Sid Meier's Pirates: Who here has played it yet.

[Muad'Dib]

There will be no Pirates!-specific forum here on Apolyton -- sorry.
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Dan; Apolyton CS

Can we at least have a thread that's topped???



Okay, with that said, pending whether or not we can get a thread topped devoted to it (since this is Off-Topic), Who here has it and has played it???

Me, I have had it since this Monday, and I love it. Back in the old days of the C-64, I played it everyday, just like Civ now. The new graphics, the details, the new additions. Everything is great. Have to says this thou, I can't dance worth a dime!!! My big fingers just aren't nimble enough for the keyboard. In the 2 days that I have been playing, and I have mastered everything to this point (I'm at Swashbuckler already), I got only one dip, ONE!!! And the Dancing Slippers don't help. I can Glisse and Pirouette very well, but when they add the Marche, that's when my Pirate stumbles and the best I can do is a kiss on the hand, damn.
Almost forgot, sneaking about town is tough too. Damn guards. Plus a map of town would help. Always come across the governors mansion first. You think it would be easier to find the tavern or merchant, and not the Gov.

After thought for those of interest, Current game: Now at 1772--12 years into Pirating.

Still first game--1660--Dutch Adventurer--started at Apprentice by 3rd Divide of Plunder went to Swashbuckler (40% of plunder)--2nd on the Top Ten list to Morgan--24 of 32 on Promotions (Duke for all nationalities except Spanish)--9 of 9 on treasures found--vanquished 3 of 9 legendary pirates--8 of 10 on the Romance--2 of 10 on Villians Avenged--2 of 16 on Lost Cities--5 of 16 on lost relatives--wealth bonus (damn I forgot that one)
Other tidbits: captured 70 ships, plundered 14 cities, Ship--a frigate (when I vanquished Blackbeard in my Sloop of War) maxed-out on the upgrades, possess 24 special itiems, and have all 8 specialists (i.e. Gunner, Cook, etc.).

Tips:

1) When you become a Duke, take advantage of the free upgrades to ships because you get more money when you sell the ship that has one versus one that does not (i.e Ship is worth 525 gold add upgrade--now worth 650). The more upgrades the more it is worth.

2) Always go to the governor when you enter port--even when you are at Duke. You won't get anymore Promotions but they still give you land and that adds to your Wealth score. Plus the daughters give you missions against fugitives of the crown, which gives you rewards when you capture them. Or you can take the bribe from the fugitive (which is a special item).

3) Stay on good terms with the Indians. You can get them to launch attacks against cities which reduces the troops that you will face when you attack it. Yeah, you can get the same result with the pirates, but when you haven't seen an enemy ships and your only pickings are pirate ships, well. Besides pirates carry more gold than Indian war canoes. And pirate ships are worth more too.

4) Ships now have missions added to them when you spot them. (i.e. Invasion force or Treasure ship or Carrying new governor, etc.). Each one effects the game--positively or negatively. Wipe out the ship carrying the peace message and war goes on. Protect the ship carrying the new governor and city has economic boom.

5) You can recruit and keep a very large crew content to very happy for about 16-18 months at sea without accquiring lots of gold before trouble. Provided you have the Specialists (Quartermaster) or Specials (Concertina). Once they become Unhappy, unless you can find a huge source of gold (Inca Gold, Vaniquishing a Legendary Pirate, or the Treasure Fleet--and even after that they don't stay happy for long) its time to Divide the Plunder and start with a new crew.

6) Game has no offical ending (Your Pirate can't die either). Your Pirate goes on until old age finally does him in and that is detmined by your own skills when age starts slowing down your pirates abilities (i.e. Fencing, etc.) and any specials or skills (Medicine) you possess. I'm not quite there yet as to retiring. I'll let you later on how tough it get as you get older.

[Urban Ranger]

I think this belongs to Other Games.

[Kropotkin]

Yes it does. Still good to hear some about it though. I've been thinking about the game but then there's the monetary issue...

I'm a bit sceptical about him doing sowell in the first game. But I guess they didn't really make the game for us old and hardend swashbucklers. Even if all these years of being the king's advisor has made me a bit soft and lazy.

[Kropotkin]

(ops, I got beamed while typing!)

[Adagio]

What's wrong with the other thread?

[DRoseDARs]

This thread was moved from the OT. He might not have seen the thread that was already here in the OG.

On-topic: I haven't. I'm not into pirate-themed things, but this does look like an interesting game.

