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

[Barinthus]

I dont know his reason but sometimes I go ahead and buy games but I simply don't have time IRL even to open the box. Like I got Deus Ex and KOTOR today but I find it doubtful that I'll be touching those until January at the earliest. I want to get Pirates too but I decided to wait to see if they will release updated version by the time I'm ready to play the game.

[Jon Miller]

I do this often

than I will play them a year later

Jon Miller

[Dis]

I never buy a game until I'm ready to play it. Although it is possible I get this game as a christmas present. But I will still have almost a month on my Everquest2 account. So I most likely won't touch it until then.

[Adagio]

I doubt I will play in in 2 weeks, since there's not that much to do and gets a bit repeative, since all you can do is: swordfight, attack city, dance, sneak, attack ships, treasure hunt...
Of course there's also this thing about finding your lost relatives, but it's basicly the same thing as searching for a treasure, except to find the map parts you have to attack the same guy 4 times to get the 4 parts of the map (for each family member)... but when you have the full map, it's just like treasure hunt...

And upgrades are not like most RPG's. The only way to "upgrade yourself" is by buying things (like swords, etc) and there's only ~8 different upgrades to your ship. Shortly after the game starts you'll probably run into some ship with many upgrades so you can do the last few upgrades yourself, or maybe you even run into a fully upgraded ship (in my current game it took about 15 minutes before I had a fully upgraded ship and about 30 minutes before I had a fully upgraded ship of my favorite ship-model

And as already mentioned several times: There's just too huge a step from the second hardest til the hardest level... when playing on the second hardest level you can't loose any battles (swordfight, ship-battle, land-battle*), unless you're VERY tired AND you're fighting the guy in the tavern (he's the toughest sword-fighter)
And if you're playing the hardest level, it's almost impossible to win swordfights (and you can't play the game without them)


*Unless it's really bad odds (like they have more than twice the number of soldiers than you)

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Crossing over from the Caribbean down to South America is an exercise in itself, you have to stock up on food and when you're there you may end up in trouble if the Spanish are mad at you since there are few non-Spanish towns around.

Not in my game... I've taken about 6-8 of their towns (from Magerita to the west) and made them some random nation... Now the Spanish has put 45,000 gold on my head

[vovan]

Originally posted by Adagio
unless you're VERY tired AND you're fighting the guy in the tavern (he's the toughest sword-fighter)

That's not true. I found the guy in the tavern to be one of the easiest. Since he has no crew members to pull up his advantage, you simply taunt him a couple times and he becomes slow as molasses. The toughest opponent for me is the guy from spanish military ships. Man, he's fast. Plus, I usually have about 40 guys against his 140, and so my men get slaughtered in a hurry, so in addition to being fast in the first place, he gains advantage from my men dying, and I get slower because of that.

Originally posted by Adagio
Now the Spanish has put 45,000 gold on my head

My highest yet was 48K, and I was just on my way to take a wealthy city from the Spanish to make this even higher, when out of nowhere Blackbeard's ship came out, he yelled something about me being a worthless treasure stealer, and attacked. Of course, I defeated him, but that made the damn Spanish very happy with me, and they took off all price on my head, and I became a Spanish captain, instead.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by vovan
That's not true. I found the guy in the tavern to be one of the easiest. Since he has no crew members to pull up his advantage, you simply taunt him a couple times and he becomes slow as molasses. The toughest opponent for me is the guy from spanish military ships. Man, he's fast. Plus, I usually have about 40 guys against his 140, and so my men get slaughtered in a hurry, so in addition to being fast in the first place, he gains advantage from my men dying, and I get slower because of that.

For me all those I've battled on a ship has all been awfully slow... and in my battles I always has the same or more men than they do, so it's usually the other way around where I didn't get to finish the fight because he didn't have more men left...
The one at the tavern is the fastest enemy I've seen for now... not fast enough to be me though...

Originally posted by vovan
My highest yet was 48K, and I was just on my way to take a wealthy city from the Spanish to make this even higher, when out of nowhere Blackbeard's ship came out, he yelled something about me being a worthless treasure stealer, and attacked. Of course, I defeated him, but that made the damn Spanish very happy with me, and they took off all price on my head, and I became a Spanish captain, instead.

