Sid Meier's Pirates!

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » November 26, 2004, 6:47 pm

Anyone tried it yet? Just downloaded it, but no time to play much till sunday, and probably raid in EQ then

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If it keep the spirit of the original its certaintly a game to buy, but i wanna test it out first

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » November 27, 2004, 3:45 am

Never mind, got a little time to try it last night, definitely a buyer, it still got all that was fun from the original Pirates.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 28, 2004, 5:10 am

Fun game.

It's nice to have a throw back game that you can play with just about zero learning curve and can play for any length of time including 10 minutes and accomplish something. It took me awhile to figure out firing my cannons strategically. I'm the pirate boarding master though!

The best part about this game is that you get to sink Dutch ships.

I raid and keep the Frenchy ships but sink the Dutch ones!

I got my ass handed to me trying to take a city though. I guess you're not suppose to do that early in the game!

Look out if you're in the open sea for my flagship, "The One"!

I give this game 71/100.

-90's level graphics
-Anti state of the art everything except gameplay
-Very easy user interface
-Extremely low learning curve
-Leisurely pace or fast pace depending on your caffeine level
-Might get bored with it pretty quick unless you like "empire" building games or trading games.
-You get to kill Dutch and sink Dutch ships
-English, Spanish, French and Dutch are the factions you can mess with.

Try before you buy. Worth a look for sure if you liked the original.

Kwonryu DragonFist · November 28, 2004, 12:30 pm

Winnow wrote:Fun game.

It's nice to have a throw back game that you can play with just about zero learning curve and can play for any length of time including 10 minutes and accomplish something. It took me awhile to figure out firing my cannons strategically. I'm the pirate boarding master though!

The best part about this game is that you get to sink Dutch ships. I raid and keep the Frenchy ships but sink the Dutch ones!

I got my ass handed to me trying to take a city though. I guess you're not suppose to do that early in the game!

Look out if you're in the open sea for my flagship, "The One"!

I give this game 71/100.

-90's level graphics
-Anti state of the art everything except gameplay
-Very easy user interface
-Extremely low learning curve
-Leisurely pace or fast pace depending on your caffeine level
-Might get bored with it pretty quick unless you like "empire" building games or trading games.
-You get to kill Dutch and sink Dutch ships
-English, Spanish, French and Dutch are the factions you can mess with.

Try before you buy. Worth a look for sure if you liked the original.

PERFECT!

Was first worried that they would make it a 3D RTS or FPS of it!

Pirates was my TOP Fav game on the C64 back in the day.

Tegellan · Post by **Tegellan** » November 28, 2004, 1:18 pm

Downloading it as we speak myself, if it's good, i am definitely buying it. I used to love Pirates back on my trusty old C64, probably one of the games I have spent the most time playing apart form EQ.

Lor · Post by **Lor** » December 5, 2004, 9:19 am

I've been playing this for a week now and the game is very much like it was on the C64, the 2 major differences are...#1 the land battles, they are turn based and #2 it dosen't look like you can attack the towns from the sea, once you run into an enemy town and say attack, it turns into a land battle ....unless I am doing something very wrong

one small annoying thing is that this new version has no time compression for those long voyages against the wind..... again, unless I just havent found it.

Anyone else find the Dancing annoying?

Laters

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » December 5, 2004, 9:30 am

Lor wrote:I've been playing this for a week now and the game is very much like it was on the C64, the 2 major differences are...#1 the land battles, they are turn based and #2 it dosen't look like you can attack the towns from the sea, once you run into an enemy town and say attack, it turns into a land battle ....unless I am doing something very wrong

one small annoying thing is that this new version has no time compression for those long voyages against the wind..... again, unless I just havent found it.

Anyone else find the Dancing annoying?

The land battles are a lot easier imo, i never managed to win one either on the C64 or the amiga, but im pretty good at them here

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You cant get a seaside attack like in the old game, but IF the town got a small fort and too few soldiers (think under 100), you dont get a land battle, you just get a fencing game again, and then you win the town. Pretty rare though, only happened to me twice, and both times was on towns that just got taken over by another nation or sacked by indians.

No time compression, but like in the old game, try to ride the wind. The different ships handle wind differently, look your ships up in the encyclopedia and see how your flagship will behave, then use that info to "ride" the wind.

Dancing was annoying at first, but when you get the hang of it, its actually pretty funny. Best thing you can do are to NOT look at the keymap in the right corner, at easiest level you can see there what to press, you cant on harder levels, so learn the womens body language and signt right away.

