Cutthroats

[Zkribbler]

As a big "Pirates" fan, I've been waiting for the price of "Cutthroats" to come down to a reasonable level, which finally happened. The verdict (IMHO):

The good: "Cutthroats" is, as I suspected, "Pirates" taken to the next level. For example, instead of just recruiting crewmen, they now come in four specialities: officers, sailers, gunners and marines. Instead of just invading towns and watching the numbers drop as you swordfight, you now have a landing party, whom you guide through an actual town. Your marines storm, loot and sometimes burn buildings, take prisoners, and shoot or slash the locals. All those good things pirates love to do. Ship battles now involve your entire fleet.

The bad: This game crashes...a lot. Much of the game is controlled through itty-bitty icons, which are really hard to make out.

The ugly: Three times, I have raided towns. The first time, the town gave me a large bribe to stop attacking. The next two times, I pulled off successful raids, but when I ordered my men to withdraw, all but one obeyed. This single troop kept marching endlessly to the southeast, and he was so far off the map, I swear he was in limbo. The rub was, because he was not back aboard, the game wouldn't let me sail away.

I say, shoot the beta testers!

[Steve Clark]

I've been involved in the Eidos CT Forum since the beginning and have watched the growth of the game since then. Patch 7.0 has been released recently that took care of many of the remaining problems. Several of the longtime forum members beta-tested this version and have declared that it is stable. However, CT does have very particular system requirements, esp. in that DirectX 7a is a must. There are several other system tweaks that are recommended.

I hate to see you give up on this, it can be made very playable for you if you work at it. Let me know if you need more info. BTW, even though I participate in that forum (I have a number of friends there), I don't play CT because I abhor that style of RTS games.

[Zkribbler]

D'oh! Of course there has to be a patch. Thanks, Steve!
[This message has been edited by Zkribbler (edited May 02, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Zkribbler (edited May 02, 2000).]

[Zkribbler]

To correct something I said earlier: Actually, the game does let you sail away even if all your troops aren't aboard. The rub is you have to sail a great distance on the battle map before the game lets you return to the main map...it takes 15-30 minutes.

I've now downloaded Patch 6.0 and started a new game. The results:

The game does not crash so often.

I've invaded four towns. The first one, I was unable to recall 7 men and an officer with their loot and 6 prisoners. Instead of marching off to limbo, the "follow" button took be to the church (which I had looted). But no one was there. So I had to abandon these people. In the second city, I took a bribe to leave. In the third, the game crashed when I tried to unload my troops onto the beach. In the fourth city, the game crashed when I recalled my men after a successful raid.

[Zkribbler]

Adding to my sad saga.

On my fifth attack on a city, I returned to the first city I had attacked. Again, one of my men did not returned, and again the troop finder indicated he was near the church. So I was again forced to begin a prolonged sailing away on the battle map. It took so long, I saved the game and came back to it the next day. But ha!--when I reloaded it, all the buildings of the town had disappeared, and my man was standing right where the church should have been. The surviving townsfolk soon surrounding him and killed him. But, with all my surviving men now back aboard, I could now sail away using the main map!

Thus, out of five attacks on cities (using patch 6.0):

1) One city surrendered.
2) Twice the game crashed.
3) And twice men refused the command to return to the ships, necessitating me sailing away on the battle map...which takes a really long time.

[Steve Clark]

Patch 6.0 was released last December (I think) and wasn't all that successful. Hothouse then spent 4 months working on Patch 7.0. That, from what I've heard, will take of your playing problems (plus doing some system tweaks).

Eidos did not have the link for Patch 7 (they had FTP problems). Get it from HH here: http://www.hothouse.org/english/cutt...d/download.htm