces a target to surrender without a fight. Chain Shot will rarely do any significant hull damage, but be aware that totally destroying the rigging on ships you intend to capture and keep will really reduce your fleet's overall speed. You can only switch to this ammo if your ship has the Chain Shot upgrade. Again, no need to reload your cannons after switching. 9: change camera views between the overhead view and a "chase camera" of sorts which zooms in on your ship and uses an angle that lets you see the position of the enemy relative to your own ship. Which camera mode you should use is largely a matter of personal preference. I usually just stick with overhead. ------- PICKUPS ------- As either you or an enemy gets damaged in battle, barrels and sailors may fall overboard. If you sail over these, they will be collected by your flagship. Sailors are immediately added to your crew - if they're your own that'll let you recover some lost crew, and you can also pick up enemy sailors as new recruits this way. Presumably, these men aren't too picky about who they're serving and not going to be uncooperative with the man that saved their lives. Barrels, similarly, contain a small amount of gold. I imagine that if barrels are lost from your own ship, they're deducted from your loot unless you pick them up again, but I'm not sure about this. We're talking small amounts of gold here anyway, I believe 50 gold per barrel. It is possible to exceed the maximum crew size of your flagship by picking up sailors knocked overboard during the battle. They will be available during the sword battle, but after you return to the map, any remaining excess crew will be lost. Even if you don't pass the maximum, it appears that only half the people you pick up from the sea will sign on permanently. ----------- AI BEHAVIOR ----------- Depending on the type of ship, difficulty level, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of your ships, the AI may behave in several different ways: - If the enemy has more cannons, it will try to weaken your ship as much as it can before boarding you. When in range it will use chain shot to slow you down and grape shot to thin out your crew, assuming it has these upgrades. The AI will frequently mix round shot and chain shot in a single volley. - If the enemy is at a disadvantage with cannons but has a crew comparable to or bigger than yours, it will attempt to ram and board you as fast as possible. - Note that damage you cause to an enemy ship during battle may make it switch between the two behaviors above. If a ship was going to ram you and you hit it with grape shot just before it can, chances are it will suddenly swing around and start exchanging broadsides with you again. - If the enemy is grossly outmatched, it will attempt to run away from you, possibly firing a few broadsides at you to slow you down first (most notably chain shot). Running is much more common on higher levels; on lower levels even outmatched ships will often keep engaging you even though they should be running. Also, warships and especially pirates are a lot more reluctant to run than a target that didn’t want a fight in the first place, like a merchant ship or smuggler. Villains will never attempt to run, nor will an escort ship. - If the enemy is too weak to beat you and too slow to escape - usually this happens after you've hit them a few times - they'll strike their colours and surrender their ship without a fight. They may still try to sail away from you, but they will no longer fire and as soon as you come close or board them, it's over. It is possible for a ship to start the battle with struck colours if it was already badly damaged when you engaged it (for instance, because of previous battles or a storm). - If you damage an enemy's sails 100%, rendering them almost immobile, they will always strike their colours. There are a couple of exceptions to the behavior above: - Merchant ships are more likely to surrender than warships or ships on special missions. For instance, if a Sloop contains a new governor, its crew will likely fight until the end even if you outmatch them. Pirates, too, hate to surrender. Indian War Canoes, on the other hand, always surrender if you manage to board them. - Escort ships never surrender. They will fight to the death as long as they still have something to escort. If you evade the escort and take out the escorted ship, the escort becomes an independent ship which *will* surrender normally if you damage them a lot. - Named pirates are very unlikely to surrender, but they can. Usually only if you destroy their sails, though. - Villains (Raymondo, Montalban and Mendoza) never surrender. If you pummel their ship enough it will seem like they do - you get the victory screen and everything - but immediately after, the usual ship battle scene starts anyway. Note that you also can't sink these guys - their hull damage will not go beyond 99%. ------- TACTICS ------- When fighting a naval battle, you need to strike a balance between defeating your enemy and not damaging your prize too much. It may be very tempting to just pummel them with round shot, especially if you outmatch your opponent. But if you intend to capture the enemy ship, this approach leaves you with a very damaged prize that will slow you down a lot and cost a lot to repair when you finally limp it to the nearest port. Even if you don't intend to hang on to a ship, you run a significant risk of sinking it if you hit it too hard, and all its cargo and gold will sink along with it. Especially if you are sailing a powerful ship on a low difficulty level, you may be surprised at how easy it is to accidentally sink an enemy! On the lower difficulty