Topic: Pirates!

[Jack Morris]

I'm still playing Pirates, Dracho. The game did not go down in price like SH3 or the SW Jump to Lightspeed. It is simply AWESOME! Was it worth 50 smackers? You bet, as NO game is the same. I finally managed a cruise that netted over 100,000 gold pieces. With that portion of my booty I can now take my vessel anywhere with the crew happy and go do special missions and find lost relatives and the secret pirate base.

I wish they had a dyna for this, it is truly a work of art.

I will be taking my new P/C with me to Chihuahua, and Jump to Lightspeed to boot.

[Dracho]

There is talk of an online Pirates! game.

[Jack Morris]

One company in the Balkans made a Pirates style online game. But who would trust a company from Romania or Bosnia or wherever in that area? Obviously they did not fare well, as Pirates by Sid Meir is known WORLDWIDE and has no competition in their arena. Kudos to Atari for publishing and distributing the game.

This game would be so doable as an online game it's not even funny. The best thing is, noone could really have an "uber" ship as the upgrades are available to everyone as long as you got some gold to spare. It would be nice to pai up or have more human players battling another enemy task force or hunter killer group or even a escorted convoy. I love the bounty thing too. Spain does NOT like me at all. They also have religious settlements and pirate bases, if you do not mind the whole world going to war with you then you can find a base and attack all nations!  You will get rich, but you will not hold rank or have any land, and no governor's daughter with big bewbies showing. 

One thing though, you attack an escorted ship, you fight BOTH of them (escort and merchant or galleon) while you only get your flagship, not important even if you have a fleet, you only get your one ship. And yes, rocks, reefs, storms, and other nasty surprises can ruin your day. The land combat mode is awesome, and is very strategic.

[Commander La'ra]

My Dream Game Thread.

I posted that not long after I got Pirates.

I wanna pillage shipping in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea or make the voyage round Cape Horn...

[Jack Morris]

http://www.firaxis.com/

Now this IS a gaming company that wants to hear from it's customers!

http://www.firaxis.com/community/polls.php

My reply would be to have an online Pirates game! If those choices are the only ones on the board though, an online F-19 Stealth fighter remake would be cool, IMO. It's great to see these fantastic remakes of the games that ruled back in the day!

[Dracho]

I think Civ IV is their next big release.

[Jack Morris]

I do not know Dracho, there have been many Civ releases so far, and there really wasn't an expectation of a single player Pirates remake to be released, it was a surprise to the gaming world. It seems Sid doesn't think about "What would sell the most?" in the conventional sense, so far it seems to be paying off rather well as Pirates is still a hot seller and has NOT gone down in price as other games (SH3, S.W. JTL) have. I can remember when JTL cost 50 bucks and was full of online bugs and server problems.

[Commander La'ra]

Wouldn't it be awesome if they could splice Colonization with Pirates as an online game?  Imagine if, when the governor of Barbados enlisted you to harrass French shipping off Martinique, the governor was a real person with a real reason for asking you to do that, and by taking French prizes, you were helping your side with their efforts to dominate the Carribean. 

[Jack Morris]

Hey La'ra, did you go to the hideout of Montalban yet? You will need 250-300 crew as he has a buttload of Indian warriors (their archers really can shoot better than the Spanish troops) but after you defeat him you get 100,000 gold AND every crewmember that can aid your voyages and regular crew!

Blackbeard pays well too.

As soon as I get Duke in all nations except for Spain I'm going to use Pirate bases only and hit every nation as hard as I can before mandatory retirement. I also learned the large frigate is MUCH better than the ship of the line, those big guns tend to hit magazines of merchies too much. I can't count how many treasure galleons I lost in one game from one salvo from my rare ship of the line.

[J. Carney]

Hey La'ra, did you go to the hideout of Montalban yet? You will need 250-300 crew as he has a buttload of Indian warriors (their archers really can shoot better than the Spanish troops) but after you defeat him you get 100,000 gold AND every crewmember that can aid your voyages and regular crew!

Blackbeard pays well too.

As soon as I get Duke in all nations except for Spain I'm going to use Pirate bases only and hit every nation as hard as I can before mandatory retirement. I also learned the large frigate is MUCH better than the ship of the line, those big guns tend to hit magazines of merchies too much. I can't count how many treasure galleons I lost in one game from one salvo from my rare ship of the line.

Montalban was a pushover to me... not enough of a fight. The land battle is hellacious, but the fencing duel was kinda anticlimactic. I'm hardly ever playing the storyline, though... I like just sailing around and pretending like I don't have a care in the world. Right now, I have 30K gold pieces and a sloop-of-war that can outfight any frigate in the game- even Blackbeard's... which should be a West Indiaman BTW, he sailed a converted slave ship IIRC.

[Jack Morris]

Sid Meier is promoting polygamy! I got married to the Gov's daughter of St. Kitt's and it's still letting me romance other women! 

I liked the original Pirates where you got to spend the night boning the barmaid! 

I've got my mystic salve and have been pirating for 15 years now. All I got left is to find cities and for some reason I have 2 more romance things to do. I'm curious as to how long the game will let you go as in Pirates and Pirates Gold you usually got ten to twelve years in before it mandatorily retired you.

