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

[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]

Answering Questions

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]

Showdown with Arch-Villian Montalban

Storming his hideout. Must defeat his indian soldiers first.

[Muad'Dib]

Victory is rewarding.

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]

Popping the question

No pre-nups if you please.