[Dis]

I may get it for christmas.

[Nikolai]

Me too. So near Christmas, that's the way to go. And besides, it's not released here yet.

[Arrian]

4) Ships now have missions added to them when you spot them. (i.e. Invasion force or Treasure ship or Carrying new governor, etc.). Each one effects the game--positively or negatively. Wipe out the ship carrying the peace message and war goes on. Protect the ship carrying the new governor and city has economic boom.

This bit seems like it would strain the immersion factor for me. And I'm not terribly excited about the dancing component. Otherwise, it sounds great. Too bad I need a better computer to play it

-Arrian

[Raion]

I am playing it, and it runs fine.
The requirement for the game, is 1.0gHz (low end requirements), 32mB video card that supports T&L whatever that is, but that is used in most games now anyway, they just don't mention it, so the Specs given, is something like a Geforce 3 or higher, but some say that they can play it with a Geforce 2 type card, but with 64mB of memory for the card.

I have had no problems with the game, except with the dancing.
Only #9 in the Top Ten Pirate's List though, and I started a new game on Adventurer to see how that goes, after starting on the default first time setting of Apprentice, and moving up to Jouneyman level, but in the 1620-1640 time period, which is harder than the default setting of the 1660-1680 Bucaneer Heros setting, to get the player going with the game.
I am also using older drivers and have had no problems, but my machine is listed as slow in the config.ini file and there is a KeyMap.ini file both with the saved games in My Documents -> My Games -> (whatever folder name you gave when it was installed -- maybe onto another logical drive as this is separated from the total game install) Sid Meier's Pirates, where those two game files are for configuration with the saved games.

The KeyMap.ini is suppose to remap the numeric keys I guess for Laptops, and others like who are left handed.

[Muad'Dib]

First item of business. Urban Ranger, didn't know there was another section. I usually don't pay attention to what is in the middle of the Civs section and the Off-Topic. I just scroll down without looking.

2nd. Kropotkin, playing the new Pirates, if you played the original, is like going from Civ2 to Civ3. You know the basics, you just got to fine tune the new stuff. So, yeah, it won't take you long to go from Apprentice to Swashbuckler if you played the original.

3rd. More Tips:

Dancing--I'm starting to get the hang of it.

To get the Dip. The Heart monitor has to have a really big heart (actually huge). You also need a few flourishes (turns with partner). To get the flourishes, your timing of the next move needs to be perfect (right on cue). Getting the dip allows you to get more special items from the daughter. Plus, and this is very important. If you marry a beautiful daughter and every time you sail back to port and visit the Gov., chose to dance and dip your wife, she gives you a piece of the lost Inca treasure map; everytime, until you find all 4 Lost Treasures--at 50,000 a pop, that's 200,000 gold.
So remember this: Court beautiful daughter. Marry her. Dance & get dip. Get Inca treasure Map. Doing this is a lot easier than searching for your relatives and getting the maps that way. Well, maybe not easier, it all depends on your dancing.

More tips to come.

Some questions:

Anybody find Captain Kidd, Henry Morgan or the Treasure Fleet. I've vanquished all others except these two. Can't find them or get clues to their pirate haven. With regards to the Fleet, I've captured ships that said Treasure ship, but nothing that refers to the Treasure Fleet. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've not retired yet (still 1st game--year is 1681) because I want to accomplish those goals before I do.

[Muad'Dib]

1 of 4

[Muad'Dib]

2 of 4

Since I'm trying to get my Spanish Dukedom, the bounty has dropped significantly since I starting attacking the English. Also, under romance, I'm working on a beautiful daughter, but have not gotten as far with her as the one in Curacao.

[Muad'Dib]

3 of 4

[Muad'Dib]

4 of 4

[The diplomat]

Some tips I have found useful:

- Try to have 2, maximum 3 ships. More than 3 is too many. If you only have 1 ship and you lose a fight, you'll get tossed on a desert island and lose precious months. But if you have 2 or more ships and you lose a fight, you sail away with your remaining ships. So it is a good idea to have a second ship as back-up.

- Bigger is not always better. Small ships with upgrades can be better than larger ships. For example, a royal sloop with the crew upgrade can carry 187 men and 20 cannons. You'll have a fast, maneuverable, and pretty powerful ship for something that size.

[Kassiopeia]

Fleet battles would be neat. Like five ships from each side engaging each other in the same battlefield. The AI for the ships on your side, the ones you're not controlling, ought to be hella good though.

