It’s pretty easy to get the Ship-of-the-Line. (All the non-Spanish nations have them, BTW.) But you have to beat the snot out of that nation’s shipping and ports to get them to start sending full warships to the Caribbean. It will show up as a “New Warship” heading to a port you’ve been savaging. Take it, and it’s escort, and you’re golden. 100 tonnes, max broadside 48 cannon, max crew (with triple hammocks) 450.
ETA: It’s much easier to get a Large Frigate. Find Henry Morgan and take his. (90 tonnes, 40 cannon max, max crew 375)
You actually see all the ships on the open ocean, rather than just “sail, sail, sail, random encounter, sail, sail sail, random encounter”. This gives you much more freedom to choose and pursue your targets, avoid pirate hunters, and ignore friendlies
Sailing seems easier than in the old game, but maybe this is just because the map is more interesting.
City invasions are now tun-based combat. Personally, I find it easier than the old system.
Hunting for buried treasure is similar to sailing, in that you’re walking around actually looking for the treasure, rather than just picking a point on the map and saying “dig here”. There are additional map features now, like named coves and rocks, totem poles, etc. (randomly generated for each game) which will show up on treasure maps and enable you to navigate to the treasure.
Ships can be upgraded in ports with improved sails, stronger hulls, grape/chain shot, etc. Each port will have a different improvement they can make, so pimping your ride will take some effort.
There are now ‘experts’ who provide different benefits (gunners improve cannon fire, cooks improve morale, surgeons heal wounded sailors, etc.). These are acquired at random by capturing ships that already have them.
There are special items that also provide different benefits, such as compasses, improved swords, pistols, dancing shoes, etc. You get these as gifts from governors’ daughters, or as bribes from criminals you’ve captured.
In addition to the randomly-generated pirates, there are also 10 famous pirates (Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, etc.) you can hunt down to become the #1 pirate on the seas.
There’s now an over-arching “super mission” to hunt down the pirate who kidnapped your family. The game continues on after you achieve this, though.
Let me get back to the posts on Fall from heaven. I saw this mod, and I SO TOTALLY WANT TO PLAY IT!
But… it doesn’t work. I downloaded it, and the add-on pack, but it just glitches and throws out an error. I thoug, Hey, that’s because it’s not recognizing the game files. For some ungodly reason Sid Meier decided to install Civ4 and Warlords in one diectry and Beyond the Sword in another. It still no work. Any hints?
In Civ 4, your first 100 turns are key. The most important thing you can do is utilize the slavery civic effectively. Here’s one strategy:
-Build your first city, begin training a worker (ideally, you’ll be in a starting location that has a good mix of resources and some forests to cut down). Send your explorer out to hopefully find some techs from native villages. Your initial tech goal is to learn bronze working so you can switch to slavery.
-Once the worker is done, start training a settler. Use your worker to build some roads and maybe a mine, especially if you have copper, stone, or marble within your supply radius.
-Around this time you’ll have completed the settler and researched bronze working. Send the settler off to build a new city, and have the new city build a worker. Once you have bronze working, you should choose your next techs based on the Wonders you want to build. Stonehenge is probably your best bet. It builds fast (faster with stone), and it can increase your borders quickly without having to build temples. Cut down the trees in your city radius to get production boosts and use slave labor at the first available opportunity to finish the Wonder. What you build after will depend. If you’re on a large map with barbarians and have stone available, go for Great Wall. If your neighbors are close or you have marble available, go for the Oracle (free tech). Whatever you choose, your capital city generally be the one building your early wonders.
-Repeat the worker-settler build with city 2, and repeat with city 3. With 3 or 4 cities, you’ll probably want to start specializing your cities. Have one start pumping out military units while you improve the others, have another build settlers to keep expanding. Don’t overexpand chasing after resources, but expand efficiently within your starting area to block out any nosy neighbors.
-Keep in mind that it’s generally difficult conquer your neighbors militarily in the early stages if you’re both otherwise even. If you manage to hem a neighbor in to an area he can’t expand from, by all means take a shot at invading him with ancient and medieval units. Try to do it before he can build walls. If your neighbor develops similarly with you, stay defensive and improve your tech and economy. Your goal will be to get to the “paradigm shifters” first, the military units that give you big advantages over civs using the older units: rifleman (and cavalry), infantry, and tanks (an argument can also be made for macemen and knights).
Your strategy will be different if you use a religious civ, since they don’t tend to start with mining or the wheel.
(90 tonnes, 40 cannon max, max crew 375)