levels, many players prefer not to shoot at the enemy during a naval battle at all. They just head straight for them for a quick ram and settle the deal with a sword fight. This is a sound approach for enemies that have far less crew than you (and not enough guns to tear you apart before you reach them). On Apprentice and to an extent on Journeyman, this also works against enemies that are stronger than you, as you'll be able to make up the difference with good fencing. On the higher levels, however, this approach is suicidal against a powerful opponent. Their guns are more accurate and do more damage, they are better able to run circles around you and hold off your boarding as much as possible, and when you do manage to board them, you'll find them tough opponents in fencing. The size of your crew against theirs is a major factor in how difficult the swordfighting will be (see paragraph 6.2), and you *need* to do your naval battles correctly to cut them down to size first. If you don't, even if you pull through, you'll lose far more crew than you need to and get in trouble later. As a rule of thumb, on Adventurer level and above, try not to board an enemy ship until their crew isn't much bigger than yours. Preferably smaller, but just about the same is good enough if you can handle a sword. Also, the bigger your own crew, the easier you can get away with fighting a numerically superior enemy. 100 against 150 I wouldn't be afraid to try, but 20 against 30 is a bad idea. Chances are you'll run out of crew before you win the battle. Here are a few tips to get the most out of your naval battles: - Pick the right ship for the job. Different players have different preferences, but the choice is mostly between Pinnace, Sloop, Brig and Frigate types. Pinnaces and Sloops are fast and small, and perfect for running circles around an enemy. Frigates have a lot of firepower and can stand more punishment, as well as carry more men so that you can usually go straight for a ram and don't have to weaken your enemies first. Brigs strike a good balance between the two, and have the unique advantage of maintaining a decent speed against the wind. - In each class, you're best off with the largest ship within it (Royal Sloop, Brig of War, Ship of the Line), but every type is servicable. Avoid using other types of ships for battle; only the combat galleon types (Fast/War/Flag Galleon) are somewhat suitable, and they are too slow and cumbersome to engage anything small. Pinnaces are also an option, but they come with small crews and not enough guns to really do anything with. - On higher difficulty levels, enemy ships get speed advantages. Especially on Swashbuckler you may find that if you have the same ship as the enemy, they can still easily outrun you. You may want to stick to the smaller ships to keep the enemy from constantly outrunning you. Besides, on higher levels, it's hard to keep a large crew satisfied, so you might not be filling up a Frigate anyway. - Use round shot at long range to knock out enemy cannons and do damage to all other parts of the ship. Be careful not to overdo it, especially against a small ship. A Large Frigate or Ship of the Line can sink a Barque-sized or smaller ship with one broadside if it's a particularly good shot. Some players prefer not to use round shot at all, but it's the only reliable way to cut down the enemy's cannons. - At medium range, use chain shot to destroy the enemy's rigging. This will slow them down and make them much easier to catch. If you destroy an enemy's rigging entirely (you'll hear their ship groan and ground to a halt if you do this), the enemy will surrender even if they still have a good supply of cannons and active crew. Of course, if you intend to keep the ship, you probably don't want to leave it entirely without sails. It will really slow your fleet down otherwise. A Sailmaker specialist will help here - he'll repair a quarter of the sail damage at the start of each month, so even if you destroy an enemy's sails completely, they'll be back at 75% soon and then the ship will be at least somewhat mobile again. - At short range, grape shot works wonders in reducing enemy crew while leaving the ship almost untouched. This is *the* way to prepare for an imminent boarding; be careful not to actually touch the ship before you are ready to board it. They will likely try to board you before you can hit them with grape shot too often. Also, unless you've already destroyed some of their cannons with round shot, you may get hit just as hard in return. Note that grape shot will not leave the enemy ship undamaged - it won't do any hull damage, but the sails will suffer. - If an enemy has struck its colors, stop firing at it; they will not fire back anymore and surrender as you draw close. A possible exception is when you are chasing a named villain, who won't surrender even now. Them you may want to hit with more grape shot if you want to reduce their crew size further before you start the battle. I especially find this important when facing Montalban on Swashbuckler level as duelling him aboard a ship is brutal. - The speed with which your cannons load is directly dependent on the size of your crew, their morale (happy crews load faster) and the presence of a Gunner specialist on your ship. Range of your shots is increased by the Fine-grain Powder upgrade. Accuracy is increased by the Bronze Cannon upgrade and by picking the Gunnery skill for yourself. - While it's easier to hit the enemy along the sides of his ships, a shot that rakes over a ship front to aft or aft to front does more damage. Keep this in mind for yourself as well: heading straight for your enemy through their broadsides is not usually