I need to type a really nice letter to Mr. Meier, if this game goes online in a dynaverse, OMG! How cool it would be! They will need to make the AI like Ubisoft does, I can do anything on this game EXCEPT duel pirates or pirate hunters on swashbuckler level, so I stick to Rogue as I got tired of getting thrown out of the second story window in the tavern.  They make the AI like Ubisoft in ship to ship combat, and make an online Pirates game, I'll be willing to shell out another 50 bucks, though I prefer they just make an expansion pack, much cheaper and sort of what LucasArts games did with the first JTL.

[Commander La'ra]

Hey La'ra, did you go to the hideout of Montalban yet? You will need 250-300 crew as he has a buttload of Indian warriors (their archers really can shoot better than the Spanish troops) but after you defeat him you get 100,000 gold AND every crewmember that can aid your voyages and regular crew!

There's very little in Pirates! that I haven't knocked over by now.  Taking on his land army was a nail biter...the first time I did it, I didn't so much defeat his groups of natives as hold the line with my buccaneers while my officers and a group of pirates did an end run to get into the fortress.

Like Carney, I found the swordfight to be much, much easier than the tactical battle.

Also like Carney, I much prefer the smaller, more manueverable Sloop-of-War to the larger, clumsier vessels.  I've had a frigate that could hit 20 knots in the right wind, but the square-riggers are so finicky about that...gimme a sloop or a brig that has a hard time ever being becalmed.  Doesn't help me when I'm trying to tack my way out of the Gulf of Mexico with a string of prizes, but at least I won't end up motionless in the middle of a fight when the wind suddenly shifts.

Carney:  I think Bartholomew Roberts had the converted slave ship.  Can't remember right off the top of my head.  Also can't remember where Blackbeard got his hands on the Queen Anne's Revenge.  I might look it up.

[Jack Morris]

Correct La'ra, Roberts used a slaver but not as any of his flagships. What fake friends that successful guy had, look at how many of his "friends" stole ships he let them command!

http://www.geocities.com/captcutlass/bio/roberts.html

Blackbeard with a Dutch flute? Well for the early 1700s I guess that would be ok, but I like Roberts thinking, better to have fast and nimble ships of war.

http://www.ocracoke-nc.com/blackbeard/ship/ship.htm

http://whyfiles.org/036pirates/queen_annes_revenge.html

Hmmmm, I sure would not mind finding Blackbeard's treasure! 

[Dracho]

A Brig O' War is a good all-around ship.

[Dracho]

Let's move the chatter over here.  Maybe we can do the same thing we were doing in SH3 and compare voyages / careers.  In the case of Pirates!, I'd think we need to have a category for each difficulty level.

[Darth Sidious]

Pirates! is the only recent release that's been making me consider getting a gaming quality PC going again.

Something tells me that a 800mhz duron w/ 256meg pc100 ram and 32meg shared video wont cut it.-

Cant afford new comp though which sucks

[Jack Morris]

Darth, Best Buy has credit payments, plus they have a P4 3.0 Sony VAIO for a little over 600 bucks! 

[Darth Sidious]

600 is still too high

Plus - i will NEVER buy a bigstore PC again (save perhaps a laptop, and then it'd be a powerbook)

I always buy parts from local sellers, and do all the installation myself.  Saves $

My main problem is too many jobchanges in the past year, and moving to boot;  and on top of that a lack of staple supplies for PC building.
(I'm out of HD's/ CDRW/Ram).

Darth, Best Buy has credit payments, plus they have a P4 3.0 Sony VAIO for a little over 600 bucks! 

[Mr_Tricorder]

Oh man!  If I had seen this discussion before, I would have jumped right in earlier.  I love Sid Meier's Pirates!  In addition to the new one, I've played the old DOS version, Pirates! Gold, and the Amiga version (the best version made before the new one).

I prefer sailing the Royal Sloop, but the absolute best feeling in the whole game is when (if) you capture a Ship of the Line and then go into battle with it as your flagship.  You just have to be careful not to sink enemy ships with one shot.

The jump in difficulty level for the duels between Rogue and Swashbuckler is tremendous.  I got really sick of being thrown out of that window.  The duels on the ships weren't so bad as long as you eliminated most of the enemy crew with grape shot before you board their ship.

If you need to get the maps to the lost city and have already married one of the governor's daughters, just keep going back to her port, dance with her, and she will eventually give you all of the pieces you need.

[Jack Morris]

Thanks for the tips Tricorder!

I too love the ship of the line, but my favorite (and just as rare) is the heavy frigate. I would love to see this made into an online nations at war game, as anyone could play, and the prospects of great fun are tremendous. I also love the close ships sailing together feature, no more chatting on RW wondering who is in what hex and who is going to crash the battle, if you are close you are in, period, and still start out at some distance from the main battle.

I too have found the swashbuckler fights just too much, even if you have the brace of pistols and set of perfectly balanced swords, yet the ship to ship combat is a joke unless they get lucky and hit your magazines.  With an online game, and badarse AI, there would be no more of that crap. Human fighters ROCK (unless you play SH3, that AI does NOT play around).