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[5.2] GOLD AND PLUNDER
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Although wealth only makes up a fifth of your final fame score, you'll likely
be pursuing gold as your main objective throughout the game anyway. If only
because that is what your crew is after, and if you don't keep gold pouring
into your holds, they will soon become unhappy. Some good ways to make gold
are:
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PLUNDERING SHIPS
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This is the most obvious one and probably what you'll spend most of your time
doing. Any ship you capture is likely to at least carry some gold which goes
directly into your hold, and possibly valuable cargo as well which you can sell
for gold later. How profitable this is depends a lot on the targets you are
striking. Bear the following mind:
- Indian War Canoes bear either no or very little gold. Not worth it; only
attack these to win the approval of European nations.
- Warships of most kinds tend to have little in the way of gold and goods.
- Smugglers tend to have nice cargo and a little gold as well.
- Unnamed pirates are sometimes down on their luck and sometimes they had a
good run before you catch them. You can never be sure, but it's usually worth
it to go after them.
- Merchant ships tend to have a decent amount of gold and high value cargo,
especially the bigger ones. Much of their value comes from the luxuries and
spices they tend to carry, but obviously you do need to find a place to unload
those, first.
- Escorted merchant ships are escorted for a reason. They tend to have more
gold and cargo than unescorted ones. Rarely, the escort ship itself has been
loaded with gold as well.
- Ships carrying immigrants or transporting new governors tend to have a good
amount of gold; presumably the personal fortune of their passengers.
- Military payroll and treasure ships have good amounts of gold on board, easy
profit which doesn't require you to sell cargo first. The Treasure Fleet, if
you can find it, usually consists of several treasure ships with a better
amount of gold than normal.
- Named villains tend to be rich. You can get an easy 3000 gold off Raymondo
and even more off Montalban.
- Named pirates have the best loot of all, especially the most famous ones.
Furthermore, their loot increases over the course of the game. I've heard of
one lucky player who got no less than 70000 off Henry Morgan's ship. More
realistically, you can expect to get at least 12000 off him.
- If you frequently talk to barmaids, you will be dropped hints about nearby
ships with a lot of gold on board. This can be any ship that carries at least
700 gold; I've once been pointed to Raymondo's ship this way. If you get a hint
about a fat target, check its route and see if you can easily go after it. It
is almost always worth doing.
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PLUNDERING TOWNS
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While it takes bigger crews to pull off than plundering ships, you can earn
yourself some serious money by sacking the various towns in the Caribbean. The
best targets are Wealthy ones, followed by Prosperous; Modest isn't really
worth doing and if you raid Poor towns for the money, you need to rethink your
priorities. (It *is* a sound tactic if you intend to capture the town, though.)
Wealth and strength of defenses in a town are not necessarily balanced. Poor
towns might have a surprisingly strong garrison and it's possible that a
wealthy town - especially one that became wealthy only recently - is poorly
defended. You don't need me to tell you which of these two examples would be
the better target to go after.
Here are a few tips on plundering towns:
- Be sure to talk to mysterious travellers at all times, and to stop in ports
whenever you have the time, to keep your information on as many towns as
possible up to date. Visiting a port will update your information on it, and
travellers can give you free information on a random other town. You can
review this information when you click on a town on the world map.
- When you attack a town, try to have at least as many pirates as there are
soldiers defending it. You *can* beat greater numbers, especially on lower
levels, but it's risky. If your numbers are as good as theirs, you can be
pretty sure you'll win it if you don't make a lot of mistakes.
- A town's defenses can be softened up by going to a nearby pirate haven or
indian village and convincing them to attack it. Note that each haven/village
can only be set on whatever town belonging to a nation is closest to them, but
you can usually find one (especially if you have the Rutter items). Inciting
Indians to attack is always safe, they will attack the soldiers and the
population but leave the gold. Pirates *will* plunder the town if they manage
it and leave you with nothing to steal, so employ them only if you're pretty
sure they can't win it. In other words, let them suicide themselves against
a particularly well defended town to soften it up for your attack.
- If a town is particularly big and rich and poorly defended, you may
sometimes find it worth it to plunder it twice in a row. If your first
attack went well, you will hopefully still have most of your pirates whereas
the garrison is battered and bruised. The second attack will be a piece of
cake and you can milk that much more gold from the town. As an added bonus,
the second attack will often let you capture the city for another nation if
the first did not.
- It may be worth it not to always intercept governors of enemy nations if you
see them sailing. You can chase them until they enter their destination port
and upgrade its economy, then sail in right after them and plunder the town's
newfound wealth before it has a chance to strengthen its garrison.
- If you are serious about robbing a specific nation's towns, aggressively
attack its troop ships and military payrolls to keep it from strengthening
its garrisons. Payroll ships are a good idea anyway; they tend to have a lot of
gold on board.
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SELLING GOODS
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Goods of all kinds can be obtained in two ways: they can be purchased from
merchants in towns (and in the various types of smaller settlements), or they
can be stolen off ships you capture. Unlike in the previous Pirates games, you
don't get any goods when plundering towns anymore; only gold. No matter how you
obtain your goods, you can then sell them in any town you desire, and if you
pick the right place for the right commodity, you can make a hefty profit. It's
even possible to have a moderately successful game as a peaceful trader by
buying low and selling high. Some tips for getting a profit off selling goods:
- You have better results selling in the towns of a nation you are a Colonel
in, or better yet, a Marquis. These two ranks give you trading bonuses: the
town will have more goods for sale and also have more gold in reserve to buy
your goods with.