Same here... I was at ~45k, but then I kinda beat Blackbeard and now it's down to 25k

[Muad'Dib]

Tips & Comments

Some More Important Tips:

Daughters & Dancing

1) Make sure you successfully dance (hand kiss or dip) with an attractive daughter you first time because they give you special items--if your struggling to win swordfights, this will help you provided the choice of gifts she's offering are items that will help you with fencing (Puffy shirt, Silk Fencing shirt, Balanced sword, Perfectly Balanced Rapier, One-shot pistol, Brace of pistols, Leather vest, & Metal cuirass). Plain daughters also give gifts but you have to get the dip.

2) Once you rescued your 1st beautiful daughter from the Evil Colonel Mendoza and return her to her father, you get a piece of the the Lost Cities map. Furthermore, any beautiful daughter that you dip after the rescue, will also give you a piece of the Lost Cities map. Note: You only get to dance non-wife beautiful daughter twice (1st meeting & once before she'd kidnapped).

3) As stated in my previous posts, marry a beautiful daughter and you get to dance with her every time you return. Every time you dip the wife, you get a piece of the Lost Cities map.

Hostile Ports

Ports won't let you in or merchant won't trade, get yourself a disguise.
False Mustache--will work if port is only mildly negative towards you.
Theatrical disguise--will work no matter how hostile a port is.


Comments

Try dueling the fiance at swashbuckler if you want a very tough opponent.

Doing something positive--defeating Indians or Pirates, sinking/capturing enemy shiping, sacking enemy towns/ports, successful escort missions or capturing fugitives will lower the bounty on your head to the point where you can start earning promotions again or having privileges restored.

[Kassiopeia]

Pfft. The evil Marquis was at my knees as I had wrecked his excuse of a ship, Magdalen with my gorgeous Bloody Delight, but even when the ship had stricken its colours I had to swordfight him. I should have shot the final decisive salvo and sunken him with his ship!

[Muad'Dib]

Dancing with Wife correction:

You will not get a piece of any Lost Cities map if you dip your wife until you defeat Montalban at his hideout. If you haven't defeat him there and you dip your wife, she'll give you a clue to his whereabouts. After you defeat him at the hideout, only then will your wife give you a piece of the map when you dip her.

[Kassiopeia]

Oh, interesting, well, need to sack him a few more times I suppose.

By the way, I just acquired a French Ship of the Line! It was my first transgression against the French in my second game, but they seemed to take it fine. So now I have a Ship of the Line in my arsenal. I need to try it out in battle and see if it can hold candle to my fully upgraded Royal Sloop - I fear the SotL has too big a profile and is too slow a turner for even the extra sturdy hull to compensate.

[Adagio]

How many soldiers does he have at his hideout? I'm just asking since it's a hell of place to be able to get enough pirates to, since there's so few cities there, and being at war with Spanish doesn't help (I assume his hideout is the same place in all games?)

[Muad'Dib]

The pic above that I posted showing my Ship-of-Line came courtesy of the Dutch. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use it much since I captured it near my forced retirement. So you can say my pirate ended his career on a high note. Taking out the most powerful ship afloat. And yes, if the game thinks your too old or too sick after you divide plunder and try to start another cruise you'll get that other screenshot above that I posted.

[Muad'Dib]

The Battle at Montalban's Hideout:

It is never in the same spot. My 1st game he was near Campeche, the 2nd, he was near Gran Granada.

Forces Guarding His Hideout
He has 7-8 units of Natives which roughly put thats in the neighborhood of a little over 300 men. The 2 times I took him out, I had between 250-280 men I was outnumbered each time by 2 or 3 units. But they're easy to defeat. Postion your officers & pirates on highground in front of your buccaneers, and let them come to you. Your officers & pirates have a greater melee value than the Natives plus the bonus they get for Height & Morale will break them quickly. Don't use open terrain or jungles (Natives move through it like its open terrain), and they will defeat you because they get bonuses too, especially if they flank you.

[Adagio]

Thx... in my current game the hideout is as far to the west as possible (don't remember what towns are nearby)... so far I've only been able to attack with 80 (but I just retreated instead), because that place is very far away from places where I can get new recruits, and if I go too far away the pirates gets unhappy