a good idea. The issue here is speed; if the wind is such that you can approach your enemy very quickly, then broadsides will likely pass over you. If you’re not fast enough, you’ll be taking hits – something you can get away with it on low levels, but not on Swashbuckler. - If you have a small ship, turning at the right moment may let you sail through gaps in enemy broadsides and take little or no damage. But bear in mind that the shots that *do* hit you will likely be raking shots if you do this, which is exactly why you should not try this with a large vessel. - If you have a lot of cannons, you can fire a "mixed shot" by switching to a different type of ammo just after firing. Your fire will come out in two bursts, and the second will be of the type you switched to. I haven't found much practical use for it, but the option is there. One reader suggested using this when you are using a Ship of the Line or another heavily armed ship against a small target: start with round fire, then switch to grape shot to make half of your cannonballs fall short. Helps to keep you from accidentally sinking your target. - To dodge enemy fire at long range, sail in whichever direction is fastest due to the wind; even if that's straight away from your enemy. The shot is aimed at the position you were in when it was fired, so if you're no longer there when it lands, you're safe. If you can get your speed at like 10 knots or above and you're not too near the enemy, you can usually ignore its shots entirely; they won't connect. At short range, on the other hand, you must keep maneuvering to stay away from the enemy's sides. If you're a smaller ship, you'll be able to keep out of its sights and pummel it with your own broadsides. - If you lose a naval battle, remember you have the option to restore the 'battle' autosave. This will put you back to just before you initiated the battle, allowing you to try it again or avoid this (evidently dangerous) target this time around. Whether or not you consider this cheating (and whether or not you care) is up to you, of course. In terms of sailing, there are a few things to be aware of: - You are, of course, much faster running before the wind than going against it. You are also more maneuverable, which is new since Pirates and Pirates Gold. Turning into the wind is slow and cumbersome and sometimes you might not even manage it at all; you just get blown back. Turn *away* from the wind whenever you can; this might be quicker even if it's a longer turn. Smaller ships do much better at turning into the wind than larger ones, and Brig type ships specifically maintain a decent speed even when they're sailing against the wind. Large ships like Galleons (and to an extent Frigates as well) handle very poorly against the wind, both in terms of speed and maneuverability. Bear this in mind both when you're sailing one and when you're going up against one. - You can pick out your starting position relative to the enemy on the world map. When you initiate a battle, your positions will be the same as they were on the map. Use this to your advantage; for instance if you want to be upwind from your enemy, maneuver to the east of his ship before you start combat. If you're attacking an escorted ship, you might want to move in behind it so you can grab it before the escort can turn around to engage you. Works very well if it's something slow like a War Galleon. - If you need to catch an enemy that is upwind, zig zag against the wind (this is known as "tacking"). This is much quicker than sailing straight against it. If you're in a large ship like a Frigate (or even worse, a Galleon), this becomes especially important, but the main thing when you're using that kind of vessel is not to get yourself caught in such an engagement to begin with. Maneuver around the enemy on the world map before you start the fight, and make sure you don't approach the target from the west. Smaller vessels are not as strongly affected by the wind, so if you're a large ship going up against a small one, this becomes very important. It's also a major reason why the Royal Sloop and the Brig of War aren't necessarily worse ships than the Ship of the Line. ------- OUTCOME ------- A naval battle can end in the following ways: 1. Retreat: the distance between the ships becomes so great that they lose sight of each other. How big this distance is depends on the time of day: it's easier to lose each other at night. If this occurs, the battle ends and the enemy ship disappears off the map; it has either gotten away or been shaken off, depending on your perspective. If you've damaged the enemy ship at all, you are said to have "engaged" it, which appears in your log and earns you a happiness point with the enemies of the ship's nation. Otherwise you gain nothing. Note that if the target in question was a named pirate or villain, they won't disappear off the world map, so you can catch up and engage them a second time. 2. Boarding: if you ram the enemy ship or they ram you, and the enemy is not so low on morale that they'll surrender, a sword fight ensues (see paragraph 6.2) that'll decide the outcome. 