- Wealthy towns pay better and also have a better gold reserve. If you don't
sell in the right towns, you might find they run out of money before you've
unloaded more than a fraction of your cargo. The best towns to sell in are,
unfortunately, Spanish. Since you won't find yourself on Spain's side in most
games (presumably because you're plundering all those wealthy towns), you'll
need to know the good places that other nations have to unload your goods.
Which towns are rich varies a bit from game to game, but safe bets are
Curacao (Dutch), Guadeloupe and Martinique (French) and Barbados (English).
Otherwise, any port that happens to be Prosperous or Wealthy at the time is
typically a good place.
- If you do keep Spain on your side, you will find you can make almost as much
profit selling stuff to their richest ports than stealing from them. This is
particularly true in 1680 when the other nations are rich enough for a Spanish
privateer to succeed. Cartagena, Havana and Santiago are all very good places
to trade. Vera Cruz as well, but it's really out of the way. Panama tends to be
the single richest Spanish town there is, but it's not a port, so you'd need
to walk there every time you want to visit it. Panama's the kind of place that
easily pays 40-50 gold for 1 ton of Spice and has enough gold to buy it in
bulk.
- The False Mustache and Theatrical Disguise items let you trade in Spanish
ports even if Spain is hostile to you. Regrettably, they don't help you
actually get into the ports, making them fairly pointless as far as I can see.
They only help if Spain is so hostile that they won't trade with you, but not
so hostile that they'll open fire on you if you try to enter one of their
towns. That's a pretty narrow window especially on the higher levels.
- Goods and Sugar sell well in large ports. Spice and Luxuries fetch the best
prices in smaller ports. Both fetch better prices in rich ports than poor ones.
For the most part, Spice and Luxuries are more profitable; give these priority
if you need to choose what to steal off a captured ship.
- Settlements often pay very well for goods and missions pay well for food,
but both always have very small supplies of gold. Barely worth it.
- Cannons aren't worth it in terms of selling. This is new to Sid Meier's
Pirates, as they fetched a good and consistent price in the previous games.
Never take cannons along instead of any other kind of cargo; just the max you
need for your flagship.
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SELLING SHIPS
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If you capture a ship at sea, it's not just its gold and cargo that is of
value to you. The ship itself can be quite valuable as well. You can actually
make a decent profit off nabbing and selling ships, if you know what you're
doing. Here's what you want to keep in mind:
- Try not to damage your prizes. The repair cost of a damaged ship goes off its
selling price, and if the ship is heavily damaged it may well exceed the prize,
leaving the ship at the minimum value of 10 gold - for firewood, probably. Even
if you have a Sailmaker and a Carpenter working for you, the repairs they can
do to ships are only minor. Try to board ships without shooting too much at
them, and rely mostly on Grape Shot and a little on Chain Shot if you do need
to fire a few broadsides. Round Shot is devastating, especially in numbers, and
you can forget about getting much of a profit if you shoot a lot of holes in
the enemy's hull.
- A Major gets cheaper repairs in port, and can thus get away better with
damaging his prizes a little. If you're a Count, repairs are free, and at that
point it doesn't matter anymore if you bring half-destroyed ships in. But they
will still slow you down while you've got them in your fleet, and tie up a lot
of your crew.
- A Duke gets to upgrade ships for free. If you're lucky enough to be a Duke
with any nation, bring your ships there to sell, and upgrade them before
selling to increase the value of the ship.
- You can only have a maximum of 8 ships in your fleet. Plan a return to a
friendly port (preferably one where you have a high rank) as you get close to
that maximum. And keep an eye on your crew, so you don't end up short as it
is divided over the ships. If you have little crew left on your flagship you
will find it hard to win any more battles. Even worse, if you don't have
enough crew to meet the minimum requirements of all your ships, you will slow
down a lot.
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QUESTS
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The most important source of money in the game is undertaking quests. There are
a bunch of different ones, some random and recurring, some set. And some are
worth a lot more than others. The following quests will bring in money for you:
- Capturing a fugitive criminal: a reward between 1000 and 5000 gold, and easy
to get. Get these quests by dancing with governor's daughters. You get them
with a moderate dance from a plain looking daughter already, and as a
substitute for various other (better) rewards if they no longer apply. See
paragraph 7.1 for more information.
- Finding a buried pirate treasure: between 2000 and 10000 gold. Talk to
travellers in taverns to get map pieces for this. See paragraph 7.3. for more
information.
- Finding a lost city: this brings in a whopping 50000 gold, but it's hard to
do. Get map pieces by rescuing family members or kidnapped governor's
daughters, or by dancing perfectly with a beautiful daughter. See paragraph
7.5. for more information.
- Vanquishing Marquis de la Montalban: the main quest of the game; it's
complicated, takes a lot of preparation, and ends with a fairly tough battle
(depending on level, though). But for 100000 gold it's hard to say no. See
paragraph 7.6. for the whole story.
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