If you have them outnumbered significantly you’ll go right to the swordfight as you describe. However, if you don’t outnumber by too much or have some lesser number then you go into the battlefield mode outside the city walls.
I find the game’s AI to be a pretty weak general. If you use the forest spaces and your buccanneers (gun toting pirates) correctly, you can defeat a significantly larger force. If you haven’t done this too much, I’d suggest you get some practice at it because it’s important later if you’re going to finish the story.
Remember that these are just suggestions…don’t want to sound like I’m going to make you walk the plank if you don’t.
Part of the fun is that you can really play the game a number of different ways.
Unlike the previous versions, I doubt you’ll ever find Raymundo in a town; seems he’s always on his ship somewhere. From what I’ve seen, once he gets to a town, he immediately turns and heads toward some other Spanish port. Raymundo sightings are now only good for narrowing down the area he’s in. The best you can hope for is to either hit the very last port he was in or the one that he’s on his way to, then figure out the quickest way to where he’s headed to (or from) and bump into him.
Well, our men were getting harder and harder to keep happy (we recovered 9000 in treasure and they were only content) so we retired a surgeon in Tortuga. We didn’t find any members of our family or the Inca treasure, but we did get married and defeated all the pirates except L’Ollonais.
Not too bad our first time out. We shall start a new campaign later today, which should go more smoothly now that we know how to dance with the ladies. Ivylad wants to concentrate on the quests first, and IIRC, the first mission we had we were able to remain at sea with happy men for nearly three years.
I brought this game after hearing good things about it but haven’t played for a couple of months now due the fact I couldn’t find any treasure using the maps. Anybody got some advice about that?
Advice, my friend, I have in spades. And shovels. And pickaxes.
First question would be: were you working from a partial map or a completed map? If a partial map, then you are somewhat unlikely to find a treasure until you’re really used to the geography of the Caribbean. To remedy this, keep going to the mysterious stranger in the back of the taverns until you get one that will sell you another piece of the map (repeat until you get a full map).
At that point, you should have some writing at the bottom of the map that says something like “Search West of Santo Domingo.” There might be a landmark on the map that says something like “Blood Rock.” It will say Buried Treasure Landmark when you sail near it on the main sailing screen. Use those landmarks to figure out where you should anchor your ships. Sail there toward your target (West of S.D. in this case), find the (Blood Rock) landmark and sail your ship directly into the appropriate patch of coastline, then select anchor ships here from the menu.
When you’re taken to the landscreen, start walking in the direction you think the X on the map is located. The 9 key on the keypad will open up the spyglass circle to give you vision at a distance. see if you can find any landmarks like a stone head, Incan temple, stone arch, etc. Keep referring back to the treasure map as much as you like. Switching back and forth you should be able to orient where you are in relation to the landmarks on the map and the X. Just keep moving in the direction you think the X is and keep sweeping your spyglass across the land. Eventually you should see a stylized big pile o’ rocks. This is the X you’ve been looking for. When you get near it, your men will run toward it start digging and you’ll get a little movie and a variable amount of gold depending on which pirate’s treasure you just looted.
Happy digging and let me know if this was any help to you. I might have accidentally omitted something inadvertantly.
He can never be found in town; the only way to catch him is by intercepting his ship.
On occasion, the game can kind of lose an evil Spaniard; I’ve had situations where Raymundo was going from one port to another nearby port and he simply vanished for years.
Well, we’re able to buy information in the tavern and have captured Raymundo twice, and we haven’t yet danced with a governor’s daughter!
We’ve found if we stop in a pirate haven, and tell the captain to attack a nearby town, then they can “soften it up” for us before we go attack it. We may not get as much money, but we’ve converted three towns from Spanish to other nationalities.
Time to fire up again Pirates. I went through the game in three periods, then shelved it to return to City of Heroes, but catching this thread (can’t believe I missed it fo rtwo weeks) has put me back in the mood.
First job, find a Royal Sloop and upgrade it with everything. Next is to find the biggest, slowest ships available for hauling troops and goods throughout the Caribbean. Time to rescue my family (again).
For those of you with the deluxe DVD version, it includes the original Pirates! Gold. You’ll need a ‘slow-down’ program, as it is keyed to processor speed, but you can find them for free.
D_Odds I was a little surprised to not see you in this thread either, since you were such a spectacular contributor to the old one (maybe the OP?). Good to see you.
ivylass the reason you haven’t danced with a daughter yet is because Sid and his band of programming rogues think of everything. Unless you have “Wit and Charm” or the Chapeau or the Ostrich Cap you can’t dance with a “decent” (don’t charge me with sexism!) daughter until you’ve gotten a noble rank. So you have to put in the time and fight for somebody and get your rank up to at least Baron before you can start chasing Montalban. Or get one of the hats, but that’s up to random chance.
