The daughters’ hand signals are easier to identify, and the timing on hitting the keys isn’t as demanding. Also, screwing up once doesn’t set the heart meter back to zero. I think they also changed the dance patterns. I seem to recall most dances ending with super hard combos that were sure to eliminate all your progress. Now, there’s almost always a series of easy combos right at the end, so you can make up a little lost ground before the dance ends.
Well I guess I need to get the patch and get back to sea. The heart-meter getting set back to zero is what really ticked me off about the dancing. But I swear I’m still getting those damn slippers as soon as possible easier-dancing or not! 
Plus I feel crappy that I haven’t properly finished the game yet.
Oh, forgot to say, I got the patch at Gamespot.com. You can probably also get it directly from the Atari website.
You can get the patch here.
Don’t know if this is true or not but supposedly in the new patch “the biggest complaint will be that you can’t change ownership of towns more than once.”
Depends on the type of ship. Anything marked as “Treasure Ship” is likely to have sugar and/or spices on board, as well as a bunch of gold. Same for any ship you hear about while visiting a pub.
Bounty doesn’t really affect how towns feel about you. You need to attack ships either leaving from or heading to that city.
Darn you straight to heck ivylass! I’m losing hours of my life again playing this game.
I’m playing in Buccaner Heroes or whatever the 1660 scenario’s called. And for some reason, I’m the rootin-est tootin-est city pillager the Carribean’s ever seen.
Don’t know why but big crews and city attacks seem to be my modus operandi for this pirate. Didn’t plan it that way, just the way it’s working out.
Just married the beautiful daughter of the gov’n of Nevis (what a hot girl’s doing in that podunk, I’ll never know). English Duke, Spanish Marquis, and French Captain and it’s somewhere around 1666.
The problem is that I’m way behind in the family rescues and pirate-killing. I hate going out to the Yucatan peninsula because it takes forever to get back from there. Villa Hermosa…a pox upon thee.
And despite my disdain for big ships in the other thread, I find myself using a War Galleon as my flagship :eek: . Pretty slow, but people tend to pay attention (and gold) after they’ve been nailed by a 32 gun broadside. 
Oh yeah, and the dancing is MUCH easier with the patch. I still wish you could skip it altogether, but I’ll take what I can get.
Is this a newer version of “Pirates! Gold”, or is this something different? (It sounds the same, from the descriptions here).
I picked up a copy of that for the Mac years ago (pre - OS X) – then later a cartridge of the same game for an old Sega Genesis. Haven’t played it for a while, but now that I’m thinking about it, I want to go back and play again!
Yes, it’s a newer version of Pirates!, the same game that was remade into Pirates! Gold.
Both of our Immortal Adversaries (maybe Baron Raymundo and the Marquis de Montalban got hold of some of the cursed gold from Pirates of the Caribbean?) seem to hang out around Spanish towns. Thus, if you don’t mind annoying the Spaniards for a while, a long pillaging trip from Florida to the Yucatan can change the ownership of all the cities in the area. I’ve not been able to take this scenario to its logical conclusion (I had almost driven the Spanish out of the Caribbean when I had to reinstall Windows and lost my saves) but I suspect that if you reduce the Spanish to only one or two conveniently located cities, the Immortal Adversaries will be pinned down and easy to find.
Hadn’t thought of it that way, but it would seem to work. I guess you’d need to get your Dukedom from the Spanish out of the way first, then you could spend the rest of the game flipping Spanish towns and pinning down the Immortal Adversaries (I like the phrase…have you trademarked it or can I use it freely?). Oh well, I guess that means another game after I finish this one.
We’ve fought some fiances, and I think I may send Ivylad back to whoever his girlfriend is (it’s listed under status, but he’s danced with so many I can’t remember which one is pining away for him) and see if I can marry him off.
Do you have to be a Duke before you get married? We’re an English Duke, but I think the girlfriend is French.
I don’t think you have to be a Duke. I think you just have to keep going back to the port where she is. Of course until you’re married the she can change. I think it’s more likely that by the time you’re married, you’ve co-incidentally been made a Duke.
After further play, two more things that I’d like everyone else’s thoughts on (if anyone else is still playing!)
- Is it just me, or does it seem that the sword-fighting game must be broken if it’s possible for you to not take a single hit during a fight, kill the enemy, and yet lose lots of men and ‘advantage’ because you somehow weren’t doing it right?
- Also, if there are any meteorologists: is the wind always east->west in the Caribbean? It would add a whole new element to the game if there were seasons with winds in different directions. Miss your window to sail east with the wind? Hope you like the countryside around Villa Hermosa, because you’ll see a lot of it as you crawl around the Yucatan.
IANAM but the trade winds are apparently pretty consistent across the Carribean from the NE, but bending around as they hit Middle of the Americas and turning into the Westerlies somewhere north of the Tropic of Cancer. So I think the wind model is correct. Also it would stand to reason that the route taken by the Treasure Fleet would match these winds: enter the Main south by Trinidad and circle around exiting past the Florida Keys with maybe a stop in San Juan).
Obligatory wikipedia article (this has a decent map
PBS Savage Seas
Very illustrative map of the current wind conditions from iWindsurf
Cumbersome WeatherOnline current wind charts for the Carribean
As far as the swordfighting goes, I haven’t had that problem. Sometimes it’s actually convenient to take your time and lose some crew in order to improve morale (now that’s an ass-backwards model…the beatings will continue until morale improves).
We’ve rescued the Tortuga’s governor’s daughter and I guess she’s waiting for a proposal. But we have another governor’s daughter to rescue. Can we still rescue governor’s daughters after we’re married? We only got one piece to the Inca treasure map so far.
We’re a French Duke now, but our men are unhappy and it’s only been 19 months. We have to sack some towns or get some treasure quick.
You can rescue governor’s daughters ad infinitum. In fact you pretty much have to in order to get the complete Inca map…and whatever comes next.
How big of a crew are you running? And do you have the fiddle and the concertina? 19 months is a little soon unless you’re carrying a big crew.
We have about 214, and we do have a fiddle and a concertina, I think. I think it’s because we’ve been busy chasing Raymundo and Montalbaln and haven’t had much chance to sack towns and attack ships.
I’m partly to blame, because I want to get somewhere and finish our mission or dig up the treasure, and Ivylad wants to fight every enemy ship that comes near, and then ships get damaged and men get lost, so we have to pull into a friendly port and get fixed, and by that time Raymundo has moved on or we’re given another mission and they’re just the next town over…
Well, you know. 
I know indeed.
Can either of you do swordfighting pretty well by now? If so, you might find you don’t need that big of a crew (unless you’re going a-sacking). And a small crew is a happy crew. ::insert eyepatch pirate smiley here:: Toward the end with this last guy I didn’t ran with right around a hundred pirates. But it all depends on what you want to do.
durr…“with this last guy I ran with about a hundred pirates most of the time.”
Oh side note: have you gotten pretty good with the land battles? If not, I highly encourage you to do so.
As far as I can tell, you just need more men than the town soldiers, right? Once when we outnumbered them about 200 to 60 we had the sword fight right in town. We didn’t have to do the field maneuvers outside the gates.