3. Sunk: if either ship takes on 100% hull damage - which basically only happens with round shot - that ship will sink. If it's the enemy, the battle is concluded, and you gain no plunder. You do gain some happiness points with the enemies of the ship's nation, though. Your benefactors don't care if you sink or capture your enemies; but you are likely interested in loot, so sinking enemies is rarely your objective. If you're the unlucky sod to be sunk, you are transferred to another ship. You lose whatever cargo/crew you can't carry anymore on the remainder of your ships. It appears you do *not* lose a portion of your gold like you used to in the past games, however. If you don't have other ships anymore, you are marooned and will spend some time on a deserted island waiting to be rescued. This *does* result in the loss of all your loot. 4. Surrender: an enemy ship may surrender to you if you sail close to it and they know they can neither win nor escape. Sometimes, you actually have to board them before they make this decision. Either way, the ship is yours without a fight; the swordfighting sequence is skipped. This cannot happen with named villains, they will always fight you. In a fight that involves escort ships as well, things work slightly differently: - If the escorted ship gets out of range, the battle ends in 'retreat' even if you are still engaged with the escort ship. The ships do not disappear from the world map, but they do appear some distance away from you and you'll need to catch up if you want to fight them again. - If the escorted ship is sunk or boarded, or it surrenders, the battle ends, and (after the sword fight if applicable) you are returned to the world map. The escort ship now becomes an independent warship which may decide to chase you or flee to the nearest port. You can then engage it separately if you wish. - The battle continues if the escort ship is sunk or if you board it (after the sword fight). Escort ships never surrender. Victories against escort ships are not noted on your record and do not get you any happiness points, unless you engage them separately after taking the escorted ship. (Technically, at that point, they're not an escort ship anymore.) For the most part, avoiding the escort ship is the best thing to do. You can always engage it afterwards if you like, and that way you *do* get credit for it. Escort ships aren't always easy to avoid, though, especially since they think nothing of sailing straight *through* the ship they're escorting to get to you. And in some cases - the Treasure Fleet comes to mind here, and groups of Indian War Canoes too - it's not even so easy to figure out which of the two ships is the escort. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [5.2] FENCING -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -------- OVERVIEW -------- Of all the minigames in Sid Meier's Pirates, this is the one you'll see the most often. Many naval battles end in boarding action and an accompanying sword fight, and you'll need to draw steel in many other scenarios as well. Sword fights can occur in the following cases: - You board an enemy ship (or they board you) and the enemy does not decide to surrender without a fight; - You decide to teach the annoying captain of the guard some manners when he is bothering the barmaid; - You track down a fugitive criminal to the tavern of the town he is hiding in; - You are lucky enough to catch Mendoza, Raymondo or Montalban in port, and fight him in the tavern; - You decide to fight a duel against the fiance of a governor's daughter you are trying to charm; - You attack a town which has a garrison smaller than 100 men, allowing your crew to storm the fort unchallenged; - After losing a fight previously, the governor offers to let you spar with his fencing master for practice, and you agree (Apprentice level only); - You track down the Marquis de la Montalban to his hideout and fight your Final battle against him. Ship battles are the most common, and the most interesting because the fight between your crew and the enemy's is a big factor in the fight. When attacking a town with an overwhelming force, this factor is present as well, but you can barely lose those fights anyway (they wouldn't happen if you weren't badly outmatching the enemy to begin with). In all other fights, it's just you against the enemy without anybody else influencing the fight. In a sword fight, your opponent and you start in the middle of whatever area you are fighting in, and you both have the objective to drive back the other to their end. This is done by scoring hits on the enemy while not getting hit in return. The first one to get his back driven against the wall - or whatever else, depending on the area - loses the battle, with various consequences. You have the following moves available during battle: 7: high chop. A fairly slow attack that drives the enemy back 2 steps if it connects, or 1 step if it is parried. No damage if the enemy ducks under it, and in fact, you'll be overbalanced for a moment if he does. 1: low slash. Just like the high chop, it drives back the enemy 2 steps if it hits and 1 if it is parried, but it can also be jumped over. In that case you'll be overbalanced for a while. 4: thrust. A quicker attack than the high chop and the low slash, but it only drives back the enemy 1 step. If it's parried it has no effect at all. You will be overbalanced for a short while but not as bad as with the stronger, slower attacks. You may be able to hit an enemy with a thrust while they're preparing a high chop or low slash, cancelling their attack and driving them back. If you and your enemy thrust at the same time, you usually end up parrying each other with no ill effect to either side. 8: jump. Used to jump over an enemy low slash. Successfully jumping over one will usually give you the time to counterattack. 2: duck. Used to avoid a high chop. If you pull this off you'll usually have the time for a counterattack. 5: parry. Used to stop thrusts, or to reduce the damage for a high chop or low slash. It's better to avoid the latter two when you can though, as parrying them merely softens the blow and does not give you time for a counterattack either. 6: taunt. This does not drive back the enemy, but it does swin