FWIW, I still haven’t finished the whole game (didn’t finish all the lost cities in the last game). Maybe this time through…I’m off to a good fast start anyhow (4 years in and I’m almost married and both a Spanish and French Duke).
I thought until recently that you could only start chasing Raymundo this way, until a friendly abbot pointed me in the right direction in my most recent game. Can you definitely not get pointed towards Montalban without dancing with someone? In the same game, alas, I was vastly disappointed to find that even on the lowest difficulty level Raymundo only gives you one quarter of the map at a time. After three games, I’m quite tired of chasing Raymundo, Montalban and the random heiress-happy coronel all over the Caribbean, and was hoping this would make it easier.
One tip which was ( I think) in the previous thread has made life considerably easier: if your flagship is an Indian War Canoe, it speeds up all of your travel, even if you’re hauling Henry Morgan’s Large Frigate behind you. It’s also handy because when you’re selling ships in preparation for dividing the loot, any of your crew that can’t fit on to the canoe get fired without pay, making everyone else’s share that much bigger.
I’ve rescued most of my lost relatives at one time or another, and defeated Montalban pretty much every time out (he really needs some proper Spanish troops) but I must confess I’ve never had any luck at all with the lost Inca cities quest. On my most recent game, I got a full map only to find that it didn’t seem to match the area it purported to. After a month or two of traipsing around Gran Grenada, I gave up. Any tips?
Thanks for the kind words, CapnPitt. Spectacular contributor…that’s an 180 degree change from the way most of my posts are viewed.
My best game, in any incarnation of Pirates, was a fast starter in 1660. The early missions didn’t send me off in 300 directions, and I had fun destroying the French and rapidly rising in the Dutch and English ranks. One of the few shortcomings in the game is that I ‘only’ married a good-looking, not beautiful daughter. I do remember taking on the Boss bad guy with a small little band the first time…that didn’t work out well. Had to re-amass a fleet and next time took him on with about 2.5-to-1 odds. That’ll learn him!
I’ve never taken ‘Wit and Charm’, nor have I bought nor accepted the Chapeau / Ostrich Cap as items. ivylass, I generally stay on the left side of the map early, and beat up whomever has the most enemies among the English / Dutch / French. I love seeing just how much I can damage a ship without sinking it. Beating up one side of a war will earn quick promotions from the other. If someone is fighting with two or more countries, you can garner favor with both quickly. A few escort missions from the settlements won’t hurt getting promotions, which lead to prettier ladies, either.
QuizCustodet, finding some of those places, especially lacking any landmarks, can be difficult. All I can say is use landmarks to their fullest.
Also, I’m not 100% sure, but whenever you lose crew, they leave with a share. This also goes for when you recruit more than you can hold. Perhaps someone who tracks their gold more closely than I do can confirm this. Whenever I want to pare down my crew, it’s time for a land battle. I just leave some people out in the open and watch their numbers dwindle. The gold is a bonus.
Ah yes, I forgot about the Jesuits. You’re exactly right about that…a friendly abbot can start you in that direction. But it is kind of randomized. But thanks for catching my error. And no doubt the random chasing can be (well, is) tiresome.
In addition to what D_Odds said about using landmarks, using landmarks, and using some more landmarks, all I can say is that those lost city maps can be difficult. Mainly, as I’m sure you’ve noticed is that you don’t often get a seaside landmark. So you have to do a bit of Sherlock Holmes and eliminate the seaside places that it can’t be. For example, one map I had said search north of Gran Granada, but only had the slightest hint of seashore at the very top. So what I did was look north of GG for swaths of seaside that might even remotely match what was on my map. In other words, orient the seashore on the map to the shore on the sailing screen to limit your options. Then landmark, landmark, landmark. I don’t know that what I’ve written is helpful, because it’s really kind of an intuitive thing.
Also, it took me forever to realize that the gadget on the bottom left serves as a compass when you’re walking overland. :smack: I’m pretty sure everyone else recognized that but me, but if it helps you, then so much the better.
The plain daughters won’t dance with you until you’re a Captain.
The attractive ones want a Colonel.
And the beautiful ones want a Baron. We tended to stay away from the Jesuit missions and the Indian villages the first game. Other than finding Raymundo, is there any benefit to visiting them on a regular basis?
Sometimes a bartender will tell you the town needs a good Indian raid, or influx of immigrants. Also, Indian raids will weaken a towns defenses without stealing it’s gold. Jesuits will send immigrants, which will make the governors like you. If you’ve been pissing off the French, but want to sail into town, escort some immigrants and the French will be more receptive to your overtures. It’s how I get into Spanish towns.
Additionally, abbots (by the way, why do Jesuit settlements have abbots? Since Jesuits are almost universally priests, rather than sworn brothers, I’ve never seen a group of them referred to as an abbey…) will occasionally offer to intercede with the governors of nearby settlements. I’ve never taken them up on the offer, but I think it gets you out of paying your way out of the bad books.