[Barinthus]

No fleet battles in this game? It's one on one?

Bummer. That's one of things I liked about Uncharted Waters, you could have fleet battles.

[Kassiopeia]

Yeah, it's one on one. The opposing fleet can have two ships in it (say a treasure ship and an escort) but you yourself can only have one ship on your side. Bummer indeed.

[Muad'Dib]

Yo, Dip, I know. I should have type a message saying that I'm starting my 4th cruise (divied-up the plunder for the 3rd time) in that game. The only tactical difference between the Frigate & the Sloops, Sloops have a tighter turn. Besides the Frigate was a gift, courtesy of Blackbeard. Plus, you can negate the tight turning of the sloop by how you enter combat. If on the navigation map, you get behind the enemy and then go into combat, you've pretty much won the battle because the frigate is just as fast as the sloop. The only ship I haven't come across is the Ship-of-the-Line. Maybe now that I've turned on the English in order to get the Spanish titles is when I'll see it, hopefully.

[Kropotkin]

A few questions to the illusirious captain if he's not in a hurry back to his frigate:

I see that there's a number of specialists on your ship. How does that work in the game? Also, how about the rest of the crew. Are they still a bunch of generic nobodies or do they have form of skill-levels or whatever? As plundering in a grand scale is a enterprise that's quite labour intensive I've always feelt like that aspect of the original game could be improved.

And when you want to recruit a few extra sailors while in port and 1074 men steps up, can you turn some of them away, but not all?

[Adagio]

When at a port only few people wants to join you... mostly it's around 30, but can be higher. You have the option to either hire all of them, or hire none, you can't pick a number... And all of those are just nobodies. On a land battle there's 3 different "soldiers": Officers, pirates and those who can shoot (Don't remember what they're called), but you have no choice on how many pirates you want to hire and how many of those with guns you want to hire... seems like 50/50 when going into battle


And those specialists do what's written next to them on that screenshot, though I'm not 100% sure about the effects of all of them, but I would assume it's written in more details in the manual about this?

[Barinthus]

Mmmm can I as a captain kick off 10 or whatever crew members or the only way to get rid of crew members are to get them killed in a battle or disband?

And is there an option to keelhaul anybody somewhere in the game?

[alva]

Originally posted by Raion
I am playing it, and it runs fine.
The requirement for the game, is 1.0gHz (low end requirements), 32mB video card that supports T&L whatever that is, but that is used in most games now anyway, they just don't mention it, so the Specs given, is something like a Geforce 3 or higher, but some say that they can play it with a Geforce 2 type card, but with 64mB of memory for the card.
*snip *

TL = transform(?) Lightning and is supported from Geforce 1 upwards.

The specs you give btw are Geforce 1. ( T/L & 32 MB )

[conmcb25]

Dam I didn't even know this was out already.

When did it get released?

[Muad'Dib]

First Kropotkin. There are 8 specialist and their abilites are laid out for you on pages 109-111 in the manual, assuming you bought the game. The crew based on their morale help or hurt you in battle (mostly at sea--land battles are more about you moving your crew like chess pieces). If you have more crew than town garrisons and win the land battle, you decide who will be the governor. At sea, your crew numbers versus other ships crew plus morale factors and how well your fencing abilities determine outcome. Plus larger crews determine how fast you reload your cannons and how many cannons you can man. There's an advantage slider that tells how well you're doing during boarding actions. Red for opposition & white for you. Start losing the sword fight and crew starts being whittled down with the red moving up. Starting winning, and enemy crew gets whittled with white moving in your favor. This is all laid-out in the manual. Eight (8) is the maximium number of ships in your fleet. Recruiting more crew is based on your rank (promotions); from Letter of Marque to Duke--the better the rank, the more crew. A Duke recruiting in wealthy ports of call can recruit large numbers. And it is a take all or take none proposition. No you can't kick crew off, but they will leave you if they turn unhappy or mutinous. As stated before, killing them in battle (land or sea) or divying up the plunder is the only way to get rid of them.

Adagio, Buccaneers is the name of the 3rd group.

Conmcb25, game was released around the week before Thanksgiving.

[Muad'Dib]

Storming his hideout. Must defeat his indian soldiers first.

[Muad'Dib]

The Villian at your mercy.

[conmcb25]

Thanks

This actually looks pretty good, I cant believe Ghengis Farb isn't arouind discussing this he has been talking about Pirates 2 for a year

[Muad'Dib]

No pre-nups if you please.