It do seem a little easy though, ATM i got max faction at all but spanish (and im a major at the spanish, though they hate me), i got around 60K cash and 30K land banked for retirement, i beat all 9 pirates, found all 9 treasures, found 3 of my 4 relatives, and got 1 piece of the map for a lost city (and god help me, that ones lost, no clue on how im supposed to find it).

Lor · Post by **Lor** » December 5, 2004, 10:13 am

I got pretty well messed up on my first land battle in the new game

but it really does get easier once you know where to put your troops. also, have you tried firing on the forts while at sea? I'm not sure if that decreases the size of the army you have to fight or not.

What ship have you kept as your Flag? mine is the Royal sloop... even though it only has 20 guns, I love the overall speed for the sea battles, Maybe for the next game I'll go for a frigate, that was my favorite in the C64.

I did notice that the dancing gets progressively harder as you court the better looking women...... I ended up marrying the Pig because I was able to get through a whole dance with her with out stumbling around

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » December 5, 2004, 3:58 pm

Shooting at forts dont help, dont bother, all that you get are your ship damaged.

Im using a fully modded up War Frigate from one of the other pirates, kept that during my whole career. Never seen a Royal Sloop or the uber rare one i read about in pirates forums.

I married the daughter in Curacao, because i was there at the time, had 2 plain and 1 beautiful daughters where i had beaten the suitors, just didnt think

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 14, 2004, 2:23 pm

I was in the Beta of this, and they made some major improvements just before release.

Attacking cities is much easier than before, and a lot easier to understand than it originally started out. I was definitely taken back to my days of playing the original Pirates game all night.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » January 20, 2005, 12:56 am

Loved the original and I love this game even more. I have found myself logging off of WoW to play it. This is one of those simple yet addictive games that can leave you wondering how the fuck it got to be 3am.

The key to dancing is to look at the partners cues and hit the key on the beat. Do that, and bagging a beautiful wife is no problem. Wit and charm (my prefered skill) with a pair of good shoes helps a lot too. Also, don't get married too soon. Spread the love around to a few women all over the map as you can use them for free information later in the game once you do get hitched (which is astronomically harder to do if you get married before working down the romance quest with some other women, at higher difficulty)

Im still playing my first guy and the key to my advancement has been sacking cities. This requires large ships (to carry the manpower) and a large force. As such my flagship is a fully tricked out Fast Galleon, and I usually keep a War Galleon in reserve for troop capacity. I used to keep a Sloop of War or Barque in my force for maneuvering, but I found it to be a waste of a ship spot (not to mention getting shot to hell every battle), since you can pick your approach to enemy shipping and thereby negate any speed advantage. Land battles are easy once you learn to set up your force that you constantly get flank attacks. Also, gunning down cavalry doesnt hurt. Wipe out an oppossing army entirely and you will nab 5k+ per city you sack and pretty much an automatic promotion from whichever nations oppose the one you just fucked over.

Another word of advice: You can't avoid trashing your pirate faction (the 9 notorious pirates are achievements and hurt that faction), so focus your efforts on being nice to the indians. Convincing a local chief to go soften up Havana for you is a great way to sack a major city with a minimum of force. You can do this with pirates, but at some point you will end up hosing that faction when you track down the famous 9 and you will probably want to intercept raids to friendly cities.

Some other fine points of the game: Intercept all troop transports, military payrolls, and grain transports to enemy towns (as these will make them harder to sack), but leave governor transports alone (as these make the towns richer and ripe for plunder). To get the highest possible score, you should start out on easy (to collect all the power-ups, best wife, and best flagship) and then divide plunder once a year, advancing the difficulty each time. This will deck you out and let you really rake in the cash over the last few years of your career (when you are probably mainly just hunting down lost treasures, anyhow) when it counts. So far, I have advanced enough that were I to retire (at age 28) I would be an admiral.

In short, this game rocks. I love it.

Karae · Post by **Karae** » January 20, 2005, 1:08 am

Lor wrote:I've been playing this for a week now and the game is very much like it was on the C64, the 2 major differences are...#1 the land battles, they are turn based

I still can't understand why nobody wants to make fights optionally turn based or free-form. It seems like a logical progression to me and something fairly easy to do.

Adelrune Argenti · Post by **Adelrune Argenti** » March 22, 2005, 5:15 am

This game has become my latest obsession. I love being able to do whatever I feel like. The last game I played I decided to advance the French cause and basically turned about 80 percent of the Spanish cities into French ones.

Truant · Post by **Truant** » March 22, 2005, 8:06 am

I played the shit out of it until I beat the shit out of it. Now I put it on the shelf, and will probably get it out at least once a year until it doesn't work anymore like I did with my NES copy.

Excellent game. And btw Jice, Frigate/Large Frigate >>>>>> any Galleon.